From Janus to ....

IANUA as gateways




In the 20th century, Janus was chosen as name and symbol by a vanilla gay group
and by a San Francisco mixed BDSM group.
In the SOJ, Janus is usually represented as a male god with two faces. In his name-month,
he looks back at the past and forward to the future. January first, like December 25, approximates the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere (not that everyone agrees to start their new year at the dying Sun's rebirth; some dissenters preferring Spring Equinox, approximated by April first and Easter).

But the calendrical god Janus has earlier and humbler roots.
The word IANUS ( plural IANUA ) originally meant "doorway",
as in the family home.


This doorway "was itself a deity, the god Janus. As the transition point between the
uncontrolled outer world and the safe territory indoors, the doorway was hedged about with taboos...."
From this beginning as a "familiar" (family) sacred object, Janus went on to become
"better known as a god of the Roman state religion, which is thus revealed as the Romans'
domestic religion carried out on a collective scale."
Janus was represented publicly by a huge double doorway, or gateway,
the IANUS GEMINUS.
The first day of every month was sacred to Janus, and also to Juno.
[ Quotes are from A HISTORY OF PAGAN EUROPE, 1995, chapter 3. ]
Thus Janus is the gateway into every month,
not merely into January and our modern New Year.



Back to sacred sites in family homes: The hearth was very holy; and long persisted as the symbolic center of family life, into the 19th century. Today in Katmandu, Nepal, certain stones or bricks in a wall may be sacred; you'll notice these because worshippers rub red powder on them. The doorway to a Jewish home may be marked by a small parchment scroll in a case, now called a "mezuzah" ( tho this word originally meant the doorpost, not the text ). Chinese homes and shops, from Singapore to our
Golden Mountain, exhibit many magical and/or spiritual aspects.


If we think of " Ianus " as doorway, gateway, transition, passage,
-- as the start of an excursion (or incursion?) --
then many themes for meditation, art, ritual, theatre, play, whatever, may arise.
Such as moving thru the gateway from mundane reality into a different reality,
an altered (alternative?) state of consciousness, and later returning....


Perhaps leather mystics might celebrate " Ianua " (gateways, plural)
in myriad ways, on or near the first of each month,
and especially on New Year's Day ?




.......
Anonymous.
Reprint freely!
San Francisco
August 2006
...........