* in Dogma and Compulsion, International Universities Press,
The Kas of El-Jazzar’s Mosque
Iakov Levi
The
Taboo of the Threshold
May 31, 2005
In that day, I will punish all those
who leap over the threshold, who fill their master's house with
violence and
deceit.
(Zephaniah 1:9)
In Zoppi e altri mutilati I have mentioned Theodor
Reik’s article “The Doorkeepers”*, in which the author deals with the
taboo, common
to many peoples, of treading on the threshold. Reik shows that the
reason for
the taboo is that treading is unconsciously interpreted as an
aggressive and
contemptuous act towards the owner of the house.
I shall add that, as Freud has shown in Symbolism
in Dreams (1915 - 17), a house represents the maternal body. Therefore, the
threshold, like the flaming sword defending the gates of the Garden of
Eden, is
the penis of the Father which inhibits the entrance to the mother’s
body.
Treading on the threshold is an aggressive act of castration,
perpetrated on
the father’s genital. (For treading as an
anal sadistic act of castration Cf. Caravaggio and La Madonna del serpente).
In this context, it is worth mentioning the
practice of many children to avoid treading on certain stones of the
pavement -
while walking on the streets - particularly avoiding the lines between
the
slabs. There is also a game in which children draw squares on the
pavement with
a chalk, and then they leap between them, carefully avoiding to tread
on the
dividing lines.
Some months ago, during a visit to the Mosque
of Akko, I had the chance to watch the following scene:
In the courtyard, as in every Mosque, there is
a rounded structure with many taps (Kas - Kaas). The worshipers
wash
there their feet. Then, in order to enter into the Mosque, they have to
walk a
few steps.
Between the Kas and the threshold of the
Mosque, some wooden planks are laid, on which the worshipers walk swiftly. When
they
reach the threshold itself, they leap beyond, avoiding to touch it.
The manifest rationalization of this ritual is that the worshipers
want to
avoid littering their just washed feet, before
entering the
sacred place. However, they could well walk on the pavement, which is
always
very clean, as the worshipers do in
Therefore, the latent reason for the wooden
planks, and then the leaping beyond the threshold, is not to avoid
littering
the feet, but to perform the rite of the leap beyond the threshold,
namely, to
build some kind of springboard which emphasizes the taboo and the
inhibition of
treading on the threshold.
It is also worth mentioning that the name of the Mosque is El –
Jazzar.
It is the name of the terrible and cruel governor of
The Mosque, which as every church and temple
symbolizes the maternal body, belongs, therefore, to El – Jazzar - the
cutting
one - which is the image of the castrating father. The taboo of the
threshold,
in the Mosque bearing the name of “the cutting one”, assumes, in this
way, a
further relevance.
In religious rites, every gesture and act
contains a latent significance. “To wash the feet” has a latent sense,
which is
more profound than just “arriving at the service” with clean feet. In
the
As Freud has shown in Symbolism in Dreams (1915 - 17), feet
and hands are a penis – substitute. The feet which are washed
during
religious rites are, therefore, not the real ones, but the symbol of
the
aggressive and incestuous drive. The feet are those of Oedipus, lame
and
patricide, “by the inflated legs”. This sinful and aggressive
member
must be symbolically purified with water from its aggressive and
incestuous
drives, before being allowed to approach the Holy Place. Like
Macbeth, after his regicide-parricide, washed again and again his
hands in the
desperate trial to wash out the traces of his unbearable guilt.
* in Dogma and Compulsion, International Universities Press,
The Kas of El-Jazzar’s
Mosque