Limbo

The sole true Something - This! In Limbo Den
It frightens Ghosts as Ghosts here frighten men -
For skimming in the wake it mock'd the care
Of the old Boat-God for his Farthing Fare;
Tho' Irus' Ghost itself he ne'er frown'd blacker on,
The skin and skin-pent Druggist crost the Acheron,
Styx, and with Puriphlegethon Cocytus,
(The very names, methinks, might thither fright us)
Unchang'd it cross'd - and shall some fated Hour
Be pulveris'd by Demogorgon's power
And given as poison to annilate Souls -
Even now It shrinks them! they shrink in as Moles
(Nature's mute Monks, live Mandrakes of the ground)
Creep back from Light--then listen for its Sound;-
See but to dread, and dread they know not why -
The natural Alien of their negative Eye.

'Tis a strange place, this Limbo! - not a Place,
Yet name it so; where Time and weary Space
Fettered from flight, with night-mair sense of fleeing,
Strive for their last crepuscular half-being;-
Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands
Barren and soundless as the measuring sands,
Not mark'd by flit of Shades, unmeaning they
As Moonlight on the dial of the day!
But that is lovely - looks like Human Time,
An Old Man with a steady Look sublime,
That stops his earthly Task to watch the skies;
But he is blind--a Statue hath such Eyes;-
Yet having moon-ward turn'd his face by chance,
Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,
With scant white hairs, with foretop bald & high,
He gazes still, his eyeless Face all Eye;-
As 'twere an organ full of silent Sight,
His whole Face seemeth to rejoice in Light!
Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb,
He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him!
      No such sweet sights doth Limbo Den immure,
Wall'd round, and made a Spirit-jail secure,
By the mere Horror of blank Naught-at-all,
Whose circumambience doth these Ghosts enthral.
A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation,
Yet that is but a Purgatory curse;
Hell knows a fear far worse,
A fear - a future fate. 'Tis positive Negation!

A small Amiga demo scene group from Finland, formed in early 1993 by Elvis (coder - formerly in Sacreds), Greippi (graphician) and Huru-Ukko (musician). The three were the only members ever in the group.

From the start, Limbo operated under a simple agenda of mixing Melon-style intro design with humor resembling Stellar's productions. But unlike many other "joke" teams, Limbo presented top quality programming and art while not taking things too seriously. This can be seen in their early titles like Three Men and a Glenz Vector and Hindun Tie Kehdosta Hautaan. Other small works included intros released around each members' birthdays.

Huru-Ukko quit the scene in 1995, but the remaining two members continued. They released two hilarious Amiga demos posing as animations made with Commodore 64's basic. One of these, 911, won first prize in the intro competition at Assembly'97. Some people were upset with this, because Limbo won by humor instead of hardcore coding.

The group has been extremely inactive for the last few years, but they did win the first place in the Amiga demo compo at Remedy'99 with Educational Sex Lesson. As far as I know, the group has never officially been declared dead.

Information came from my own memory, Limbo productions and Top Secret issue #15.
Some bits of data found in http://www.scenet.de/amp/ and http://exotica.fix.no/info/scenery/online/l.html

Music plays. At the end of a path are two vertical poles. These poles hold up a horizontal bar that can be raised or lowered. Players line up behind the bar and bend their bodies so as to cross under the bar. If they touch the bar, they lose; otherwise, they go to the end of the line as in a spelling bee. After each round, the MC lowers the bar a notch.

A common variation on limbo puts the players in roller skates. A further variation, often played in elementary school gymnasiums, gradually lowers the divider between the west and east gym and uses that as the bar; the players skate around four cones placed near the corners of the full gym.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1260 "Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal Mystery." Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such pesons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.

1261 As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them," allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church's call not the prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.

The Catechism makes no mention of limbo (to my knowledge).

In the Marvel Comics universe, limbo is a sort of parallel dimension where time doesn't flow in quite the same way as elsewhere. Based loosely on the limbo of Catholic theology, it was ruled for a long time by a sorcerer/demon named Belasco, who held absolute power over the demons who lived there.

That changed when Belasco located Illyana Rasputin, the six-year-old sister of the X-Man Colossus. He used limbo's magical "stepping discs" to teleport her and a few of the X-Men to limbo. The X-Men rescued her, but not before Belasco gave her a magical pendant which he claimed would lead her to a powerful destiny as she grew older. The X-Men eventually escaped, but between their world and limbo they lost their grip on Illyana for a moment. When they grabbed her again and pulled her through, Illyana was a teenager, and soon began displaying her own mutant power to control limbo's stepping disks, giving her power over teleportation through space and, occasionally, through time.

During that moment Illyana was out of reach, she spent the rest of her childhood in limbo, sometimes with Belasco and sometimes with older versions of the X-Men who, in a branching timeline, failed to escape limbo themselves. (Again, time flows differently there, and sometimes loops back on itself.) Eventually the magic Belasco and others taught her gave Illyana the power to create a "soulsword" out of herself. This soulsword empowered her to drive Belasco out of limbo and take control of it herself. It was after this that she was able to return to earth with the X-Men.

From that point on, the soulsword became the figurative and literal symbol of the ruler of limbo. As long as it remained in limbo, Illyana retained power; when she took it to earth with her, other demons were able to exert their own influence. One, a former servant of Belasco named S'ym, eventually rallied the other demons to mutiny and was able to take the soulsword from Illyana. His goal was to permanently join earth and limbo; Illyana eventually stopped him by sacrificing herself and, through means never fully understood, reverting herself to a six-year-old child who had never grown up in limbo at all.

The soulsword continued to exist, and whoever wielded it was given power over limbo and all its denizens. When last it was seen, however, it had no owner.

In a less official sense, "limbo" is a term used by the fans of comic books and other storytelling universes to describe where a character is who hasn't been used in some time -- either because the writers have forgotten about him, they have him between adventures, or they just don't know what to do with him and have stuck him on the back burner for a while.

Lim"bo (?), Lim"bus (?), n. [L. limbus border, edge in limbo on the border. Cf. Limb border.]

1. Scholastic Theol.

An extramundane region where certain classes of souls were supposed to await the judgment.

As far from help as Limbo is from bliss. Shak.

A Limbo large and broad, since called The Paradise of fools. Milton.

The limbus patrum was considered as a place for the souls of good men who lived before the coming of our Savior. The limbus infantium was said to be a similar place for the souls of unbaptized infants. To these was added, in the popular belief, the limbus fatuorum, or fool's paradise, regarded as a receptacle of all vanity and nonsense.

2.

Hence: Any real or imaginary place of restraint or confinement; a prison; as, to put a man in limbo.

3. Anat.

A border or margin; as, the limbus of the cornea.

© Webster 1913.