Since the most ancient times, the crossroads has been viewed as a likely dwelling place not only for the spirits, magic and prophets of many cultures, but also for their gods. Both in its small local rituals and in more formulated religious practice aimed at accessing those gods, what happens at crossroads represents the outbound aspirations of an earthlocked race. Besides being the guardians, or the guards, of those spirits, the gods of the crossroads stand as agents of connection sometimes to the higher divinities and as gatekeepers to otherworlds of experience, either beyond death or otherwise somehow beyond life: the miraculous, the sublime, the instant or hard-worked conversion from one state to another. The facilitative doormen and stern concierges of the crossroads are able to open passages that lead to unusual opportunities, a word whose etymology is rooted in the Latin porta. Proverbially of course, metaphorical doors may be opened or closed on various paths, depending on the presiding genius of the portal, and the abilities of the supplicant. The main paradox of the crossroads is that it simultaneously offers the seemingly opposed functions of opening and closing, of transformation and binding. The resolution of this divergent functionality might be found in the reciprocally metamorphic and mutually constitutive relationship between the spirits bound there, the gods encountered there and the crossroads itself.

The mediating gods of the crossroads are numerous and varied and have manifested in many countries of the world, throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas and over at least the last two thousand years, to the present day. In looking at a selection of these, it is perhaps their functional similarities which are most striking, even when examples are separated by great gulfs of time and distance. One of those previously mentioned, on the Indian sub-continent the Hindu god Bhairava guards crossroads at the outskirts of villages where stone phalluses and eye-statues are erected to represent Bhairava as guardian of boundaries.