The Element Encyclopedia of 1000 Spells: A Concise Reference Book for the Magical Arts. Judika Illes
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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. When legendary bluesmen Tommy and Robert Johnson journeyed to the crossroads to trade their souls for musical ability, were they looking for this devil or for the sometimes lame, Papa Legba, or could anyone even tell the difference anymore? (See Identification/Syncretism.)
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. Magic spells also emphasize other, very specific crossroads.
The Cemetery
The cemetery is the threshold between the realms of the living and the dead. It too is a place of transformation. Many spells demand that a spell either be cast in the graveyard or that spell remnants be buried there, as if one were conducting a funeral. These include protection, banishing and love spells, as well as hexes. Significantly, many necromantic spells, spells, for communicating with those who have passed on to the next life, do not require a trip to the cemetery.
The cemetery, like the more general crossroads, swirls with energy, albeit of a more specific kind: ghosts, souls of the departed, abstract life and death forces, spiritual entities, protective guardians, and those malevolent beings who are attracted to grief or decay all make their home in the cemetery.
Whether the cemetery is a benevolent or a threatening place depends largely on cultural perceptions of what happens to the soul after death. Cultures that depend on protective ancestral spirits rarely fear the cemetery; cultures that believe that human memory and emotion truly dies, leaving nothing but a hungry, destructive ghost will avoid the graveyard except for purposes of malevolent magic.
The Pros and Cons of the Graveyard
The cemetery is the place where dangerous entities lurk, dangerous people, too! Although a Greek word, the term “necropolis,” city of the dead, stems from ancient Egypt. Once upon a time, the devastatingly poor made their home among the graves. This situation still exists in many places, to greater or lesser extent. On the other hand, cemeteries are places of great neutral power (think of all that swirling radiant energy!), which is able to be harnessed for good or evil, as the practitioner intends or desires.
Even in the cemetery, bypassing actual grave-sites, certain areas are more packed with power than others. The threshold of the threshold, so to speak, is at the cemetery gates. Older cemeteries traditionally feature iron gates to provide this boundary. Iron, with the exception of menstrual blood, is the single most protective substance on Earth, and will repel and contain malevolent spirits and ghosts. Many spells request that items be left at the cemetery gates: this is not because people were afraid to enter the graveyard itself, but because that threshold is so much more powerful.
Many powerful spirits, such as India’s Kali and Shiva, Matron and Patron of Tantra, reside in the cemetery, as do ancient Egypt’s road-openers, Anubis, the jackal-headed inventor of embalming, and Wepwawet, a wolf deity. (Say the name fast and hear that wolf cry.)
Accessing the power of crossroads and cemeteries is common to most magical traditions, to varying extents. Specific other traditions recognize and incorporate still other crossroads.
The Bathhouse
Prior to the advent of private, indoor plumbing, the public bathhouse was a place of great social importance, a crossroads to which everyone eventually came. Its purpose was not only hygienic and social, but spiritual and magical, too.
In the days before privacy, public bathhouses were required for spiritual cleansing rituals as well as physical ones. The bathhouse attendant, now most frequently a lowly janitorial occupation, was once a respected, and perhaps feared, ritual leader who wielded great power. In many cases they might be the only ones privy to occult secrets.
Many traditions still retain the equivalent of a bathhouse: the Jewish mikveh, the Native American sweat lodge, the Aztec temescal. Not all bathhouses feature water, as the sweat lodge demonstrates. Finnish saunas and Turkish steam baths access other methods. In the same way, cleansing spells are as likely to use smoke, sound, or other methods as water. The bathhouse, whether wet or dry, was frequently the scene of many threshold experiences:
Babies were born in bathhouses
Preparation for brides and sometimes grooms occurs in the bathhouse
Cultures that isolate menstruating women frequently have rituals held in the bathhouse to signal her return to society at large
Bodies are prepared for funeral rites in the bathhouse
The frequency of these experiences in the bathhouse would exponentially increase the potential power contained within.
The bathhouse is the descendant of ancient springs, each the home of resident magic spirits. Many bathhouses were built on the site of springs, and the spirits took up residence in the new bathhouse. Water spirits, like the nature of their element, are frequently volatile, replete with treasure, but also with dangerous currents. These can be tremendously benevolent spirits (water spirits rank among the most powerful love spirits), but you have to know how to handle them. With the coming of Christianity and Islam, rites of devotion and pacification were forbidden and abandoned. Many spirits packed up and left; those remaining, starved of attention, are frequently grouchy. Thus the bathhouse is both a place of power and danger. Enter alone to access the spirits or avoid entering alone so that the spirits cannot access you!
Russian magic, in particular, manifests this ambivalence and will direct many spells to be performed in the bathhouse, usually at midnight.
Ruins
Ruins of buildings and cities, particularly (but not necessarily) those that met their ruin in violence, are perceived as swirling with power. This is the stuff of fairy tale: the European witch convicted purely because she has been gathering herbs amidst the ruins. It’s not like there’s any other reason to be there, the witch hunters say. Indeed, some of the most powerful magical herbs, mugwort and Syrian rue, thrive best among ruins. Many practitioners believe that these botanicals, already more powerful than most, are at the height of their power when picked there, especially at midnight, twilight or just before dawn.
Stone ruins are most powerful because stone, although silent, is in magical terms hardly inanimate. Stone is believed to retain memories of whatever occurs in its vicinity. Those memories may be accessed by those who know how.
Souls of those who perished in the ruins may linger, as may others drawn to the site. They may be accessed, if you dare. Djinn not found lurking in the desert, behind doorways or at natural springs will be found amidst ruins, the more broken the better. If you want to access them, that’s where you’ll find them. If you’re afraid they’ll access you, hurry past without stopping.
Altars