Door superstitions

 

Door superstitions

                                Door of St Cuthbert's church, Wells

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Hill Top Post commented that her mother was always quoting superstitions and they stuck in her head. The one she quoted said that people shouldn’t go out of one door and come in through another. That intrigued me but I couldn’t find much about it except that it seems to be an Irish superstition and means that people would carry the luck in the house out with them if they exited through a different door.

Then I discovered there were many superstitions involving doors, often contradicting each other. For example, in 1864, it was thought unlucky to go through the back door of a house you were intending to occupy. In 1907, after their wedding it was unlucky for the bride and groom to enter through the front door as that was the door the dead were carried out from. In 1923, in Taunton, Somerset, it was thought very unlucky to enter one’s new home through the back door.

Doors are considered paramount in forbidding entry to evil spirits and the exit of good fortune. In 1882, one way to challenge ill fortune was to change the doors, blocking an existing door and creating another. In 1926, an alternative to this was to foil a ghost by taking the door off its hinges and hanging it the other way round.

If there should chance to be a thunderstorm, doors and windows must be opened to let the lightning out if it came into the house, or to let it pass right through without damage. 

Huge mezuzah on Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem

                            Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Superstitious people thought that the porch of the main entrance to a dwelling should have a good luck charm. In similar, though more serious vein, observant Jews hang a mezuzah on the front door and often all the other door frames in their houses, apart from the bathroom. The mezuzah case is placed on the right-hand side and contains a small scroll containing the Shema, a prayer from Deuteronomy, which is recited morning and evening. Jews will often touch the mezuzah as they pass through a door to remind themselves of their faith in God and their duty to Him. 

                                               Sculpture of Janus, Vatican Museum
                                Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

For the Romans, Janus was the god of doorways and gates. Janus was portrayed with two faces, one looking into the past and the other looking towards the future. Sometimes he was shown bearded and at other times clean-shaven.  He presided over all beginnings - the beginning of the day, the month and the year – and transitions. He oversaw the beginning and end of conflicts, and seasonal events like planting and harvesting. He also symbolised the meeting ground in life changes, as between life and death and youth and adulthood.

Janus was present at the beginning of the world and guarded the gates of heaven, governing access to it and to other gods. In portrayals of him he is shown holding a key in his right hand, a symbol of his protection of thresholds and frontiers. In Ancient Rome, a key was a sign that a traveller sought a safe place to stay or to trade in peace.  

January, the month marking the beginning of a new year, is named after Janus.

There were a number of ceremonial gates or jani in Rome. They were freestanding edifices used for propitious entrances and exits. Close attention was paid to the departure of a Roman army, for there were favourable and unfavourable ways to pass through a janus (gate). The most famous janus in Rome was the Janus Geminus, which was a shrine to Janus. It consisted of double doors at each end of a rectangular bronze structure. By tradition the doors were left open in time of war and closed when peace reigned. The Roman historian Livy recorded that the gates were only closed twice between the 7^th century B.C., when the Temple of Janus was built, and the 1^st century B.C.