Crossroads
Crossroads are considered sacred in almost all magical traditions. A crossroads is a universally accepted place to hold rituals, leave offerings, or dispose of items you wish to be rid of.
To relieve feelings of depression, helplessness, and hopelessness, journey to a crossroads and absorb the power.
The crossroads is the juncture of powerful energies, where all possibilities meet. Don’t go to a traffic intersection – the most common modern crossroads. Excessive yang energy will only worsen the situation. What you need is a traditional witch’s crossroads, ideally the intersection of remote streets but at least roads with minimal traffic.
You don’t have to do anything; just linger, keep your mind open and absorb the converging energies.
About Crossroads:
It is believed that Hecate rules over the three-way crossroads. She can see the past, present, and future. It is said that if you should approach a three-way crossroads at night, you would hear her black dogs howling. Her altars have been erected at such places for centuries.
The four-way crossroads are considered to be powerful because all four directions meet at one point. Dirt, rocks, and sticks gathered from such a crossroads are said to have powerful spiritual connections, albeit tricky ones to master. In Greek myths, Oedipus met his fate at the crossroads. From the Yoruban people we have Legba (a god known for his clever tricks) ruling the crossroads.
The strength of Ellegua lies at the crossroad. He is the remover of obstacles. An offering of twenty-one pennies and three candies left at the crossroad will prompt him to be kind and remove the roadblocks in your life.
Ancient people were afraid of what it meant when one direction met another direction. All manner of folklore is available concerning the crossroads. Fairies are said to hang out there, along with ghouls, ghosts, and goblins. Even the Christian Satan is said to roam the crossroads.
Times Square in New York City is known as the “Crossroads of the World.” A true urban crossroads is any intersection where 3 or 4 roads mead and then continue outward unobstructed for eight city blocks in each direction. If any one path is blocked by a dead end, a cul de sac, or a park, it is not a true crossroad.
Metaphysically, a crossroads is a place of sacred transformations, a metaphor for transformational points in our lives, and relate to time and choices. It is a place to go to unblock your path.
Why Crossroads Are So Important
In ancient times the crossroads were places where very important information was exchanged, information that might never reach a town or village. To facilitate this, a common language developed. Called a lingua franca, such a language permitted people from different countries to understand each other well enough to do business.
In addition to learning a common language like lingua franca (Latin was the lingua franca of educated people in Europe for many centuries), crossroads experiences invariably stimulate a desire to learn a foreign language.
Did you know that learning a foreign language increases your intelligence? One reason is that it builds bridges of communication between the right and left side of the brain, increasing flexibility. A person who can come at a problem with right and left brain flexibility has double the resources of someone relying on just one or the other. In addition, on the one side, you learn to speak another language but on the other side, you develop the telepathic ability to understand someone else’s language. This ability often transcends the words being spoken and heard as many people with language ability will tell you.
Important information is exchanged at crossroads. Here is an example of some of the kinds of important information that might have been exchanged at a crossroad.
- Be careful, it is no longer safe to drink the water at xx
- Be careful the king of xx is dying and the country is run by renegades who no longer honor our trade agreements
- Warning, there was a spring flood which washed away the trail at xx
- Good news! The mountain pass is clear now.
- Good news! The king of xx wants trade in his country and has cleared the bandits out of the gulch at xx.
- The price of amber has dropped. Don’t be fooled into paying high prices.
- The market for silk has shifted further west … be careful not to buy more than you can sell.
- Xx’s supply of xx is terrible this year. Best go in another direction with what you have to sell.
People who stay at home in the town and village don’t need this kind of information. But if they are wise, they listen to news from travelers because it can portend things in the future. For example a traveler returns and says, “I have been to xx and they will pay fabulous sums of money for this yellow stuff that washes up on the beaches around here [amber]”. Or he might say, “There are restless tribes marauding close to here. We need to be careful or they will wipe us out.” There is no way for a connection to be made between towns and villages if someone doesn’t travel.
In addition to Hekate, Elegua, and various other deities, Mercury, the god of travel, communication, and thieves, presided over the crossroads. The Greeks erected little phallic statues (no pun intended) honoring the god Mercury along the side of the road and at crossroads to honor the god of travelers.
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The crossroads are literally where different roads meet and where they separate, where opportunity emerges to change directions. They are unpredictable; you could take any one of a variety of choices. Magically speaking a crossroads is the place where multiple forces converge, where anything can happen, where transformations may occur. Energy is liberated and expanded at the crossroads. Instead of hopping over boundaries, you can stand in the center and be inundated by power, potential and choices.
Crossroads are ubiquitous in magic. Many spells demand to be cast at the crossroads, others require that the remnants of spells – left over candle stubs, ashes and the such – be buried at the crossroads where their energy can safely disperse.
Specific types of spiritual entities, known as “road-openers” and inevitably beings of great power preside over crossroads. These beings can be petitioned for knowledge, information and for a change in destiny. They control thresholds and roads and determine who has free access and who finds roads barred, who will choose the right fork in the road and who will wander hopelessly lost forever.
In ancient Greece, Hermes ruled the four-way crossroads, while Hecate presided over three-way crossroads. In West Africa, Eshu-Elegbara rules the crossroads as does his Western hemisphere incarnations Elegba, Papa Legba and Exu. In Brazil, Exu’s female counterpart, Pomba Gira, presides over T-shaped crossroads.
Once upon a time, crossroads were where people met, where nomads rendezvoused, where gallows stood, where the death penalty was enacted and corpses left to hang, where suicides were buried. If magic spells were cast according to direction, then midnight at the crossroads must have frequently been a crowded, busy place, especially on a night like Halloween when the veil that divides the realms of living and dead is at its most permeable, leaving an open road for inter-realm communication.
Christian authorities frequently urged people to avoid the crossroads, particularly at night, as it was the devil’s stomping grounds. If you were looking to meet Satan, however, if you had a proposition or a request for him, the crossroads was where you were most likely to find him.
Unfortunately, the most accessible modern crossroads are traffic intersections. The magic energy remains, however. Think about a busy intersection: on a good day you fly straight through, making a journey faster and easier. A traffic tie-up, however, is an energy build-up with added potential for accidents and road rage.
Faithfully attempting to follow a spell’s directions may leave you playing in the middle of traffic. In Rio de Janeiro, Pomba Gira’s devotees take this into account: offerings aren’t left where you might expect, at the center of the crossroads, but by the side of the road. No matter how powerful your spell, it will have no opportunity to work if you get hit by a car during the casting.
Find an appropriate old-fashioned crossroads, a safe area of a modern crossroads, or read between the lines – figure out what the spell really requires (why you’re being sent to the crossroads, for what purpose) and adapt and substitute as needed. Not all crossroads are literal intersections of roads. Other crossings include: Graveyards, bathhouses, ruins, bike paths, and altars.
Found in: The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells
Art from: Cotton Fine Arts
Crossroad is a symbolic term denoting the union and joining of paths. The association of the crossroad with Witchcraft goes back to ancient Greek and Roman times. Classically the crossroad symbolizes a joining of three roads, the balance of opposites, and the meeting of time and space.
In the Aegean/Mediterranean region crossroads were sacred to Hecate, Triformis, and Diana. Ovid, an ancient Roman writer, speaks of Hecate as having three faces with which to guard the crossroads as they branched out. Verro, another ancient writer, equated Diana with Hecate and stated the images of Diana were stationed at the crossroads. Other writers of the period called this goddess Artemis-Hekate, and attributed the mother goddess aspect to her.
The crossroads are likewise associated with the ancestral spirits called Lasa or Lares. These beings were originally thought to be spirits of the forests and meadows, the fairy folk, and spirits of Nature. With development these spirits became associated with the cultivated fields, and eventually the Lara became protectors of the family and home, and associated with the hearth.
Also, in the archaic Roman religion small towers were constructed at crossroads, and an altar was placed before them upon which offerings were laid. Such towers were associated with Nature spirit worship and demarcation. Possibly this may be the foundation of the concept of Watchtowers within modern Witchcraft.
Since classical times the crossroad has been a favored place for Witches to gather because of its link to Nature spirits and the moon goddess. When the symbolic crossroads were Christianized they became symbols of dread. Crossroads become the construction sites for gallows, and suspended cages that contained bodies of criminals. Also, suicide victims, who were not permitted burial in hallowed churchyards, were frequently buried near a crossroad. Then too, the Judaic-Christian Devil was said to hover near crossroads. All of this, of course, helped to defile the sacred grounds where Witches gathered.
Source: The Mystica
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