Joachim Brouwer
Hamilton Ontario
Robert Johnson and the (Cross)roads
It is the year 1928. A man, of the Negro race wearing a dapper suit walks down a dusty Mississippi state road near midnight. He is carrying a black case by his side. A full moon fills the night sky, throwing brooding shadows onto the cotton fields that lie perfectly flat as far as one can see. The silhouettes the black man sees far off in the distance to the west are the earthen levees keeping in the dangerous waters of the Mississippi River. The man comes to the intersection of another dirt road and stops right in the middle. From the black case, he produces a scratched and scoffed six string guitar, maybe one of the $8 Sears Roebuck catalogue models that are becoming popular, putting the strap over his shoulder. He issues a few ruminative chords entreating some spectre of the night or an astral entity to visit him.
Crickets hiss from the damp weeds by the side of the road, but even their base insect nature sense a nefarious act in the offing and their chatter trails off. Soon even the lonesome warblings of the whippoorwill birds ceases and there ensues the most unearthly of silences.
On the northern branch of the crossroads, a phantasmagoric black figure appears, seemingly riding on air and stirring up the dust. The figure stops in the crossroads and materializes into a well-dressed man with a leather valise.
"Hello Satan. I believe its time to go," the black man says. The shadowy figure in turn reaches into his valise and produces a fountain pen and scroll of parchment with strange symbols inscribed on it, handing it to the man.
Such might been the moment when Robert Johnson sold his soul to an unbeknownest agent of the diabolical so that he could make the music the world knows him by. The telling of Johnson's pact with The Devil is often recounted in the story of the Blues to heighten the mystery and impact of this powerful music but it is rarely treated as indubitable fact.
Julio Finn in his book The Bluesmen: The Musical Heritage of Black Men and Women in the Americas says that Robert Johnson's biographers are divided into two camps. There are the older black bluesmen who don't question that Johnson, the consummate Hoodoo man sold his soul to the Devil and then there are the Ivy League white folklorists who infuse Johnson with an almost impenetrable fanciful air of mystery but cannot accept the Pact.
To the young northerners, some of whom may have been Freedom Riders and very supportive of the civil rights movement in the South in the 1960’s, Robert Johnson lead the life of a romantic troubadour who died young. Like John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley and carries important cross-cultural/ epochal/geographic/racial importance but there is nothing else. (Julio Finn The Bluesmen pg 210.)
Robert Johnson himself did little to dispel the rumours that he had made a deal with The Devil and dabbled in the black arts. But Johnson never himself stated he was in The Lord of the Underworld’s service. Pettie Wheatstraw, one of Johnson's forebears , on the other hand, described himself as the `High Sheriff of Hell' and the `Devil’s Son-in Law.' But it is Robert Johnson's bargain with the Devil that has passed into popular legend and has the appearance of being more than bravado or self-hype.
It is from the supposition that Robert Johnson sold his soul to The Devil at a Mississippi Delta crossroads in 1928 , that this writing shall proceed.
The Crossroads as an actual place where macabre events take place and the symbolic significance of the Cross in various religious traditions including western occultism will be discussed.
On Nov 23, 1936 in San Antonio Texas, Johnson recorded blues `Crossroads Blues' with its haunting lyrics:
I went down to the crossroads fell down on my knees/ x2
I asked the lord above have mercy save poor Bob if you please./
....
I'm standing at the crossroad/
Babe, I believe I'm sinking down/
`Crossroad Blues' lyric can be interpreted from a non-supernatural point of view when we remember that a black person on the open road late at night in the old South could easily be arrested for vagrancy or beaten up and left for dead. Standing at a crossroads on a hot summer night in the flat expanses of the alluvial soil late of a small river like the Grand River in Ontario, Canada, where I am from is powerful enough, but the experience in the Mississippi Delta must have an allure all its own.(INSERT PICTURE #1 HERE)
"Anyone who's ever stopped at a deserted Delta crossroads in the dead of night knows what a spooky experience it can be. Everything's empty- black-black bottom land stretching for away for miles in every direction"(Robert Palmer Deep Blues pg. 126) The crossroads are often the only markers in these flat expanses. Businesses located at prominent crossroads often take names such as Crossroads Service Station or Crossroads Wreckers.
The most well-known crossroads relating to the Johnson story is the intersection of Highways #49 and #61 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, although it would seem to be too busy even in the thirties to be the Crossroads where the infamous deed took place.
Another story says the actual Crossroads was at Dockery Road and old Highway #8 in Sunflower County. Dockery Road was built to service the well known Dockery plantation where Charlie Patton and Howling Wolf came from and is one of the fabled birthplaces of the Blues.
Further south in Washington County, the intersection of Highway #61 and #82 has been proposed. Another report has Johnson signing the pact somewhere near Crenshaw, Mississippi. The crossroads used in the movie of the same name is near Beulah, just south of Rosedale in Bolivar County.
Robert Johnson’s `Pact’ at a Delta crossroads is only the most recent example of the macabre things that went on at the intersection of two roads. The Greek goddess of witchcraft Hecate was supposed to have conducted her rituals at a crossroads.
Hecate’s followers would pour oil on the smooth stone stones of two intersecting roads and wait for the goddess, wreathed in garlic to appear to answer their supplications.
In pre-Christian Europe human sacrifices were made at altars set up at crossroads. Suicides were buried at such places in the hope that the constant traffic at the junction of two or more roads would prevent the dead person’s ghost from escaping the ground. In Christian times, the cruciform shape of the crossroads was claimed to disperse the evil energies stirred up by the person who killed themself.
The cross is a familiar object of art and veneration in cultures ranging from North American Indians to those of the Orient. A mandala or pictorial image of the Tibetan Buddhist’s Heaven was laid out in the form of a cross with demons placed at the four quarters.
In Jacobus de Vorgaine's Aurea Legenda it is related how the actual cross that Jesus was crucified on, two beams of wood, the horizontal bean placed three quarters of the way up the vertical shaft came from three seeds of the Tree of Life from the book of Genesis. These seeds grew into the straplings that Noah took into the ark and were the ancestors of the Burning Bush that talked to Moses in the Egyptian desert. Many generations latter, the bush, now a huge tree was cut into two pieces and used to crucify Jesus Christ at the very spot where Adam's skull with the three seeds was buried. (Manly Hall. The Secret Teachings of All Ages. pg 123.)
The perennial themes of death and redemption in the Blues finds a parallel with Jesus's crucifixion on the cross. By dying on the cross, Jesus showed how mankind can free themselves from material earthly enslavement and become One with God . For many people, the blues is a cathartic experience that is nothing short of transcendent too.
In the Mystery religions that vied with Christianity in the first centuries of the first millennium, the initiate was ritually crucified to signify rebirth. Apollonius of Tyana supposedly hung on a cross in tomb for three days. When he became unconscious, he passed into the realm of the immortals. Prometheus, Adonis, Apollo, Bacchus, Mithras, Quetzalcoatl, Krishna all did time on the cross. (Hall, pg 125.)
It was the Latin or Passion cross (Insert picture #2 here)where the horizontal arm is higher than the vertical, indicating the ascendancy of spirit over matter, that became associated with Christianity. Robert Johnson no doubt saw many of these rugged old crosses made of coarse wood in his travels around the South in front of churches and far out in fields.
The equilateral or Greek cross on the other hand is more Gnostic oriented and representative of an actual crossroads. Here the vertical and horizontal arms cross at equal distances, representing the interpenetration of n the spiritual and material realms.
In astrology, the equilateral cross forms the basis of the natal horoscope. The horizontal arm, representing space and the vertical arm time, fixes the Native in time and space. The enfolding circle symbolizes Spirit, the Timeless Eternal, the Platonic One. The astrological symbol or glyph for earth is a cross inscribed in a circle.
The cross was a symbol of the equinoxes and solstices since at these times the sun passed crucial angles of its path around the earth reversing or balancing the power of the sun. The sun was seen as being ritually being crucified at these times (Hall, pg 124.)
An early form of the cross was the Tau which resembles the letter T. This may have the shape of the crossroads where Johnson signed his pact since `a fork in the road' is often used in blues lore to describe the place where nefarious dealings were done.
The Tau cross held great significance for the ancient Egyptians, since it resembled the face of a bull and became transformed into the `crux ansata’ or ankh a oval inscribed above the horizontal bar. The `crux ansata’ resembled a device called the Nilometer which measured the waters of the Nile River. For this reason it became known as the symbol of life and often was buried in Tombs of pharaohs and used as sacred implement in Egyptian magic. A modification of the `crux ansata’ became the astrological glyph of Zodical sign of Taurus.
In Voodoo, the religion which came to the southern states from Haiti, the crossroads not only represents the totality of the earth's surface by the extension of the cross into space in all directions on a horizontal plane, but also represents the meeting of the horizontal plane, the mortal world with the vertical plane or metaphysical axis.
"The crossroads... is the point of access to the world of les invisibles, which is the soul of the cosmos..and the source of the life force."(Maya Deren The Divine Horsemen: Voodoo Gods of Haiti pg.35) Other cultures see the spiritual and physical worlds as a parallelism, an irreconcilable dualism but the Haitian practitioner of voodoo sees it as resolvable in the right angles created by the crossroads.
The crossroads is "the mystical barrier that separates the divine from the profane world." Legba,(Insert picture #3 here) the guardian of the crossroads", interprets the will of the gods to man and carries the desires of man to the gods." (Francis Davis The History of The Blues pg 105- 106)
Legba is also associated with the crossroads since he spends a great deal of time walking the roads of the land. `The big black man' that Tommy Johnson talked about in his own pact with the Devil was one of the shapes taken up by Legba.
In the Yoruba mythology of West Africa, crossroads are places where spirits, people and animals met. Legba directs traffic bringing peace and order representing the link between the mortal visible worlds and the invisible immortal ones. "Legba is the god of the poles, of the Axis, of the axis itself- he is the god of the crossroads, the vital intersection of two worlds" (Deren pg 97.)
The crossroad is a concrete metaphor for the mirroring or reflecting aspect that is central to Yoruba/voodoo cosmology. As long as a human being is alive his spirit- gros-bon-ange or lau stands on the one side of the mirror. With death, the force which kept the two apart is lost and the spirit sinks into the substance of the mirror and he becomes one.
Most voodoo ceremonies begin by supplicating Legba, offering food such as flour at actual crossroads. The sign of the crossroads made in the air as well as on the ground symbolizes the traffic of energies and forces between the material and spiritual realms. In addition to being the guardian of the crossroads, Legba stood in front of the sacred gateway called the Grand Chemin, using a ritual rattle to call up other lau.
One description of a voodoo conjuration tells a female participant to remove her hairpins lest they become accidently crossed and introduce an unwanted malacious energy (Finn, pg.143.)
We can imagine Robert Johnson adhering to the following voodoo prescription for evading his pursuers, whether they by white authorities, jilted women or jealous men: "When you reach the crossroads, select the road you will take. Then walk backwards nine steps in the opposite direction. Your pursuer will take the wrong road"(Jim Haskins. Voodoo and Hoodoo, pg 175)
The following is a voodoo prescription for obtaining luck in gambling: "Take a lodestone and some brimstone and go to the crossroads at midnight. Strike a match and light the brimstone making it flare up. In that moment a man... will come and give you advise as to when luck will be on your side"(Haskins, pg 159)
Could it not apply equally to calling up the Devil?
The crossing of two lonely Mississippi roads in the early part of the last century should not be seen as fanciful side story in Robert Johnson’s biography but an ancient geometric archetypal symbol containing eternal truths. The Crossroads should be seen as the forlorn foci of a master Hoodoo Bluesmen’s Pact with an Agent of the Infernal.
Bibliography.
1. Charters, Samuel, Robert Johnson. Oak Publications: New York, 1973.
2. Barnes, Bertrum and Wheeler, Glen. "A Lonely Fork in the Road" Living Blues Nov./Dec. 1990: University of Mississippi.
3. Barnet, Sylvan. edited by, Doctor Faustus. New American Library: New York, 1980.
4. Davis, Francis. The History of the Blues. Hyperion: New York, 1995.
5. Deren, Maya. The Divine Horsemen: Voodoo Gods of Haiti. Chelsea House Publishers: New York, 1970.
6. Finn, Julio. The Bluesmen:The Musical Heritage of Black Men and Women in the Americas. Interlink Books: New York, 1992.
7. Garon, Paul. Blues and the Poetic Spirit. Da Capo Press:New York, 1978.
8. Greenberg, Alan. Love in Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson. Da Capo Press: New York, 1994.
9. Guralnick, Peter. Searching For Robert Johnson. E.P. Dutton: New York, 1989.
10. Hall, Manly. The Secret Teachings of All Ages. Los Angeles Philosophical Society
11. Haskins, Jim. Voodoo and Hoodoo. Scarborough House Publishers Chelsea, Michigan, 1990.
12. Metraux, Alfred. Voodoo in Haiti. Oxford University Press: New York, 1957
Oliver, Paul. Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1990
14. Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues. Penguin Books: New York, 1981.
15. Smeed. J.W. Faust in Literature. Oxford University Press: London, 1975
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