practicesHanging at the door

Jewish law makes the door a legal obligation with a measured position. A mezuzah's parchment goes in a case on the right side of the doorway, in the upper third of the post, at roughly shoulder height and within about three inches — eight centimetres — of the opening. Many Ashkenazi Jews tilt it so that the top slants into the room, a compromise proposed by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, c. 1269–1343, between Rashi's vertical and Rabbeinu Tam's horizontal; most Sephardi, Mizrahi and other non-Ashkenazi Jews fix it vertically. In the diaspora it goes up within thirty days of moving into a rented home; in a purchased home, or anywhere in Israel, immediately. The person holds it to the spot and recites a blessing, and one blessing covers all the doors done in a session. Samaritans set select verses above the house door or on a prominent wall, and stone plaques of the Ten Commandments from the Byzantine and Early Muslim periods, the fourth to the eleventh centuries, are now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The door is also where the practice gets litigated. A Chicago condominium association at Shoreline Towers banned objects outside unit doors and in 2004 read the ban as absolute, and management removed residents' mezuzot; complaints went to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, the Illinois Attorney General and the federal housing department. Alderman Burton Natarus drafted an amendment making it illegal to prohibit a religious sign, symbol or relic on a door, doorpost or entrance, and it became Chicago law that December with a maximum $500 fine, the first such legislation in North America.

Japan assigns doors by deity. Protective gofu such as Tsuno Daishi, the Horned Great Master — the Tendai monk Ryōgen drawn as a yaksha or an oni — go on doorways and entrances; hearth deities go in the kitchen; a talisman of Ucchuṣma, the wrathful figure who purifies the unclean, may go in the toilet. Europe nails iron. Worn horseshoes were placed above or beside doorways to guard houses, barns and stables across Italy, Germany, Britain and Scandinavia, traditionally held with seven nails; whether the ends point up or down is a live disagreement, with much of Europe, the Middle East and Latin America hanging them downward so that blessing pours out, and parts of Ireland and Britain hanging them upward so that luck is caught and cannot run out. The two habits travelled to the United States with their carriers. A legend attached to the tenth-century blacksmith-saint Dunstan has the Devil promising never to enter a household with a horseshoe nailed to the door.

Ireland hangs a woven cross. Saint Brigid's crosses are typically woven on 1 February, and hanging one from the rafters, or over an entryway, was held to bring the saint's blessing and protection for the rest of the year; on the feast day crosses went up in the main dwelling, the outhouses and the stables. Pennsylvania painted the wall instead of the door: barn stars in circular borders appear on Pennsylvania Dutch barns in Berks, Lancaster and Lehigh counties, beginning in the early nineteenth century and spreading once ready-mixed paint became affordable. Two readings of the barn signs run side by side in the same communities — one holds them protective, the other decorative — and both sides agree that particular designs carry folk beliefs. The Amish do not use them.

Inference — the door is the most crowded position in this atlas. It is also the only one where the charm is aimed at people who are not its owner: a doorpost charm is read by every visitor, which makes it a statement of who lives here as much as a guard.

Fix, nail, paste or hang, at the position the tradition specifies, often with words said at the moment of fixing. Height, side and orientation carry rules; so does the date, in the Irish case.

Live and legally protected in at least one American city. Mezuzot are fixed in Israel and across the diaspora, with cases made in silver, wood, stone, ceramic, pewter and polymer clay; a case sold with a photocopied paper text is a case, since a valid mezuzah is handwritten on parchment by a qualified scribe. Japanese households renew door talismans at the New Year. Hex signs are sold as mountable boards for barns and houses, a trade Jacob Zook of Paradise, Pennsylvania claimed to have started in 1942 for shops along the Lincoln Highway.