For crossing into the unknown
Threshold Crossing Card
- 1 Pause. Feel your feet on the ground. Notice what is behind you. Let the weight settle.
- 2 Name what you are leaving. Speak it aloud or in silence. Be specific. Be honest. The threshold needs to know what you're releasing.
- 3 Name what you are moving toward. This can be uncertain. 'I am moving toward what I do not yet know' is enough. The direction matters more than the destination.
- 4 Cross. Step over the threshold with intention. Do not look back. Your body knows how to do this.
- 5 Breathe. Stand in the new place for three breaths before continuing. You have arrived.
Threshold Crossing Card
Thresholds are older than doors. Before we built walls, we knew the places where one thing became another—where forest met field, where water met land, where day met night.
The word itself comes from threshing—the place where grain was beaten to separate seed from chaff. Every threshold is a winnowing. You cannot cross without leaving something behind.
In folk practice, thresholds require protection because they are openings. Iron buried beneath the doorsill. Salt scattered at the gate. Careful words spoken at the boundary. What passes through a threshold passes through you.
Correspondences
- Materials
- Iron, salt, stone
- Plants
- Yarrow, mugwort, rowan
- Moon
- Dark moon or first quarter
- Time
- Dawn, dusk, or midnight
- Direction
- East (beginnings) or West (endings)
I stand at the edge of what I know.
Behind me, the path I have walked.
Before me, the path I cannot see.
I cross with open hands and steady breath.
May what needs to fall away, fall.
May what needs to come, come.
I am ready. I am crossing. I am here.
Your intention: