Gate
threshold, transition
The charged frame that separates inside from out, profane from sacred — a passage that changes whoever steps through.
- Instances
- Torii ⛩ (the Shinto threshold) · triumphal arch · lych-gate · 門 (the gate radical)
- The flip
- A gate admits and a gate refuses, and it is the same structure doing both. The torii marks entry into sacred ground and the arch admits the victor; the barred city gate, the lych-gate where the dead are set down and go no further, and the gate in Dante with its instruction to abandon hope, are the identical form turned against the traveller.
Sources · 3
- documented Dante, Inferno III — the inscription over the gate.
- documented Japanese shrine architecture: the torii as the boundary of consecrated ground.
- traditional The threshold as a cross-cultural archetype.