crossroads in magic

7/17/2019 Crossroads In Magic

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the spirit who opens the way, guards the crossroads, and teaches wisdom.

European tales of, by, and about European musicians, dancers, and others who seek physical dexterity selling themselves to the Devil are legion, frequent, and commonplace

In hoodoo practice, after one completes a "job of work" or magical ritual, the most neutral way to dispose of remnants such as left-over candle wax, incense ashes, footprint-dirt, or ritual bath water is to carry everything to the crossroads, throw it into the intersection, turn and walk home without looking back. (Alternative methods for the disposal of ritual items include throwing them into running water for get away or moving spells, taking them to a graveyard for hard-core enemy work, or burying them in one's yard for drawing influences toward one.)

If a job such as a Follow Me Boy Spell is worked to link two people, then the trick may be laid at every crossroads between the home of the practitioner and lover's home, that is, each crossroads will be marked with ritual artifacts to cement the bond and draw the desired one closer. Contrariwise, in at least one formof Hot Foot or Drive Away Spell, ritual items are thrown into a series of crossroads leaving town, to push the hated person out of town and to act as guards against his or her return. Also, there is a version of the Crossing Spell in whichGraveyard Dirt is buried at a crossroads.

Not all hoodoo rituals take place at an actual crossroads, but when laying trick

s or casting magical spells, many practitioners make use of what can be called a"portable crossroads" or circle with a cross inside, known as an "X" or "cross-mark," generally. The cross-mark may br drawn on the ground or on a personal altar with sachet powders or it may be created quite subtly, with a mere five dotsrather than with two crossing lines. In the latter case, the dots go at the fourpoints where the crossing lines would touch the circumference of an imagined circle and at the intersection or center-point of the circle. When drawn this way,the pattern is not called a cross-mark but a "five-spot." Although folkloriststend to call the pattern a "quincunx" and some anthropologists use the term "cosmogram," in actual conversations with real practitioners, you will hear them spoken of like this: "You lay down your salt in the four corners and in the center,like the five-spot on dice" or "Sprinkle your powders in the form of a cross-mark inside a circle" or "They'd lay out powders by the door -- a big old X-mark -

- to trick you.

The crossroads is the most popular place to perform a specific hoodoo crossroadsritual to learn a skill -- to play a musical instrument, for instance, or to become proficient at throwing dice, dancing, public speaking, or whatever one chooses. As this ritual is usually described, you bring the item you wish to master-- your banjo, guitar, fiddle, deck of cards, or dice -- and wait at the crossroads on three or nine specified nights or mornings. On your successive visits youmay witness the mysterious appearances of a series of animals. On your last visit, a " big black man" will arrive. If you are not afraid and do not run away, he will ask to borrow the item you wish to learn. He will show you the proper wayto use the item by using it himself. When he returns it to you, you will suddenly have the gift of greatness.

The man who meets people at the crossroads and teaches them skills is sometimescalled "the devil" He is also called "the rider," the "li'l ole funny boy" or "the big black man," black in this case meaning the actual colour, not a brown-skinned ("coloured" or Negro) person. Because he shares qualities with and derivesfrom a number of African crossroads spirits (of whom Legba, Ellegua, Elegbara, Eshu, Nbumba Nzila, and Pomba Gira are some African and African-diaspora names),it is a common scholarly conceit to equate the crossroads "devil" with Legba, but that is utterly unheard of in the oral folk tradition.


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This African-derived crossroads ritual is one of the most widely distributed beliefs in African-American folklore and is practiced throughout the South. It is the subject of the rest of this essay.

The specific idea that rural blues musicians "made pacts" with "the devil" for earthly good fortune is an oft-repeated misunderstanding of the crossroads ritual. Some Christian blacks of the early 20th century themselves confused the issueby calling the entity one meets in the ritual "the devil," but i have found no evidence that they ever called him "Satan" or "made pacts" with him in the medieval European sorcery tradition exemplified by the Faust legend. Furthermore, as will be seen below from several examples, the crossroads deity did not grant goodfortune, wealth, or power, as the European-American Christian devil is believedto do. He was a teacher of manual dexterity and mental wisdom.

When African-Americans born in the 19th or early 20th century told interviewersthat they or anyone they knew had "sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads," they did NOT intend to convey thereby that the person in question was an evil, hell-bound anti-Christian. The confusion arises in the eyes of white interpreters who don't understand that the crossroads deity is a survival from polytheistic African religions and that he has been assigned the only name he can be given in a monotheistic religion.

The traditional colours assigned to the African crossroads spirit are red and black, and the spirit himself is given offerings of alcohol and sacrificed animals

, so it is easy to see why Christian slaves and their masters conflated him with"the devil" (e.g. Satan, the "Adversary" to the monotheistic god in the Jewish,Christian, and Islamic religions). However, the crossroads spirit is not Satan.Nor is he evil, harmful, deceptive, or cruel in the sense that the Judeo-Christian devil is. He is a revered spiritual entity from a polytheistic religious system. No "black arts" in the medieval European sense are needed to call upon himor gain his favour. He is a teacher and guide, the opener of the way.

{Re: the "things" that "will come 'fore yo'" in the above entry. Hyatt collectedmany, many accounts of the crossroads ritual in which it was said that on eachsuccessive visit to the crossroads (at midnight or dawn, depending on the informant), a different black animal appears and on the last midnight (or sunrise) the"devil" or "big black man" appears and fulfills the request. Each account gives

a variant list of animals, but most commonly mentioned are a black chicken, a black bull, and a black dog. Other animals named are a snake, a bear, a lion, a cat, a lamb, a cow, a sheep, and a horse. One informant in Snow Hill, Maryland (entry 355), carefully specifies that all the animals will be male (a drake, not aduck; a rooster, not a hen; "wouldn't be no females"). In a couple of accounts,some of the black animals are replaced by black weather conditions -- a smoke,a rain, a thundering. These stories are simply too long for me to transcribe here, but the ritual given above, although it does not name or describe the "things" that will come before the postulant, is obviously part of the "black animals at the crossroads" series.}

Not all hoodoo rituals take place at an actual crossroads, but when laying tricks or casting magical spells, many practitioners make use of what can be called a

"portable crossroads" or circle with a cross inside, known as an "X" or "cross-mark," generally. The cross-mark may br drawn on the ground or on a personal altar with sachet powders or it may be created quite subtly, with a mere five dotsrather than with two crossing lines. In the latter case, the dots go at the fourpoints where the crossing lines would touch the circumference of an imagined circle and at the intersection or center-point of the circle. When drawn this way,the pattern is not called a cross-mark but a "five-spot." Although folkloriststend to call the pattern a "quincunx" and some anthropologists use the term "cosmogram," in actual conversations with real practitioners, you will hear them spoken of like this: "You lay down your salt in the four corners and in the center,


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like the five-spot on dice" or "Sprinkle your powders in the form of a cross-mark inside a circle" or "They'd lay out powders by the door -- a big old X-mark -- to trick you.

The crossroads ritual is currently best known in popular American culture through the recent acceptance of a spurious legend that the famous 1930s blues singerRobert Johnson claimed that he had learned how to play guitar by selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads, somewhere in Mississippi. In truth, the bluessinger who publicly made this claim was Robert's rather less-well-known contemporary and friend Tommy Johnson, not related to Robert. Tommy Johnson is remembered for his classic recording of "Maggie Campbell Blues." LeDell Johnson, Tommy Johnson's brother, spoke with the blues scholar David Evans about Tommy's sudden guitar playing skill and Tommy's claims about it. His account of the ritual is typical of others collected throughout the South. Note that LeDell did not say that Tommy Johnson called the crossroads spirit "the devil" and he did not mentionselling his soul.

"If you want to learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where the road crosses that way, where a crossroads is. Get there, be sureto get there just a little 'fore 12 that night so you know you'll be there. Youhave your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself...A big black man willwalk up there and take your guitar and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want."from "Tommy Johnson" by David Evans (London: Studio Vista, 1971)

In fact, these stories seem to be prescriptions for a way to contact a specific,helpful spirit -- and the specificity of the crossroads spirit's power is quiteapparent: He is a TEACHER spirit who will accelerate one's mastery of mental, manual, and performing arts. The man at the crossroads does not steal your soul or condemn you to perdition or make any unholy bargain with you. He takes your offering and then he teaches by example and transference of power.

A gibbet is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, executioner's block, impalement stake, hanging gallows, or related scaffold), but gibbeting refers to the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bod

ies of executed criminals were hung on public display to deter other existing orpotential criminals. The structures were therefore often placed next to publichighways (frequently at crossroads) and waterways. In earlier times, up to the late 17th century, live gibbeting also took place, in which the condemned was placed alive in a metal cage and left to die of thirst.

In the holy grove at Upsala men and animals were sacrificed by being hanged upon the sacred trees. The human victims dedicated to Odin were regularly put to death by hanging or by a combination of hanging and stabbing, the man being strungup to a tree or a gallows and then wounded with a spear. Hence Odin was calledthe Lord of the Gallows or the God of the Hanged, and he is represented sittingunder a gallows tree. -Sir James George Frazer (18541941). The Golden Bough. 1922.

Havamal, Stanza 137I know that I hung on a windy treenine long nights,wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,myself to myself,on that tree of which no man knowsfrom where its roots run.


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In the stanza that follows, Odin describes how he had no food nor drink there, that he peered downward, and that "I took up the runes, screaming I took them, then I fell back from there."

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 theplace where multiple forces converge, where anything can happen, where transformations may occur. Energy is liberated and expanded at the crossroads. Instead ofhopping over boundaries, you can stand in the center and be inundated by power,potential and choices.

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.

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, ahsesand 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 r

oads 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 the Aegean/Mediterranean region crossroads were sacred to Hecate, Triformis,and Diana. Ovid, an ancient Roman writer, speaks of Hecate as having three faceswith which to guard the crossroads as they branched out. Verro, another ancientwriter, equated Diana with Hecate and stated the images of Diana were stationedat 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 orLares. These beings were originally thought to be spirits of the forests and meadows, the fairy folk, and spirits of Nature. With development these spirits bec

ame 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 towerswere associated with Nature spirit worship and demarcation.

Ceremonies of death were largely the concern of women in ancient Greece. Women predominate in artistic and literary representations of mourning and the laying out of bodies; laws were passed governing their actions and influences of funerals. House sweepings and offerings were made to Hecate at crossroads at the Dark Moon after a 30-day mourning period.

In the second half of the fifth century, there is in Greek literature a side ofHecate that is both frightening and new. She is associated with restless spiritsand phantasms that attack by their own volition or under the command of spiteful foes with purification ceremonies involving the killing of dogs and with offers left at crossroads at every Dark Moon. In situations such as these Hecate is known as Hecate Chthonia.

In many parts of the world, they feel that the crossroads are supernatural places....places to work magick and to encounter spirits of all kinds. In later literature, Hecate is associated with crossroads and most particularly three-way inte


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rsections. Sacrificial meals are commonly left out at crossroads for Hecate, especially during the three days about the Dark Moon. These are sometimes called Hekates deipna (Hecates banquets.) Offerings are to solicit Her aid in protectionagainst the other spirits. Many felt that restless spirits walk the earth duringthe Dark of the Moon. Neglecting to make offerings to Hecate is therefore dangerous not because she might attack, but because She is the one who stands betweenyou and the dangerous spirits. Because of Hecates association with crossroads, she is called Hecate Enodia (in the road.)

Hecate is honored on November 30, the night of Hecate Trivia, the night of the crossroads.

Hecate also came to be associated with ghosts, infernal spirits, the dead and sorcery. Like the totems of Hermesherms placed at borders as a ward against dangerimages of Hecate (like Artemis and Diana, often referred to as a "liminal" goddess) were also placed at the gates of cities, and eventually domestic doorways. Over time, the association with keeping out evil spirits could have led to the belief that if offended, Hecate could also allow the evil spirits in. According to one view, this accounts for invocations to Hecate as the supreme governess of theborders between the normal world and the spirit world, and hence as one with mastery over spirits of the dead.

The modern understanding of Hecate has been strongly influenced by syncretic Hellenistic interpretations. Many of the attributes she was assigned in this period

appear to have an older basis. For example, in the magical papyri of PtolemaicEgypt, she is called the 'she-dog' or 'bitch', and her presence is signified bythe barking of dogs. In late imagery she also has two ghostly dogs as servants by her side. The frog, significantly a creature that can cross between two elements, also is sacred to Hecate

According to Ruickbie (2004, p. 19) the Greeks observed two days sacred to Hecate, one on the 13th of August and one on the 30th of November, whilst the Romansobserved the 29th of every month as her sacred day.

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