a founder of the codex

Threshold

Liminaria transitoria·the Crossing Sill

From Latin limen, a sill, and transitorius, made for passing through, a line laid down to be crossed.

Level: Conceptorganism
Phylum: Pathimage schema
Class: Boundaryits guardian lions
Niche: Extremophileabsence
Mode: Organizationhow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: City

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Change · Wilkins, 1668: Transcendental Relation of Action · WordNet, 1990: State · Llull, 1308: E · Man

Crossing Sill, the whole specimen — Plate LXIII. Liminaria transitoria, the whole specimen.

Between two states runs a line that one small step crosses, and many crossings hold a margin of waiting, where a being has left the old state and has yet to enter the new.

A small step at the right line changes what one is.

behavior It lies flat and unnoticed until something approaches, then holds everything at its edge and lets it through one at a time.

provocation

Which doorway in your life are you standing in now?

Each draw is the being derived afresh by the current laws at another seed (laws §11); the chosen one leads (where they sit in the morphospace).

I Dissection

Each organ answers one question about the idea. The framed one, its boundary, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Threshold — Fig. 1. Kernel
Tipping point
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
Between two states runs a line, and a small change at that line makes the whole difference, from unseen to seen, from outside to inside.^{3, 1}
drawn as: tipping point · view: microscope

Boundary of Threshold — Fig. 2. Boundary
Guardian lions
❦ dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is set apart from a wall by being made to be crossed, and from open ground by being marked and guarded, as stone lions and door gods guard gates.^{4, 1}
drawn as: guardian lions · view: transparent

Intake of Threshold — Fig. 3. Intake
Antechamber
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It needs something on the way, a traveller, a novice or a growing stimulus, and a place to wait before the line, a porch, an antechamber or a vigil.^{1, 3}
drawn as: antechamber · view: at work

Mechanism of Threshold — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Rite of passage
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
Crossing runs in three steps, a separation from the old state, a margin spent between the two, and an incorporation into the new.^{1, 2}
drawn as: rite of passage · view: exploded

Output of Threshold — Fig. 5. Output
Just noticeable difference
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It makes change countable and clear. A light is seen only above a certain strength, and the smallest step a sense can detect becomes a unit of measure.³
drawn as: just noticeable difference · view: cross section

Dispersal of Threshold — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Torii
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It travels in customs of the doorway, the bride carried over, the sill stepped across for luck, and in arches and gates built for passing through.^{1, 4}
drawn as: torii · view: magnified

Decay of Threshold — Fig. 7. Decay
Limbo
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
A passage left unfinished strands people between states, in a limbo that leads nowhere. Where the rites fade, the crossings blur.²
drawn as: limbo · view: series

II Meaning associations

No relations recorded yet.

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Roget Awakening, Entropy, Metamorphosis, Petrification, Tongue Horizon

same kind in Wilkins Metamorphosis

same kind in WordNet Possession, Presence, Solitude, Tinnitus, Trance, Weightlessness, The Shared Cell

same kind in Llull Echolalia, Glossolalia, Love, Memory, Nostalgia, Oblivion, Placebo, Possession, Presence, Prophecy, Solitude, Trance, Volition, Knowing Trust, Rushmaker, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), Commemorative Revision, The Shared Cell, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology

same phylum Entelechy, Memory, Music, Nostalgia, Prophecy, Ritual, River, Wind, Tongue Horizon, Afterlistening

same dominant organ Amber, Aura, Cloud, Diamond, Equinox, Frost, Possession, Reflection, Solitude, Tongue Horizon, The Shared Cell

Genome

passage also in Awakening, River
limit
margin
waiting also in Patience
crossing

III In the world

Echoes

a bride carried over the doorstep
a torii before a Shinto shrine
the faintest star seen on a dark night
an initiate's seclusion before returning with a new name

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 1, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axis	value
book	humores
symmetry	radial many
organization	solitary
silhouette	ribbon
scale	immense
proportion	elongated latent
growth	regenerated
articulation	seamless latent
openness	spongy latent
skeleton	test latent
locomotion	sessile latent
pattern	speckled
coloration	eyespots latent
substance	vapour
surface	spined
palette	quartz
luminosity	none
transparency	translucent
gesture	closes
unity	integral latent
modality	necessary
causation	unmarked latent
determinacy	crisp latent
fusion	becoming
anomaly	inverted
graft	scaffold
technique	chromolith
viewpoint	motion
value	chiaroscuro latent
balance	grounded latent
density	intricate latent
rhythm	unmarked latent
saturation	vivid latent
appendages	ocelli
anchor (body)	a welwitschia, two endless strap leaves splitting and curling across the ground
anchor (detail)	hoarfrost, feathery ice crystals growing along an edge

Sources

Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage (1909)
Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969)
Gustav Theodor Fechner, Elemente der Psychophysik (1860)
Mircea Eliade, Das Heilige und das Profane (1957)

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