Is Liminal Territory a real structural finding or an over-reach?

The case for

Mission 8's feature-space analysis found a cluster of figures — Moon, Hanged Man, Wheel of Fortune, Shapeshifter, Trickster — that code for between-ness and dissolving-form regardless of origin system. Mission 9 identified it as a fourth structural pole alongside departure, ordeal, and return. No single traditional system names this region on its own; naming it adds explanatory power.

• — Mission 8 structural-similarity analysis
• — Mission 9 meta-patterns

The case against

Every member of Liminal Territory already has a home in another cluster (Shapeshifter, Death-Rebirth, Herald). Promoting the family resemblance to a structural axis risks reifying a statistical artifact. Mythographers before us did not need this category.

• — Adversarial Mission 10 — over-fitting critique

Devil's advocate

If it doesn't hold up in use — if the cluster never tells readers anything the parent clusters don't — it should collapse back. We offer it as hypothesis.