Liminal Spaces Are Where the Tarot Stops Being Literal
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Last winter I was moving out of a Brooklyn studio and got stuck in the hallway at 3am, surrounded by boxes I hadn’t packed. Not because I was tired—though I was—but because the space felt charged. The walls were bare, the light was weird, and for some reason my brain kept saying: you are not in your old life, and you are not in the next one. You’re in the hallway.
That’s when I started taking liminal spaces seriously. As a vet tech, I spend a lot of time in in-between places: exam rooms, waiting areas, the moment between “we’ll see” and “we have a diagnosis.” People act like the hallway is just a hallway. I think it’s more like a threshold where identity gets loose. From what I understand, Arnold van Gennep talked about rites of passage having a liminal phase—separation, threshold, incorporation. That fits. You leave one self behind, you don’t fully arrive at the next one, and your nervous system is basically buffering.
I started treating those spaces like tarot pulls, except the cards are the room, the silence, the smell of old paint. A hospital corridor can hit like The Moon: disorienting, symbolic, full of things you don’t want to look at. An empty apartment can be The Tower, not because it’s dramatic, but because the floor opened up and you have to decide what you’re going to build next. I’m not saying every hallway is a prophecy. I’m saying when your life is in flux, your environment starts reflecting the inner threshold you’re trying to cross.
The trick is that tarot stops being literal there. It’s not “this hallway means you’ll get a job” or “this waiting room means bad news.” It’s more like the space is asking you to notice what you’re carrying. I remember a client’s dog, a nervous terrier, who would freeze in the clinic hallway before exams. The vet said it was just stress, and maybe it was, but I kept seeing it as a tiny threshold: the dog wasn’t ready to move from “home” into “being handled.” Sometimes I’d sit on the floor with him, not to fix anything, just to let the hallway be a hallway. He’d eventually walk in, and I’d think, okay, the card was The Hermit, not The Tower. He needed a moment alone before the next part.
Now when I’m in a liminal space, I don’t try to read it like a fortune. I read it like a mood. What does the room feel like? What am I avoiding? What part of me is still packed in a box? That’s where tarot becomes useful, because it gives me a way to say, “I’m not sure what this is, but I can name the feeling.” The hallway doesn’t predict the future. It just reminds me that I’m between two versions of myself, and sometimes that’s enough to keep moving.
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