An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Crossroads as Witches’ Meeting Places

Ever since the days of Diana Trivia, or Diana of the Three Ways, crossroads have been traditional meeting-places of witches. This may be the origin of the custom, observed up to comparatively recent years, of burying the bodies of suicides and executed criminals at the crossroads, with a stake through the heart. The latter was to prevent the ghost from walking. The body, having been denied Christian burial, was symbolically abandoned to the pagan powers.

Statues of Diana Trivia, or of the triple moon goddess Hecate, both of whom were divinities of witchcraft, were erected by the Greeks and Romans at places where three or more roads met. This is why, in later years, witches chose crossroads for their rendezvous. It was a place sacred to the moon goddess of witchcraft.

In Ashdown Forest, Sussex, there is a place where three roads meet, called Wych Cross. In past years, this place-name was spelt ’Witch Cross’, because it was the meeting-place of the local witches.

Another forest crossroads where witches used to meet is Wilverley Post, in the New Forest in Hampshire, near the old oak-tree called the Naked Man.