Tu Shanshu

 [Reid hates technology. No, he really, genuinely does. Computers don't move fast enough to keep up with him, and he has a long-established love of hard copies where literature is concerned. But the fact of the matter is, there are very few books here. So here he is, seated at a console, half a dozen of the local books he could find stacked beside him and several empty coffee cups as well. Recently, he's taken to drinking green tea, but a lapse in that particular habit seems appropriate considering his surroundings.]

 You know, the terminology relating to a meta or 'multiverse' was originally coined by William James, a philosopher and psychologist in the late nineteen hundreds. His paper, titled 'Is Life Worth Living?' was published in the 1985 October Edition of the International Journal of Ethics. He postulated that, with the decline of social religion all 'visible' nature (that is to say, everything we see and experience) is in and of itself a 'moral' multiverse as opposed to being a moral 'universe'. He was referring to the visible nature of the world - good existing alongside evil, with every imaginable shade in between. Each nuance of the world then became in and of itself a 'multiverse' in James' ideal.

 The neologism didn't actually enter into common vernacular until much later and under a drastically different context, but the concept of other worlds or parallel universes - what we today call a 'multiverse' - has actually been around for centuries, generally tied to religious philosophies of the time. Muslim theologian al-Ghazālī believed that it was not only possible but highly probable. His extrapolation was that that Earth was the best of all possible worlds and that humans occupied it as a form of divine right, stating that 'there is in possibility nothing more wondrous than what is'.

 [a brief pause, because... he's generally not used to speaking so long without interruption.]

 Essentially, the concept of a 'life, death or dreaming' state faintly echoes several Buddhist or Hindu philosophies, though equally suggestive of liminality. The continual repetition of that 'life/death/dreaming' theme represents a trinity; three is often considered a holy number in any number of doctrines. Three also represents the body (life), the soul (death) and the spirit (dreaming). And then, the fact that there are five districts also reinforces the ties to numerology. If you go by the numerical value of the Hebrew letter 'He' or 'five' it symbolizes the universal life, the breath of man, the air, the spirit and the soul.

 Oh-- right, liminality. Liminality was another word coined in the same philosophical era as William James' 'multiverse' by Arnold Vann Gennep in his 1908 paper Rites de Passage. It's from the Latin līmen which means 'threshold' and it's a word used to describe the transitionary phase during a ritualistic transformation, during which the participant's own identity is considered to be void until the process is complete and the individual can be reborn. It's almost a contract – during this process you forsake your identity, your sense of self, your titles and earthly possessions all for the sake of a form of theoretical transcendental enlightenment. It's this fluidity of self that enables change and dissolution of old habits or customs to make way for the new. It's not limited to an individual, either; it can be applied to groups of people – such as a graduating highschool class – or to societies and cultures as a whole and I believe it's what we're technically undergoing now.

 Liminality is considered a tripartite structure, and each segment of that structure is as follows: preliminal rites, or rites of separation. This stage involves a metaphorical 'death' undergone by the initiand. They're essentially forced to leave something behind by breaking away from previous practices and routines, or by, say, coming to Keeliai.

 The liminal rites – or transitionary rites – involve the creation of a sort of... tabula rasa, a blank slate, through the removal of limits and forms previously taken for granted. There are two primary characteristics to this stage of the rite, first: the rite 'must follow a strictly prescribed sequence, where everybody knows what to do and how'. Because this rite is a fundamental deconstruction of the self and self-held values, it's meant quite literally to mirror the act of walking over a threshold between two worlds.

 The postliminal rites, or 'rites of incorporation' are the third and final sequence. During this stage, the initiand is re-incorporated into society, essentially born again as a 'new' being.

 [CRICKETS. CRICKETS ARE CHIRPING IN THE BACKGROUND, REID. He awkwardly clears his throat.]

 All... right so... um, hi. I'm Doctor Spencer Reid. Any questions...?

 [for those of you who didn't turn the console off ten seconds into his impromptu lecture??


 ooc; also: a permissions post.]