Liminal Spaces: Where Magic Waits in the In-Between
Witches don’t just work with nature, we work with transitions. Liminal spaces are places (or moments) that exist between states. They’re powerful, slippery, and ideal for spellwork, spirit contact, or time-bending magic.
🗝️ Examples of Liminal Places:
• Doorways
• Crossroads
• Bridges
• Shorelines (between land & sea)
• Abandoned or overgrown places
• Thresholds of homes (yes, your front step counts)
🕯️ Liminal Times:
• Dawn & dusk
• Midnight
• The moment before sleep
• Samhain / Beltane / Equinoxes
• New Moons & Dark Moons
These moments are when the veil is thinnest, and your intentions can travel further — to ancestors, spirits, the subconscious, the unknown.
The magic is in the spaces no one thinks to look at.
🔮 Witch Tip: Try placing offerings or performing spells at the threshold of a door or window. Let the spell sit in that in-between, gathering power.
listen i know liminal spaces in witchcraft are different than Liminal Spaces but just the thought of pulling off the highway on a road trip and into the parking lot of a 24-hr subway, going in and seeing someone occupying a whole table with a large involved tarot spread and maybe a few crystals
it just makes sense to me and brings me so much joy. like i don't want to do witchcraft at a crossroads or a cemetery i want to do it at my local gas station at 3am
S. I. Johnston on Crossroads, focused primarily on Greek traditions.
On rituals at crossroads:
[...] “Crossroads are liminal points or transitional gaps between defined, bounded areas, that is, between roads or between the areas of land that the roads define.
These rituals can be divided into two categories, both of which reflect their liminality: 1) those in which an individual sought help and protection at an uncertain liminal point, and 2) those in which the detachment of the liminal point was exploited.”
On offerings at crossroads:
“Crossroads, precisely because they were unclaimed “nowheres,” were among the few appropriate places to leave material expelled from society. According to several sources, [...] the polluted remains of household rituals, were left at the crossroads.”
On symbolic display of parricides:
[ parricide: the killing of a parent or a near relative; someone who committed parricide ]
[...] “that Plato only prescribes this purifying treatment at the crossroads for parricides -- the most polluted and polluting of murderers -- indicates that what is of concern is not the punishment of the murder per se (which, after all, already would have been accomplished by this point) but the expulsion of a particularly dangerous bloodguilt. [...] This alternative combined the ritualized expulsion of pollution to a liminal place with the practical removal of the offending corpse.”
On exploiting the magic at crossroads:
“If one sought contact with the unquiet dead, then a crossroads was the place to look. It is possible, too, that only selected crossroads became burial places for atypical corpses and thus, repositories of restless ghosts. [...] perhaps, there were appointed crossroads for the burial of other stigmatized dead, chosen for their distance from the city or other qualifying circumstances.
By manipulating the souls who gathered at crossroads, the magician, in his own way, exploited the liminality of the crossroads that brought him there; he recalled the polluted souls that others had cast out.”
Johnston, S. I. "Crossroads." Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 88 (1991): 217-24. Accessed April 21, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/20187554.
I guess I’m on a kick with ways to cleanse and purify recently, and I’m traveling so it’s perfect to introduce some more on liminality!
Tired of that old city feel?
While traveling [provided you aren’t the one driving of course–safety first], close your eyes and imagine the road as a river of light, color can be solid or shifting.
Now picture yourself flowing along side the river, washing away any energy you don’t want attached to yourself.
Another way is to open the windows [if possible] and focus on the wind surrounding you, carrying any negative energy away with you.
For me, I focus on the liminal nature of the energy, it is in-between, on its way to becoming something new, and you can redirect that energy into something new of to your choice
Now, if you are at a hotel, you can cleanse with a similar idea in mind. Take a shower or bath, using whatever soaps you choose [I always use the hotel/motel provides ones because I forget to bring my own], and let the water and energy of the place wash away the city feel, and anything else you want gone.
I’m on the road again! Which means it is the perfect time for liminal witchcraft!! Something I did last night that you all might enjoy was a simple love spell for a friend of mine. Ingredients: local flowers that you find pretty, the closer they are to a road the better. ( I used wild roses for example) Instructions: Pluck/collect three flower petals or flowers. Wash them off with clean cool water(if petals) or gently rise for flowers. Then visualize your intent or say it verbally “let love find me/keep my love strong/help me in my search for love/etc” Then, place a petal under your pillow each night, or keep one flower by your bed for three nights. If you are traveling keep it on your person, and dispose of it each night. Before you go to bed (or put a new one on you) visualize or state your intent “love will find me/I will be succesful in my search/etc” For visualization: if you are traveling, there is a ton of liminal energy around Imagine it fusing with the flower and your intent to boost the magic.
Some urban liminal spaces I've encountered: A Dennys along the interstate going from AZ to CA at 2:30 AM Empty aisles in Walmart anytime past 1. Maverick gas station and the lots near them in rural towns Being from a big city, I've noticed that there are more liminal spaces in urban areas than one would expect. If any one can add some more rural ones or ones in forests/deserts/mountains etc feel free to add them
One would think that these two are mutually exclusive,
But to me, they aren’t.
We live in a world where nothing, save death, is certain.
So how can we know?
Well for starters, we know ourselves, or who we were and who we want to be.
We know that sometimes shit happens, and that there is little to do about it.
The world is one big liminal space in itself.
This uncertainty makes people fearful sometimes. And that’s ok.
We can use this fear to motivate ourselves to furthering our knowledge to grant us a feeling of security.
What you know may change, and may be wrong in the future, but that knowledge is on thing that doesn’t change.
To me, the place an herb or stone comes from is just as important as what it can do. These are by no means the only herbs and stones associated with liminal spaces, just a few personal to me.
Herbs:
Anything growing by the side of the road
Milk weed
Dandelions
Daisies
Pine needles
Oleanders
Half bloomed flowers
Stones:
Granite
Concrete
Stones by freeways
Stones in school yards
Sand (any)
Sandstone
Barite
Sylvite
For me it’s always about the place they are at, literally and metaphorically
