Doorway by Simon Unwin

Author:Simon Unwin
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Routledge

Affirmation

Passing through a doorway can define, in a spatial way, a change in persona. This is apparent particularly in the role doorways often play in ceremonies associated with transitions in life.

When a bride arrives at the church she walks in through the doorway, on the arm of her father, as a single woman (right). After the service she re-emerges with her husband. The moment of transition occurs within the church, but the doorway defines its relationship with the outside world, the community for whom the person changes. Later, when the couple go to the house they will share, the husband might carry the bride across the threshold to symbolise their dwelling there, joined together as a single family unit.

There are many examples of the affirmative role of doorways in ceremonies of transition.

When a Roman general was victorious in a great battle, his status as a hero was affirmed by his riding through an arch of triumph. Through the history of the Roman Empire such triumphal gateways became grander and grander, standing as lasting symbols of military success.

Generally speaking Australian Aborigines, living in their traditional ways on the land, live in a world without doorways. But sometimes, especially for initiation ceremonies, they make them. The drawings on the right show the ceremonial ground of the Engwura sub-incision initiation ceremony, performed on boys by Aboriginal tribes in central Australia. The ceremony takes place at the Kauaua – a sacred pole – screened from the rest of the tribe by the Parra – a low earth bank topped with branches – which marks the eastern boundary of the ritual area. After the ceremony the Parra is broken open on the axis of the sacred pole to make a gateway through which the boy, now transformed by the ceremony into an adult, returns to the tribe.

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