Like all human social phenomena, the functions of the crossroads are ultimately driven by economics and, which is virtually the same thing, the economics of belief. Its particular uses are determined by ideological and religious imperatives dating from pre-classical times. This crossing over of the ‘topographical and conceptual’ develops from paganism's relatively celebratory relationship with the physical world through Christianity's murkier suspicion and pessimism about our relation to this into the early modern era and from there into modern times. In the early decades of the twenty-first century there are still some religious organisations and traditions that worship gods and expect transformational experiences at crossroads (notably in Haiti and Brazil). For the vast majority of people, however, there are now other more meaningful and considerably more accessible transformative rituals available.

The multifarious means of the transformation of the self and communication with the gods are now so widely available that escaping to a crossroads is unnecessary. Every liminal practice is now to be found in the broad cities of the planet or is otherwise findable along the endless trails of the internet. Both the megacities and the server farms are polynodal crossroads where gathering and distributing happen at ever-increasingly unprecedented speeds and scales. The libraries and the cities of the ancient world of course carried some of these same functions. What was lacking perhaps was the assimilation of the liminal within the body of the place. The joyful and fearful phenomena of the peripheral crossroads were necessitated by the sometimes violent homogeneity of the centres of power they outlay. Rome is the archetype of the place to which all roads lead. But simultaneously Rome was also notable for the fact that it found its crossroads rituals inside its limits and made them integral to the functioning of its very streets. Simultaneously, then, Rome could be the ultimate location of inward transformation and the sprawling octopus of grand imperial expansion.

From a properly modern global perspective, the transit routes of the world now have their own mega-junctions and crossways that surely service some of the same impulses as the ancient crossroads. Flight paths are the new transitional routes and since their midair crossings are separated by 1,000 vertical feet, airports must be their true nodal crossroads.