The expression "Beyond the Fields We Know" was coined at the turn of the last century by the Irish peer, Lord Dunsany, a gifted playwright and master storyteller, who used it in many of his tales to describe the realms which lie beyond the world we live in, Elfland or Faerie being one such world beyond.

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats, a friend of Dunsany's, said wistfully that he (Dunsany) wrote from "a careful abundance", and more recently, Lin Carter  called Lord Dunsany a magnificent storyteller, and one of the last great masters of English prose, superior even to J.R.R. Tolkien in subtle artistry. Dunsany 's work has been a major influence on most, if not all, of the fantasy writers who followed him, and "The King of Elfland's Daughter" rivals anything else ever written in the field of fantasy literature.  The text of two of my favourite Dunsany tales can be found on this site, "The Kith of the Elf-Folk" and "Where the Tides Ebb and Flow", and I shall be adding others, when there is time.

What separates us from Elfland and the other realms which lie beyond the one we inhabit?  At the edge of the fields we know lies a hedgerow, a very ordinary sort of hedgerow containing a rustic gate.  Hedgerow and gate delineate the presence of a place which is neither here nor there, neither up nor down, neither in nor out, neither real nor imagined.  The hedgerow and its rude gate are a threshold of sorts, a doorway or liminal space, and like all liminal spaces, they are a place of strong magic, not simply a barrier between here and there, as they appear to be at first glance.  Like all liminal spaces, hedgerow and gate are also a corridor or passageway into the unknown (but occasionally glimpsed and heard) mysterious worlds which  lie beyond the fields we know.  Within the liminal space of the gate/hedgerow and beyond it lies something rich and strange, a dimension which is by times, extraordinary, creative, exhilarating and terrifying.

I cheerfully confess to a fascination with doorways, windows, gates, thresholds, hearths, chimneys and portals of any kind whatsoever, and it isn't unusual to find me standing lost in thought in front of a newly discovered portal or curled up in my favourite chair at home thinking about such places.  I'm entranced by their situation, their architecture, the materials of which they are formed, and even their color, as much as I am by what lies beyond them.   I didn't realize it until I started trying to describe my interest in liminal spaces a while ago, but my two favourite fictional works are both about thresholds and liminal spaces: Little, Big by John Crowley, and "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin, and a number of my other favourite books seem to be as well.

There are indeed strange worlds beyond liminal spaces, but there are times when the liminal spaces themselves perform a special function and act as interstitial or "between" places for a  bored or weary psyche, offering a brief, even momentary escape from that which is mundane and prosaic.  These are the twilight or transitional places where the veils between our own plane and the uncharted territories are thin, where possibilities are mysterious and never-ending, where one may encounter all sorts of things if one is courageous, carries a little protection and is willing to take the next brave step, across the threshold into the unknown.

Within a liminal space and beyond it,  lies a dimension which enfolds everything which has ever existed or happened in the cosmos, every thought, every dream, every sensation and movement, every possibility, a plane of existence which is characterized by flowing movement and spontaneous glowing transformation, a place where anything at all can happen and one should expect the unexpected. Traveller beware - there may well be dragons lurking within a liminal space and waiting just beyond the doorway, but there are also wonders to be seen, and there are knowledge and enlightenment to be won on the other side.

Liminal spaces can be utterly compelling and they can exert a powerful tug on the sensibilities.  Every hero or heroine's journey begins with a call to adventure, one breathtaking, serendipitous, watershed moment in which she or he recognizes a liminal space, responds to its eldritch music and steps across the threshold into another realm.

Mircea Eliade wrote of doors and thresholds as being both symbols and passages:

"the limit, the boundary, the frontier which distinguishes and opposes two worlds  and at the same time the paradoxical place where these worlds communicate, where passage from the profane to the sacred world becomes possible."

"The threshold calls into being the separation of the between, calls into being the  gathering middle, in whose intimacy the preservation of things and the granting of world pervade one another."

Within the seemingly empty space of a doorway or a threshold there are ancient, wild and chaotic forces in motion, and thresholds have the power to open a cranny or passageway between this world and the other side, allowing those tumultuous forces to blow through. There are very good reasons why cultures from ancient times to our own revered both threshold and hearth, and why they took special measures to secure such places, carving symbols on their door lintels, inserting sprigs of rowan and Brigid's crosses into the doors themselves, burying pins and needles beneath their hearth stones, sweeping and blessing their thresholds, and nailing horseshoes above their doorways.

Sometimes, thresholds or liminal spaces are physical locations, but there are also numerous times when they are intangible and not visible to the human eye, liminal or interstitial moments rather than places, which allow us to transcend ordinary life for a brief, intense interval -  these liminal spaces are not physical entities at all.

For students of Buddhism, particularly Zen, doorways, gates and thresholds are powerful symbols and metaphors for mindful living and the plane of earthly existence.  Buddhist literature contains an abundance of references to such places and commentaries on them.  In Buddhist practice, anything at all may become a doorway or gate, and beyond each and every one, enlightenment and the Buddha are waiting to be discovered.  Through the simple act of entering a doorway or stepping onto a threshold, one acknowledges and makes a commitment to something which is at the same time smaller and greater than the self.  One meditates on the intrinsic nature of the threshold, on the random thoughts which form there and are held within the space, on those who travelled the path before us and came to this place, and on those who are yet to come.  When one is thinking of other beings, doorways and thresholds become gates of compassion and realms of Tara.

Waking, sleeping and dreaming are liminal times, and the very act of breathing may be viewed as liminal.  Mazes, spirals, labyrinths, tors, mounds, stone circles, groves and sacred enclosures are liminal spaces opening into other realities and other modes of being - as are most rituals and seasonal festivals.  Sunrise, noon, twilight and midnight are liminal times of day when divination and magic can be worked by those skilled in such arts;  they may be times of fear and vulnerability for those without such gifts or the protections of the Craft.  The ancient fire festivals of the Celts are the most powerful threshold times of all, for the four feasts of Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lammas fall at the times of the year when the veils between the worlds are thinnest and when magic is indeed afoot.

Life is full of thresholds or liminal spaces, and I sometimes wonder how many we pass by every day without recognizing them or realizing what adventures or enlightenment await us, in Lord Dunsany's words,  "beyond the fields we know".

Whether or not we realize it, we all encounter liminal spaces from time to time, and we need such places in our lives in order to survive, to grow and be creative.  Liminal spaces allow us to step out of the ordinary world for a while, and into the rich realm of the archetypal, the strange and the creative.  From time to time, I encounter them in art, meditation and stillness, in the flowing movements of Tai Chi and yoga, in smouldering sticks of nag champa incense, in deep twilight and the shapes of trees, in strong coffee and the keyboard sonatas of Scarlatti, in winter days in the shire when the air is so hushed  that one can actually hear the snow falling in the trees, in loons (anywhere, anytime) and walks through the oak woods in October, in the creaking timbers of old log barns, in wood smoke, in dark chocolate, good brandy and the fragrances of bergamot, lavender and rosewood.