The threshold, as the family altar on which the sacrificial blood of a
covenant welcome is poured out, is counted sacred, and is not to be
stepped upon, or passed over lightly; but it is to be crossed over
reverently, as in recognition of Him to whom all life belongs. “On
passing the threshold,” in Arabia, “it is proper to say, ‘Bismillah,’
that is, ‘In the name of God.’ Not to do so would be looked upon as a
bad augury, alike for him who enters and for those within.”[19] In Syria
the belief prevails “that it is unlucky to tread on a threshold.” When
they receive a new member to their sect, the Bektashi derwishes of Syria
bring him to the threshold, and prayers and sacrifices are offered “on
the door-sill.”[20]
“The khaleefs of Bagdad required all those who entered their palace to
prostrate themselves on the threshold of the gate, where they had
inserted a fragment of the black stone of the temple at Meccah, in order
to render it [the threshold] more venerable to those who had been
accustomed to press their foreheads against it. The threshold was of
some height, and it was a crime to set foot upon it.” In the advice
which Nurshivan gives to his son Hormuz, he recommends him to betake
himself to the threshold of the Lord; that is, to the “presence of God,
in the same fashion in which the poor do, at the gates of the rich.
‘Since you are his slave,’ he says, ‘set your forehead on his
threshold.’”[21]
Among the Hindoos, “the threshold is ... sacred in private houses; it is
not propitious for a person to remain on it; neither to eat, sneeze,
yawn, nor spit whilst there.”[22]
A double welcome is sometimes given to one who is in an official
position. Thus, a Syrian, who held a commission from the chief officer
of customs in Upper Syria, was surprised at having two sheep sacrificed
before him as he approached the door of a house east of the Sea of
Galilee; and he graciously protested against the excessive honor shown
him. “One sheep is to welcome yourself as a man, and the other is to
welcome you as an officer of the government,” was the answer. Loyalty as
well as hospitality was indicated in these threshold sacrifices.
Sacredness attaches to the threshold in Persia. It must not be trodden
on; but it is often kissed by those who would step over it.[23]
A man should always cross himself when he steps over a threshold in
Russia; and, in some portions of the realm, it is believed that he ought
not to sit down on the threshold.[24]
High sills, or thresholds, so that one must step over, and not on, them,
are in the houses of Finland, and in the houses of many Finns in the
United States.[25] The same was true of many Teutonic houses.[26]
To shake hands across a threshold, instead of crossing it, is said, in
Finland, to ensure a quarrel.[27] To step over a threshold is, in
Lapland, to bring one under the protection of the family within, and of
its guardian deity.[28] The same is true among the Magyars.[29]
The ancient Pythagoreans quoted various maxims, supposed to be from the
sayings of their great founder, as teaching important lessons for all
time. In these maxims there were indications of a peculiar reverence for
the threshold and doorway. Thus: “He who strikes his foot against the
threshold should go back;” it were unsafe to pursue a movement so
inauspiciously begun. And, again: “The doors should be kissed fondly by
those who enter or depart.”[30]
“Treading on the threshold was ... tabooed by the Tatars.”[31] Again, on
the other side of the globe, in Samoa, to spill water on the door-step,
or threshold, when food is brought in, is a cause of anger to the
protecting deity of the family. It may drive him away.[32]
In Europe and in America it is by many counted an ill omen to tread upon
the threshold of the door on entering a house. To the present day, in
portions of Scotland, the idea popularly prevails, that to tread
directly upon the boundary lines of division between ordinary flagstones
is to endanger one’s soul; hence the very children are careful to avoid
stepping upon those lines, in their walking across the courtyards or
along the streets, in their every-day passing.
Many a person in the United States, who knows nothing of any
superstition connected with this, avoids, if possible, stepping on,
instead of over, the cracks or seams of a board walk, or even the seams
of a carpet.
All these customs seem to be a survival of the feeling that the
threshold is sacred as the primitive altar.
Apart from the reverence for the threshold demanded of those who pass
over it, there is an obvious sanctity of the threshold recognized in the
placing of images and amulets underneath it, and in the sacrifices and
offerings placed on it, as a means of guarding the dwelling within.
In the building of private houses, as well as temples, and city
gateways, in ancient Assyria, images of various kinds and sizes, “in
bronze, red jasper, yellow stone, and baked earth, ... are buried
beneath the stones of the threshold, so as to bar the entrance to all
destructive spirits.” Invocations are graven upon these figures.[33]
Herodotus mentions[34] that, in the annual feast in honor of the god
Osiris, “every Egyptian sacrifices a hog before the door of his house”
on the evening before the festival. Osiris was the god who was the judge
of the soul after death, and who in a peculiar sense stood for the truth
of the life to come. Every Egyptian desired, above all, to be in loving
covenant with Osiris, and when he would offer a welcoming sacrifice to
him, he did so before the door of his own house, as before the primitive
family altar. That it was the _blood_ poured out at the threshold which
was the essential act of covenanting in this sacrifice to Osiris, is
evidenced in the fact that the animal sacrificed was not eaten in the
family of the sacrificer, but was carried away by the swineherd who
furnished it.
Bunches of grass dipped in blood, and touched by the king, as if made
representative of his dignity and power, are to-day placed on the
threshold, as an offering, and as averters of evil, in Equatorial
Africa. This is known there as an ancient custom. In Uganda, “every
house has charms hung on the door, and others laid on the threshold.” An
offering to the _lubare_, or local spirit, must be thrown across the
threshold, from within the house, before a native ventures to leave his
home in the morning.[35] Charms for this purpose are kept behind the
door.
One of the requirements in the Vedic law (the sacred law of the Hindoos)
was, that “on the door-sill (a bali must be placed) with a mantra
addressed to Antariksha (the air),”[36] by a house father, in his
home;[37] that is, that an offering, with an invocation to a deity,
should be a sacrifice at the threshold altar. Other references in the
Hindoo laws seem to demand bali offerings “at all the doors, as many as
they are,” in a house, and evidence the importance and sacredness
attaching to the doorway.[38]
The threshold seems to have special reverence in Northwestern India, in
connection with the seasons of seedtime and harvest. At seedtime “a cake
of cowdung formed into a cup” is placed on the threshold of the
householder; it is filled with corn, and then water is poured over it as
a libation to the deities. Cowdung is not only a means of enrichment to
the soil, but it is a gift from the sacred cow, and so, in a sense,
represents or stands for the life of the cow. It is laid on the
threshold altar as an offering of life. The libation of water is an
accompaniment of that offering; water is essential to life and growth,
and it is a gift of the gods accordingly. Seed-sowing is recognized as
an act which needs the blessing of the gods, and on which that blessing
is sought in covenant relations.
At early harvest time the first-fruits of the grain-field are not taken
to the threshing-floor, but are brought home to be presented to the gods
at the household altar, and afterwards eaten by the family, with a
portion given to the Brahmans. The first bundle of corn is deposited at
the threshold of the home, and a libation of water is made as a
completion of its offering. The grain being taken from the ear, of a
portion of this first-fruits, is mixed with milk and sugar, and every
member of the family tastes it seven times.[39]
Among the Prabhus of Bombay, at the time of the birth of a child, an
iron crowbar is placed “along the threshold of the room of confinement,
as a check against the crossing of any evil spirit.” This is in
accordance with a Hindoo belief that evil spirits keep aloof from iron,
“and even nowadays pieces of horseshoe can be seen nailed to the bottom
sills of doors of native houses.”[40] Iron seems, in various lands, to
be deemed of peculiar value as a guard against evil spirits, and the
threshold to be the place for its efficacious fixing.
Similarly, “in East Bothnia, when the cows are taken out of their winter
quarters for the first time, an iron bar is laid before the threshold,
over which all the cows must pass; for, if they do not, there will be
nothing but trouble with them all the following summer.”[41]
Among the folk customs in the line of exorcism and divination in Italy,
the threshold has prominence. “In Tuscany, much taking of magical
medicine is done on the threshold; it also plays a part in other
sorcery.”[42] A writer mentions a method of exorcism with incense, where
three pinches of the best incense, and three of the second quality, are
put in a row on the threshold of the door, and then, after other incense
is burned within the house in an earthen fire-dish, these “little piles
of incense on the threshold of the door” are lighted, with words of
invocation. This process is repeated three times over.[43]
A method of curing a disorder of the wrist prevalent in harvest time, in
North Germany, is by taking “three pieces of three-jointed straw,” and
so laying them “side by side as to correspond joint by joint,” then
chopping through the first joint into the block beneath. This “ceremony
is performed on the threshold, and ends with the sign of the cross.”[44]
Observances with reference to the threshold are numerous in Russia. “On
it a cross is drawn to keep off _maras_ (hags). Under it the peasants
bury stillborn children. In Lithuania, when a new house is being built,
a wooden cross, or some article which has been handed down from past
generations, is placed under the threshold. There also when a newly
baptized child is being brought back from church, it is customary for
its father to hold it for a while over the threshold, ‘so as to place
the new member of the family under the protection of the domestic
divinities’ [bringing it newly into the family covenant at the threshold
altar].... Sick children, who are supposed to have been afflicted by an
evil eye, are washed on the threshold of their cottage, in order that,
with the help of the Penates who reside there, the malady may be driven
out of doors.”[45]
At the annual feast known as “Death Week,” among Slavonic peoples,
marking the close of winter and the beginning of spring, the peasants in
rural Russia combine for a sacrifice to appease the “Vodyaoui,” or
aroused water-spirit of the thawing streams. They also prepare a
sacrifice for the “Domovoi” or house-spirit. A fat black pig is killed,
and cut into as many pieces as there are residents in the place. “Each
resident receives one piece, which he straightway buries under the
door-step at the entrance to his house. In some parts, it is said, the
country folk bury a few eggs beneath the threshold of the dwelling to
propitiate the ‘Domovoi.’”[46]
When a Magyar maiden would win the love of a young man, or would bring
evil on him because of his reluctance, she seeks influence over him by
means of the sacred threshold. “She must steal something from the young
man, and take it to a witch, who adds to it three beans, three bulbs of
garlic, a few pieces of dry coal, and a dead frog. These are all put
into an earthenware pot, and placed under the threshold,” with a prayer
for the object of her desire.[47]
A superstition is prevalent in Roumania, that if a bat, together with a
gold coin, be buried under the threshold, there is “good luck” to the
house.[48] Various superstitions, in connection with the bat are found
among primitive peoples.[49]
In Japan, the threshold of the door is sprinkled with salt, after a
funeral, and as a propitiatory sacrifice in time of danger.[50] Salt
represents blood.
Among the Dyaks of Borneo, a pig’s blood is sprinkled at the doorway to
atone for the sin of unchastity by a daughter of the family. Again, the
blood of a fowl is sprinkled there at the annual festival of
seed-sowing, with prayers for fecundity and fertility.[51]
“On New Year’s morning, along the coast [in Aberdeenshire] where seaweed
is gathered, a small quantity is laid down at each door of the
farm-steading [the buildings of the homestead], as a means of bringing
good luck.” And fire and salt are put on the threshold of the byre-door
before a cow leaves the building after giving birth to a calf.[52]
Of portions of Ireland, it was said, early in this century: “On the 11th
of November, every family of a village kills an animal of some kind or
other; those who are rich kill a cow or sheep, others a goose or a
turkey; while those who are poor ... kill a hen or a cock, and sprinkle
the threshold with the blood, and do the same in the four corners of the
house; ... to exclude every kind of evil spirit from the dwelling.”[53]
Holes bored in the door-sill, and plugged with pieces of paper on which
are written incantations, a broom laid across the door-sill, or “three
horseshoes nailed on the door-step with toes up,” are supposed to be a
guard against witches or evil spirits in portions of Pennsylvania
to-day.[54] Many a Pennsylvanian is unwilling to cross, for the first
time, the threshold of a new home, without carrying salt and a Bible.
Among the Indians in ancient Mexico there was an altar near the door of
every house, with instruments of sacrifice, and accompanying idols.[55]
“Threshold” and “foundation” are terms that are used interchangeably in
primitive life. The sacredness of the threshold-stone of a building
pivots on its position as a foundation stone, a beginning stone, a
boundary stone. Hence the foundation stone of any house, or other
structure was sacred as the threshold of that building. According to Dr.
H.V. Hilprecht, in the earlier buildings of Babylonia the inscriptions
and invocations and deposits were at the threshold, and later under the
four corners of the building; but when they were at the threshold they
were not under the corners, and _vice versa_. It would seem from this
that the corner-stone was recognized as the beginning, or the limit, or
the threshold, of the building. It may be, therefore, that the modern
ceremonies at the laying of a “corner-stone” are a survival of the
primitive sacredness of a threshold-laying.[56]
It would seem, moreover, as if the sanctity of the threshold as the
primitive altar were, in many places, in the course of time transferred
to the family hearth. In the primitive tent the household fire was at
the entrance way, as it is in the tents of the East to-day. Where Arabs
have camped on an Eastern desert, the place of the shaykh’s tent can
always be known by the blackened hearthstones at its entrance, or
threshold, where he welcomed guests to the hospitality of his tribe and
family by the sharing of bread and salt, or by the outpouring of the
blood of a slaughtered lamb or kid.
If, indeed, the earliest dwelling of man was a cave, rather than a tent,
the household fire was still at its entrance; and the threshold was the
hearthstone. When, in the progress of building-changes, the hearthstone
was removed to the center of the building, or of the inner court, its
sanctity went with it, as the place of the family fire. Thus, for
example, in Russia, the Domovoi, or household deity, who is honored and
invoked at the threshold, “is supposed to live behind the stove now, but
in early times he, or the spirits of the dead ancestors, of whom he is
now the chief representative, were held to be in even more direct
relations with the fire on the hearth; as were the Penates of the
Romans, who were sometimes spoken of as at the threshold, and again as
at the hearth.”[57]
A recognition of the peculiar sacredness of the threshold is shown, in
different lands, by the popular unwillingness to have the dead carried
over it on the way to burial. In India, the body of one dying in certain
phases of the moon can in no wise be carried over the threshold. The
house wall must be broken for its removal.[58] When Chinese students are
attending the competitive examinations for promotion, they are shut up
in rooms until their work is completed. If one of them dies at such a
time, “the body is removed over the back wall, as the taking out openly
through the front door would be regarded as an evil omen.”[59]
In the capital of Korea there is a small gate in the city wall known as
the “Gate of the Dead,” through which alone a dead body can be carried
out. But no one can ever enter through that passage-way.[60]
There is a recognition, in Russian folk-tales, of safety to the spirit
of one who dies in a house, if his body be passed out _under_ the
threshold of the outer door.[61]
It is not allowable to carry out a corpse through the main door of a
house in Italy. There is a smaller door, in the side wall, known as the
_porta di morti_, which is kept closed except as it is opened for the
removal of a body at the time of a funeral.[62]
In Alaska, it is deemed an evil omen for the dead to be carried over the
threshold. “Therefore the dying one, instead of being allowed to rest in
peace in his last hours, is hastily lifted from his couch and put out of
doors [or out of the house] by a hole in the rear wall” so as not to
have a corpse pass the threshold.[63]
In some communities, in both Europe and America, the coffin is passed
out of the house through the window, instead of through the door, at a
funeral. And again, the front door is closed and a window is opened at
the time of a death, in order that the spirit may pass out of the house
in some other way than over the threshold.[64]
Even though the dead may not be lifted over the threshold altar, the
dead may be buried underneath it. In both the far East and the far West,
burials under the threshold are known. And in Christian churches of
Europe, a grave underneath the altar is an honored grave for saint or
ecclesiastic.
In the Apocalypse the seer beheld “underneath the altar the souls of
them that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony
which they held: and they cried with a great voice, saying, How long, O
Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on
them that dwell on the earth?”[65]