What is liminology?

Liminology is a way of observing experience at points of transition.

It is concerned with thresholds rather than destinations. These are the moments where something has ended but has not yet resolved into what comes next. Such moments are often disorientating, emotionally charged, or difficult to articulate, and are frequently passed over in favour of outcomes or explanations.

Liminology does not seek to determine what should happen in these spaces. It pays attention to what is already happening there.

At its core, Liminology is a descriptive lens. It observes how meaning, identity, perception, and language behave when familiar structures fall away. It is interested in pauses, crossings, interruptions, and the subtle shifts that occur when a person is no longer held by a previous role, belief, relationship, or narrative, but has not yet arrived at a new one.

This lens developed through lived observation rather than formal theory. Over time, recurring patterns became visible across experiences of change, loss, emergence, and reorientation. Existing language did not adequately account for these patterns, and new terms were required to hold them with greater precision.

While this work sits alongside many disciplines and spiritual traditions, it did not arise from any single profession, belief system, or practice. Its foundations lie in observation rather than affiliation.

Liminology does not present fixed answers or prescribe a single meaning. Instead, it supports the process by which meaning is noticed, shaped, and understood within lived context.

It is concerned with sense making rather than certainty.

If you have found yourself between identities, between understandings, or between versions of yourself, not broken but not yet settled, then you have already encountered the territory liminology observes.

This site exists to explore that territory carefully, ethically, and without urgency.

Liadán Hallow
The Liminal Linguist