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Crossroads

Spookdaddy

Spookdaddy

Cuckoo
Joined
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Does anyone know if there might be a practical source for the popular superstitions concerning crossroads. The points where two streams converge often attract unpleasant phenomena in folklore. It’s easy to interpret that this may be due to the fact that with differing strengths of current, whirlpools, eddies and undertows can make them potentially lethal places and imbue them with a sinister reputation. Does it strike anyone that there might be a practical reason for the traditional wariness of a place where two roads cross. Obviously it won’t be as physical as the river thing but was there some practical reason maybe to do with territorial issues, that led to the more abstract superstitions we associate with them now.

(Oh and please, please, please...all the funny stuff about midlands motels with wobbly walls guarded by hulking idiots in wooly hats - I’ve already done all that in my head and it really wasn’t funny).
 
Weren't crossroads popular as the sites of gibbets and as the burial place of suicides to stop restless souls finding their way home? Then there was that blues bod who supposedly met the devil at one (Robert somebody?). Those seem like a couple of practical reasons to avoid crossroads.
 
By a very basic association of ideas, the crossing of the ways
suggested a vertical meeting of underworld and Gods as well as
men.

The omphalos or navel-stone became a place of pilgrimage. The
most famous was at Delphi. On this beehive-shaped stone, people
would pour libations to the Gods.

The habit of having an omphalos at crossroads was widespread. In
the UK, it would often be a millstone, the centre hole was perfect
for the erection of a May-pole. More grim was the use of the crossroads
as a place for executions.

In Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, the heroine Amelia has to go to
a crossroads at midnight to gather the mandrake from beneath the
gallows. A nasty little detail lies hidden there. :eek:

The antiquarian Stukely excavated beneath one omphalos stone at
Royston in 1764* and found a large bottle-shaped cave. Its purpose
has been much debated and the dread name of the Knights Templar
has been evoked. Meaning nobody has a clue, I guess. ;)

*No he didn't actually but he wrote a book on it in 1744. See below.
Thanks to David for the correction.
 
Suicides and Bad Eggs were often buried at crossroads. Something to do with not being able to decide which way they went, if they got up again.

There was usually a pile of stones at the site. Travellers would add a stone or two, just to make sure that nothing chased them home.

('Chased them home' is the phrase used in, I believe, 'The Usbourne Guide to the Supernatural World'. Presumably being more pleasant for kids then 'chased them for about two minutes, caught them and ripped their intestines out'. Though why they skimped on this detail when the books were so full of outright gore, I have no idea...)

Crossroads often marked boundaries as well, as did many natural landmarks, such as crossing rivers etc. I suppose that has some connection.

If you recall, the devil is said to haunt crossroads. Robert Johnson is said to have sold his soul on such a junction. Is it symbolic? Practical? Political? Spiritual? Any ideas?









(miss Diane)
 
If you notice, an awful lot of things happen around boundaries. They were quite important, to Celts, Greeks and Romans. Basically, when something is neither one thing or the other, it is supposed to cause a weakness is reality. So, midnight is neither one day or the next. Hallowe'n, the Celtic New Year's Eve, is neither one year or the next. Until recently (and still in some areas) you get the Beating of the Bounds where the boundaries of the village, town, whatever, are beaten with sticks to keep evil out.

Twilight is always considered dangerous. Thresh-holds, which is why we weak and feeble women need carrying over them ;) The period after birth and before Baptism. The superstitious will not slam a door because of catching a spirit there. When you stop and think about it, there's an awful lot of boundaries in life.

Also look at some Celtic myths. Quite a few heroes were caught out by being neither one nor the other, like Lleu Llaw Gyffes, who could only be killed when neither inside or outside a house, on horseback or on foot, and with a spear that had been a year in the making, with the work only undertaken while others were at Mass and no other work being done by the maker.
 
Like lots of people have said - boundaries, plus if you draw a circle with a cross(road) in the centre you get the nigh on universal symbol which is the Earth, the Sun and the cycle of the seasons.

Not surprising that crossroads are where tons of archetypes hang out. From Hermes/Mercurius to the Blues Devil that Robert Johnson made a pact with, they're all there.

Lucky for the Xtians that Jesus got nailed to such a potent symbol eh?
 
The antiquarian Stukely excavated beneath one omphalos stone at
Royston in 1764 and found a large bottle-shaped cave. Its purpose
has been much debated and the dread name of the Knights Templar
has been evoked. Meaning nobody has a clue, I guess. ;) [/B][/QUOTE]

Sorry James W. I know I'm being pedantic but the Royston Cave was found in 1742, as some workmen were digging a hole for a post. So no Stukely & no omphalos stone, tho' a mill stone was found covering the entrance shaft.

But yes! The carvings may have a link with the Knights Templer who were seven miles down the road at Baldock. Trouble is the carvings are so primitive they could have been done almost any time in the last eight hundred years or so. They might even have been done after the cave was rediscovered in1742 & while the locals were secretly digging it out looking for treasure!!!
 
I appreciate all the responses to my query but what I was really trying to get at was WHY all these things happened or were made to happen at crossroads. What symbolism prompted people to bury suicides and the executed at crossroads. Is there something about confusing the spirits of the dead by offering them a choise of directions..? By the way tinfoilpants it was Robert "RL" Johnson who traded his soul for musical talent at a crossroads in the Mississippi delta and was therefore partially responsible for one of the most horribly miscast movies of all time.
 
The perils of memory. Thank you for the correction.

I should indicate clearly when I am talking out of my omphalos.

1764 should have been 1744, when Stukely visited the site and
wrote his Origines Roystoniae. So he didn't discover it, antiquarians
were gents in them there days and not much given to grubbing
in the soil. He was however the first writer associated with it and his reflections
on millstones are said to have influenced Blake's concept of Satanic
Mills.

And there was a millstone at the site - there is of course no UK
tradition of traditional style Greek stones at crossroads. My posting
makes that clear.

I will try in future to make clear when I am drawing on my memory
and when I have been bookworming.

My source in this case was a memory of this article online:
http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/royston.htm


As to the question of Why, which appeared while I was editing this,
I think there have been two decent attempts to answer. One from
the Greek notion of a meeting place and the other from the notion
of a boundary or threshold. I can't envisage a more fundamental answer.
But the concept is capable of endless enrichment. As has already been
suggested, the cross of Christ represents the torture of the spirit nailed
to matter. Archetypal basics. :)

I have tried to explore the notion of matter as a trap or net for the
spirit in a study in-progress posted on my site:
http://www.btinternet.com/~j.b.w/mater.htm
 
Sorry. Just realised I've repeated what two other people have said on the Robert Johnson thing. It's also just struck me that a cross shape is the basic unit of a net - maybe they were trying to trap restless spirits rather than confuse them.
 
This has probably already been mentioned, but just in case it hasn't: people who committed suicide were once thought to become vampires. They were given the usual stake through the heart and buried at a crossroads. This was apparently done to confuse the 'vampire', so it wouldn't find its way home to drop in on old friends and family.
 
what I was really trying to get at was WHY all these things happened or were made to happen at crossroads.
Click to expand...

My para-Jungian explanation would be that there's something in the human mind that reacts to certain images/symbols. Some of these, such as the crosssroads, are so 'insistent' that they'll strike a similar response in most human cultures. The circle divided into four is an almost universal symbol, from sand paintings to mandalas. Once we got to the stage where it had a correspondence 'on the ground' (when straight roads met), which seems to have happened with urbanisation (the Greeks seem to have had the first Xroad deity), it was inevitable it would start to accrete archetypal material to itself.

On the gallows question:

'Cross, herm, and caduceus merged in northern symbolism with the gallows tree of Odin/Wotan, "God of the Hanged", which led to the Christian custom of erecting a gallows at a crossroads as well as a crucifix.' - Barbara Walker 'The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (Harper + Row 1985)

Well worth finding the whole reference, and the related one on the topic of Hermes.
 
Yes, but crossroads get maximum exposure, (two roads not just one for crosses & gibbets). I can think of places in England, where both (crosses & gibbets), were sited at places where there were no crossroads, but hills gave maximum exposure.

There is also a trend for bodies to be buried at the edge of the parish. Don't forget that in England, an unclaimed body was buried at the expense of the parish in which it was found.
 
Highwaymen?

Perhaps the reputation of crossroads as ill-omened places started because bad stuff tended to hapen there. If you were a robber intending to waylay travellers and nick all their gear wouldn't you wait at the crossroads. After all that way you get to watch 2 roads.

Cujo
 
The execution at crossroads thing also originates from the way that crossroads often happened on borders and that tribes/clans would want to mark the beginning of their land, often using those they had executed for this purpose- a warning to anyone thinking to take from the land or attack.
 
The concept of a crossing is fundamental. Most of its
implications would have been known in pre-history.

As well as being a meeting place and a threshold, it
was also a place of division, choice and separation.

The drama of choice was already highly developed in
the tragedy of Oedipus, who kills his father Laius at
the meeting of three ways.

Go back as far as you like, it is universal and basic. :p
 
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