Crossroads

A crossroads in a dream is the dream's image of a public point of decision where two routes are equally available and a single direction has to be chosen. The crossroads is famous in folklore because the choice is exposed and the next mile is not the same depending on which way you go. Across traditions the crossroads has been treated as a place where the ordinary world thins — Hecate's shrine in Greek practice, the African-Atlantic Eshu-Elegua, the European wayside cross — because the moment of choice was understood to attract powers larger than the chooser. A crossroads is distinct from a fork: the fork is the road splitting in two, the crossroads is two roads meeting and crossing, which means a stranger's path also runs through your point of decision. The dream brings the crossroads when something in your life — a career, a relationship, a moral question, a vocation that has come into open conflict with a duty — is at the moment where two directions both look like real options and one decision now will decide most of what follows. A crossroads stood at long enough to make the honest call is the dream affirming the right kind of pause. A crossroads where a figure waits to advise you is the dream marking that the choice is happening in the presence of a counsellor — inner or outer — and the encounter is part of the deciding. A crossroads where the signposts have been removed is the dream noting that the markers that used to help you choose are gone and the read is now on your own conscience. A crossroads run through without deciding, with the choice made by momentum, is the dream noting that the decision was taken and not chosen, and the next mile is being lived without ownership.