There exists a moment each evening when day hesitates before surrendering to night. A pause between certainties, when shadows stretch long but darkness has not yet claimed dominion. It is here, in these liminal spaces—from the Latin limen, meaning threshold—that transformation quietly unfolds.
The ancient Romans understood the power of in-between places. Beyond their famous two-faced Janus, who presided over major transitions and the turning of years, they honored an entire pantheon of minor deities devoted to the humble threshold itself. Cardea protected door hinges and handles, her very name derived from cardo, the hinge upon which everything turns. Lima guarded the literal threshold stone, that worn piece of marble or wood we step across without thought. Limentinus watched over door lintels, while Forculus stood sentinel at the doors themselves.
These small gods understood what we often forget: that the most profound changes happen not in dramatic moments of arrival, but in the barely perceptible spaces of crossing over.
"Every doorway is a summons to become."
— John O'Donohue
While Janus commanded the grand passages—the turning of seasons, the opening of wars, the birth of new years—these smaller deities attended to the intimate crossings of daily life. They knew that every threshold, no matter how humble, marks a boundary between states of being. The doorway between kitchen and garden. The moment when we step from sidewalk to home. The breath between waking and rising.
What the Romans intuited, we have largely forgotten: that we are not solid beings moving through space, but fluid creatures in constant dialogue with transition. Every crossing changes us, however subtly. We enter conversations as one version of ourselves and emerge as another, shaped by whatever truths were spoken or received.
The small gods gather in moments we rarely pause to witness. They hover at the edge of first kisses, in that electric space between leaning closer and contact. They preside over the instant when understanding dawns—when scattered pieces of a problem suddenly arrange themselves into solution. They inhabit the moment when fear transforms into courage, usually in some forgotten hallway or stairwell where we pause to gather ourselves before stepping into what we didn't think we could face.
"At the threshold, we are both who we were and who we might become."
— Celtic wisdom
