We're all foreigners in Liminal Times

As we leave the perceived known world of 'what was' and venture further into the waters of these liminal times, the experience of 'becoming the other' becomes pronounced as we build our new selves.

The fear of the Other and of being othered lives in our memories

The other isn’t just outside our psychological or physical frontiers. Perhaps we have even felt the other lurking within, in our personal Jekyll & Hyde experience. Thus our fears, attraction, and experiences with the foreigner, the strange, the alien - the ultimate other, either inner or outer - stir our unconscious as it’s something ancient and ancestral. If we look closely, we all have felt as the other even within our smaller circles of family and community.

This fear is ancient, but also recent in a world that continues to expand.

One of my favorite books in my collection is by the medievalist historian Georges Duby comparing the year 1000 to the year 2000 (An 1000 an 2000 - Sur les traces de nos peurs). I got this book when I was in college and have reread it many times, as it’s prophetic in its ability to show us how we’re not too far off from our medieval ancestors. The thesis of this book builds a parallel of the fears of our medieval forefathers with our modern fears: of poverty, of the other, of epidemics, of violence, and of what comes after death.

As I read the news, I found myself digging out the book to reread the chapter on the fear of the other—a theme close to my heart.

As a Gemini, I know what’s to have my Other Twin, the cantankerous one come up for an extended visit, my angry self, which I’ve taken to calling Scarlett, causing a ruckus in my mental space, and also my experience of being an immigrant at an early age, crossing physical and mental bilingual and bicultural borders.

The sense of being the other, both in the country I call home and where I happen to come from, has given me a taste of the advantages and the vulnerability of being the other.

Astrologically speaking, Uranus rules the field of experience of the other, the strange, the outcast, the one that is out of our boundaries - Saturn. And as Uranus is inching closer to leaving Taurus to move to Gemini in July, we’ll learn much about the OTHER - within and without.

Okay, let's return to George Duby’s ideas and how they can help us navigate these liminal waters.

The Other in times of expansion versus in times of contraction

The fear of invasions by the other is primal; thus, the deep anxious unease it raises in us when we perceive that what is for us the other is too close to our borders (psychological or otherwise).

Humans are funny in that we both crave security and being with those we consider ‘ours’, and desire to expand and explore. Inherently, we both love and hate what is other. The other can be dangerous, even deadly, but it can also help us diversify, enrich our experiences and resources, and strengthen our DNA.

I feel liminal times could be exemplified by the space between Saturn and Uranus, where Chiron lives.

We leave the castle walls (Saturn) to venture into the unknown forest (Uranus), where we can either be wounded (Chiron) or find our maverick selves (also Chiron) and our group of outlaws, misfits, and ‘Merry Men’ (a la Robin Hood).

And that’s where we’re at in these times.

In the year 1000, Europe was in an expansive phase, unlike today. The successive invasions of hoards of others (e.g. vikings, mongols, etc.) caused terror, but also were assimilated, expanding trade and commerce (there’s your Mercury working for you!), created new alliances and the offspring of those times was an adventurous spirit that both diversified and strengthened the European civilization, according to George Duby.

In time, the others also found integration by becoming Christians, intermarrying, and forming alliances. Thus, through demolishing the barriers, even violently, our ancestors learned that letting in the ‘new blood’ was more productive than closing in on themselves.

The way the other arrived may have been first through fear, but also via trade, an exchange of ideas, and innovation—the very realm of Mercury, one of the primary liminal deities alongside Venus.

If Mercury brings trade and commerce, Venus brings alliances via love, marriages, unions, and shared values. If Uranus busts open (at times with the help of Mars as its battering ram) our Saturnian castle walls, it comes accompanied by Mercury and Venus. Eventually, Jupiter, the culture maker, will show up and expand our world further.

It’s the never-ending archetypal cycle of life on this planet - the constant of change via expansion, contraction, and expansion again.

The Other in times of contraction

More and more, I see the wisdom of seeing the Lunar Phases as a methodology for life. It’s all about Waxing and Waning. Expanding and Contracting. It’s Jupiter helping us go beyond our perceived limitations, expanding further, and Saturn’s contraction and focus. All that rises will eventually fall, because once fullness is achieved (Full Moon phase), we must pivot, release, and contract/wane, thus focusing what’s essential into the seed of the new.

But the appearance of the other in times of contraction elicits a sharper reaction of fear and projection than in times of expansion.

Now, the focus and fear are on protecting what has been achieved. The desire is to maintain the status quo of whatever and whoever is in power (this happens even in our inner worlds when an aspect of our Egos wants to continue driving, even if this stalls our evolution). Thus, our Saturnian borders and walls are hectically and fearfully raised when the other shows up, be it a people, an idea, a way of life, or a change. Remember that Saturn also rules fear, and since its union with Pluto in Capricorn in early 2020, we have been experiencing a pervasive rise in our collective fear.

In the Middle Ages, the other, especially those who were considered infidels (i.e., Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Heretics, etc.), carried the fearsome projection of all that was sinful. In a worldview where eternity in Hell was a real possibility, the projection of Sin was dangerously loaded. The other now is devilish, certainly leading us straight to hell, and thus must be fought and eliminated with all the zeal of faith.

Now, the strangeness of the other takes on a more nefarious clothing, and what would have been just unease becomes a zealous, destructive focus. The other becomes the scapegoat of all our fears, and more importantly, of our unconscious ones, which are thus more fearsome because they’re unconscious.

The irony is that as power and riches consolidate and strengthen through alliances and a sense of ‘US’ (i.e., nationalism, statehood, nations, etc.) take root, more battles are fought, for the focus is on maintaining what was achieved, thus contracting things further and othering evermore.

Now, take this imagery away from world events and make it personal.

Let’s say you’ve committed to a certain career and achieving the prescribed success markers of said path. However, the more entrenched you are on this path, getting the promotions, the accolades, and the material expressions of this chosen field, the more it may come as an assault to acknowledge that this isn’t what you truly wanted in your heart. It has nothing to do with you and how you wanted your life to turn out.

So these uneasy questions must go elsewhere lest they ruin what you’ve so carefully built. But the other within, this part of yourself that wants to be acknowledged and received, won’t go away. You can project it onto others (i.e., a child that follows the path you dreamt of when younger, but you fight against, pressuring them to take a ‘safer’ path), or it shows up via unconscious self-sabotage actions that lead to a blow up, or even by becoming a disease in the body.

This is to say that the other will not go away.

Once it appears outside our walls, it demands to be acknowledged and related to in some way because the appearance of the other is one of the precursors of liminal times of transition and ultimate transformation.

Foreign and yet - sovereign

The word foreign originates in Latin foris, which means ‘a door, doorway’. Thus, the ancient meaning is related to ‘outside’, literally ‘out of the doors.’ In time, the meaning was linked to ‘outside the boundaries of a country' and, if in reference to a place, ‘born in another country’ when related to a person. By the 1700s, the English spelling was altered, influenced by REIGN of the word SOVEREIGN.

(Interesting that LIMINAL has its origins in the ‘limen’ of a doorway - that we step over when we cross the threshold provided by an entrance. What do we meet as we step over this limen? That which is foreign, while we also become foreigners in that unknown territory.)

Now, FOREIGN is something OUTSIDE of what is considered SOVEREIGN.

Think of this as a process of transformation.

The seeds of the end are present at the very moment of birth. This applies to anything: people, ideas, things. Inherent in the beginning lies the seed of the end.

Things will wax and, in their fullness, pivot towards the waning. Remember the lunar phases.

So eventually, the center will no longer hold; it will speed faster and wobblier, announcing that we’re entering the liminal space that encompasses both the end and the seeds of a new beginning.

The process of transformation announces itself both from the inside and the outside.

If we’re a bit more aware, paying attention to nuanced shifts, we can see that something from the inside is stirring, and the status quo no longer has the strength it once had.

But transformation also announces itself from the outside world, knocking on our door. Perhaps gently at first, but the more we avoid it, the knock becomes a banging, and eventually, it may even become a battering ram.

What is foreign, that stands outside our ‘door’, lives both inside and outside. We have the foreign within, feelings, ideas, stirrings that show up for us in our thoughts, feelings, dreams, and desires, while it also shows up from the outside, at times as an actual other.

This foreign element carries the seed of what will be born through us.

But it will first require a union of sorts. Remember that Venus and Mercury are deities of the liminal, influencing us through trade and relationships. We will encounter the other, this foreigner, either through trade or in a more physical, perhaps even romantic, union.

Simplistically put, money and love will be the tickets for us to board the ship that will traverse liminal waters.

Meeting the Other puts into question our sense of sovereignty.

The idea of what one is, or what a country is, gets brought into question because what is foreign beckons us to expand beyond the limitations of our sovereignty. When a foreign element arrives, the sense of self, whether as an individual or a country, will have to expand and change. We can welcome or prolong the unease by keeping it at bay, digging our heels in.

Saturn can hold itself under a self-imposed siege, but Uranus, the boundary crasher, will ultimately win out.

We did not evolve as humans by staying put in the same place and mindset. It’s in our very DNA to venture into unexplored and uncharted waters, dueling with ourselves between our need to stay safe and our desire to expand.

Plus, the appearance of what is foreign announces that we’re entering liminal times of releasing ‘what was’ and moving towards ‘what will be’. But the distance inherent between moving away and moving towards is leagues apart.

The release isn’t easy because we’ve built an entire sovereign personality armor that has served us, and to take that off is painful and uncomfortable at best. It brings up a lot of anxiety and fear when we’re in the middle passage of ‘what was’ and ‘what is yet to be’.

All is strange, and we’re now the foreign ones in this unknown territory.

I bet we fear the other, because we fear the other growing inside us.

This other within will eventually become the new sovereign within, but at first, it’s strange and alien. So, it becomes easy for us to project our fear of the alienness within toward the ‘alien’ outside (i.e., the immigrant, the illegal alien, other ethnicities, religious, ideologies, etc.).

In the short term, scapegoating may provide us with immediate relief and assuage our anxieties, but it will never be a stable solution.

If we can learn anything from our Medieval ancestors, the barbarians at the gate eventually became the sovereign ones via the union of trade and marriages and the assimilation of ideas.

The other assimilates into us, and we assimilate into the others.

Ease & Grace on your journey!
Vanessa Couto