Thresholds of Reality: Exploring the In-Between in Religious Traditions Across the World

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite submissions to this Special Issue of Religions, dedicated to the study of liminality and transitional states in religious traditions across the world. This Special Issue seeks to explore conceptualizations of in-between space, in-between time, and liminal experience as articulated in religious texts, rituals, myths, and practices. While the primary focus lies on ancient and medieval sources, contributions that trace the continuity, transformation, and reinterpretation of these ideas in later periods and contemporary contexts are also welcome.

The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together interdisciplinary studies that examine transitions between different realities—material and imagined; between states of consciousness; and between fundamental existential conditions such as life and death. Particular attention will be paid to intermediate and threshold states, including moments of nontrivial bifurcation that open up multiple possibilities and alternative “worlds” or modes of being. Within this framework, ritual transitions—symbolic deaths and rebirths through which individuals emerge with altered status, knowledge, responsibilities, or even transformed “bodies”—constitute a key area of inquiry.

This Special Issue also addresses the boundaries and interactions between different regimes of truth and reality—scientific, religious, and imagined—and the processes through which coherent structures and relatively stable worlds are constructed and maintained. Contributions may explore cosmological and symbolic models such as the world tree, understood as a horizontally and vertically stratified structure of existence or consciousness, as well as movement, travel, and passage between its levels. Transitions between these worlds may be analyzed as acts of awareness, revelation, or moments of morphogenetic rupture within the otherwise continuous flow of human life.

Further, our focus is on ambivalent figures associated with liminality: deities, semi-divine beings, mythological entities, and their retinues—anthropomorphic, semi-anthropomorphic, animal, or vegetal—whose functions are often to mediate, guard, or destabilize boundaries. This Special Issue welcomes the submission of studies focused on dreams and visions, ancient and more recent, as privileged modes of access to the in-between; on shadows, ghosts, demons, and demigods inhabiting transitional worlds; and on entities that enter or exit the human body or soul, temporarily or permanently influencing perception, cognition, and action, whether in beneficent or ambivalent ways.

Articles are also welcome to examine the experiential dimension of liminality: fleeting states or worlds glimpsed only momentarily, yet leaving enduring traces in memory and tradition. Such experiences—recorded, ritualized, and transmitted across generations—often become foundational for religious, philosophical, or cultural “truths” through which communities understand and inhabit the world.

Finally, this Special Issue seeks to illuminate the dynamics of transformation inherent in ritual and practice, including their ultimate aims—immortality, enlightenment, liberation, power, knowledge, or intensified mental and emotional states—and the paths leading toward, through, and beyond liminal zones. Special attention will be paid to the nature of time and temporality, especially to transitional moments or “joints” of time marking passages between phases, states, or cosmic cycles. As ritual itself is intrinsically intermediate—mediating between humans and gods, microcosm and macrocosm, the sacred and the profane—its study in all its dimensions remains central to the thematic focus of this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Gergana Ruseva
Prof. Dr. Milena Bratoeva
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• liminal spaces and levels of existence
• in-between (mental) states
• transformation
• initiation
• dream
• death
• rebirth
• ritual
• myth