Crossroads
As in other European traditions, the crossroads in Polish mythology are a sacred and magical place where both divination and invocations were uttered. Talismans and amulets were hung or buried there, as well as other spell work was conducted. The crossroads were a place where all places and directions meet; and all time faded away into the present moment.
The legacy of this tradition can be seen all across present-day Poland, where tens of thousands of crosses and statues of the Virgin Mary stand next to major and minor crossroads. The Catholic Church, as with many other cultures, absorbed what was good in the symbolism of what she found there while utterly transforming its' purpose. Accordingly crossroads were marked by crosses and statues, as special places where wayfarers would be under the protection of saints.
Read more about this topic: Polish Folk Beliefs
Famous quotes containing the word crossroads:
“The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas’ mysterious routes back to his native Guinea.
Meanwhile, the feast continued. The peasants were forgetting their misery: dance and alcohol numbed them, carrying away their shipwrecked conscience in the unreal and shady regions where the savage madness of the African gods lay waiting.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“...I’m thirteen years old, and I think I’m at the crossroads of my life. I’ve got to make good between now and the time I’m twenty, and I have only seven years to do it in. Besides, I’m the father of my family and I’ve got to earn all the money I can.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)