Doors are imagined to have a strange sort of energy that is all their own – we have talked before about how doors have entered our subconscious as a metaphor for all sorts of things … they have their own special meaning in dreams, we make up all sorts of sayings, phrases and aphorisms about them, and even name supergroup rock bands after them! And all for something that is essentially a handy combination of a privacy, security and insulation implement.

Because of the way doors have made their way into our psyches as something more than the sum of their parts, we have also made up various superstitions about them. Most of these revolve around maintaining a balance of energy with doors, working harmoniously with the energy they inherently have and not flouting the ‘natural law of doors’! It all sounds a bit complex and Feng Shui-ish… it is probably easier to explain by simply telling you the superstitions I mean!

One such superstition is that it is unlucky to enter a house which you are going to occupy by the back door. Not sure why, not sure how… but it just messes with order of things, man! Presumably this only means the very first time you enter it – if it was unlucky to ever enter a house you were going to occupy (continue occupying) by the back door, there would be no back doors at all … and hence no superstition! There’s a paradox fit to make the universe explode :)

It is also unlucky to enter the house by the back door immediately after a wedding. However! According to other sources, it is also unlucky to enter a house by the front door, immediately after a wedding! So I guess, once you are married, you are simply doomed to a life outside … or perhaps that is the reason for our rising divorce rate. People have just kept on going into houses after they were married, and thereby created the old adage that marriage equals unhappiness. Obviously, it need not – as long as you stay out of houses after you have been married!

On the same subject, it is considered unlucky to leave the house by a different door than that you came in by, especially immediately after you have been married. Although, this is meant to hold true for everybody, everywhere. This is another demonstration of how the use of doors in different ways can either maintain an energistic balance in the home (creating good luck!), or upset that balance, and bring bad luck. So do you think that if I came in by the back door and left by the front door, that I could reverse the bad luck and maintain the balance by doing the reverse next time (coming in by the front door and leaving by the back)? Makes sense to me, and I’ll argue it in any court of luck!

When you die at home, your corpse is supposed to be carried out by the back door. Here is another way in which you are doomed to bad luck … if you live in an apartment, and you die at home, you must either be thrown out a window, or possibly down a laundry chute. Maybe they could cut special corpse holes through the back areas of people’s apartments, into an adjoining one? Or would it matter that it was going out somebody else’s front door? Ah, the ways of the administrator of luck and superstitions are very mysterious to me :)

Apparently, you can also keep out evil spirits and ghosts that have been plagueing your house, by unhanging the door and turning it the other way around. A pity if you happen to have solidly affixed some lovely hardware to your front door! The ordeal of switching over knockers, bells, letterbox slots, and espagnolettes could almost make you want to just make friends with the ghost and be done with it. However, yet another example of the way people view doors as having a certain energy, and some of the ways they believe you can manipulate it. I wonder what the consequences of reversing your door would be on positive energy (good spirits, like guardian angels)? Would they also be effectively locked out of the house by the backwards door?

And, saving the strangest of all door superstitions for the last … when there is a thunderstorm, you must open both the front and the back door (or window), because if the lightning comes in, it will need a place to get out easily. Obviously by this method, if lightning decided to come into your house, it would see how obliging you had been, and simply make for the back door without destroying a single thing. If that’s not obvious to you, I don’t know what is! Also, the more doors and windows you have open during a thunderstorm, the easier it makes it for the lightning to go out. Opening every door and window, in fact, gives you the best chance of survival from that sneaky, evil lightning.

Why they just don’t close all of their doors so it can’t enter in the first place, I don’t yet understand …

Photo credits: XVII………VIXI! by Patrizio C., Just married by Ruth Leslie

This entry was filed under Doors in Modern Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.