The Triple Gateway

Abstract

THE crossroads is associated with witches, with gallows, with the burial of suicides and criminals, and with buried treasure. The usual explanation given for interments at this point is that if the ghost is likely to try and wander back to its former habitation one method of discouraging this is to confuse it by a choice of roads, most of which will lead it away from home. Dom Ethelbert Horne' suggested that this site might equally be chosen as a gesture of mercy; the cruciform landmark perhaps strengthened by the presence of a wayside calvary gave some token of sanctity to comfort the relatives of one who could not legally be buried in a churchyard. Both these reasons may be valid, but they seem hardly sufficient, and they do not account for all the sinister activities and superstitions focussed on the crossroads even at the present day. In Latin antiquity, the trivium the place-where-three-roadsmeet was a magical locality. Precisely what was meant by a trivium is open to a variety of interpretations. Generally it is taken to mean one road branching into three, like a twig, but more commonly it was probably a 'Y' or 'T' junction, and no doubt on occasion any kind of junction would serve. Hecate presided over the trivium in the form of her three-faced statue, or post with three masks, and sacrifices were made to her there far into Medieval times, at least in Southern Europe. Whereas the cynical Theophrastus2 in the fourth century B.C. was poking fun at the kind of man who felt urged to wash his head at the trivium, or if he found someone picking garlic there rushed home to do it, yet as late as the fourth century A.D. St Martin of Tours complained that the countryfolk were still burning candles at the trivia to someone like Diana.3 Hecate was frequently depicted with three heads, lion, dog and