(continuation)The simple truth of the matter is that I've always been enthralled by doorways (blue or otherwise), windows, gates, thresholds, hearths, chimneys, hidden forest trails, gaps in the hedgerow, garden hollows and portals of any kind. It isn't unusual to find me standing lost in thought in front of a newly discovered gateway or curled up in my morris chair at home with a mug of tea and a faraway look in my eye, thinking about such places and where they go. I'm entranced by their situation, their architecture, the materials of which they are formed, and even their color, as much as I am by what lies beyond them.
Liminal spaces can be compelling, and they can exert a powerful tug on the sensibilities. Every hero's journey or heroine's journey begins with a call to adventure, with one breathtaking, serendipitous, watershed moment in which she or he recognizes a liminal space, responds to its eldritch music and steps across the threshold into another realm. No hero or a heroine here (at least in this lifetime), but the presence of a gateway, any old gateway, calls to me in a voice as lyrical and compelling as that of the mythic sirens, a mere glimpse or a casual mention of one, and off I go.
Mircea Eliade once wrote of doors and thresholds as being both symbols and passages, as places where the passage from the profane to the sacred world becomes possible. The philosopher Martin Heidegger described thresholds as joinings or spaces between two worlds, potent common or middle grounds which hold, join and separate two worlds, all at the same time. In other words, thresholds are sacred places which form a boundary between what is "here" and what is "there", but they are in themselves neither here or there.
Within the seemingly empty space of a doorway or a threshold, one sometimes senses ancient, wild and chaotic forces in motion, and thresholds have the power to open a cranny or passage between this world and the other side, allowing those tumultuous forces to blow through. Cultures from ancient times to our own knew it, and they took special measures to secure such places, carving arcane protective sigils on their door lintels, inserting sprigs of rowan and Brigid's crosses into the doors themselves, burying pins and needles beneath their hearth stones, sweeping and blessing their thresholds, and nailing horseshoes above their doorways.
(to be continued)
4 comments:
Dear Nokomis.....how I have this same wonderment at archways ,old doors, gaps in the forest and the forbidden path....the more discreet and forgotten the more they call my name.....I feel magic and the whispers of the innocence of childhood.....perhaps it is not innocence but an unspoiled connection to the light within and the feeling of anythingspossible...aisling
I'm enjoying your writing so much today. And maybe you are a heroine today, though you say that may be for another lifetime ... I say you are performing a heroic deed by observing and writing about your connection with nature and beauty. The way you write about the doorways, gateways, thresholds of life, of the world ... and the luminal places in your world - you express yourself so well, and you are bound to have an effect on those who see your photos, read your thoughts.
In my spiritual path, we think of those doorways, gateways, as "nerika" or the "doorway to the heart" ... to the place inside where all of creation lives, where you can find your intuition and your connection to life. I like the way you describe the meaning of the doorway in your view. Amazing and always wonderful to realize the connections/similarities between the different spiritual traditions and points of view. We are more alike, as humans, than we are separate!
Maureen
oh, an I forgot to tell you that photo is exquisite!!! It would look incredible enlarged to 24x36 and framed! I love it.
Stunning photograph! There is something magical about windows and doorways isn't there.
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