Crossroads

From Traditional Witchcraft Wiki Project

A Crossroads is a place where two or more roads meet and fully intersect with each other. This is different from a fork in the road. A crossroads can also refer to a bridge over water or other such intersections. Things can be lost and found at a crossroads for the benefit or detriment of the traveller, a belief enshrined in the folk remedy of losing warts. The crossroads can also refer to in symbolism and actuality as a meeting place between the worlds; this being a result of their ambiguous nature, belonging to two or more roads at once.

The Crossroads is considered to be sacred to such gods as Hecate & Mercury, hence the placing of Hermes Stones at some crossroads, and is often associated with the Devil. Traditionally, they have been the site of the gallows and the burial place of criminals, and are often said to be haunted by the spirits of the dead & by phantom Black Dogs. They are often thought to be places of choice & confusion, and it is perhaps because of this that the bodies of executed criminals and witches were buried at them (a practice known from Anglo-Saxon times), so preventing the spirits from finding their way back; it may alternatively be that as crossroads were outside the town boundaries, to buried there denoted that the person had been expelled from their home, hearth, kith & kin.

Some witches link the crossroads with the four airts, thereby establishing a link between the geography of the land and certain tides and powers.