Outhouse why moon

In modern times we use the restroom. In older times we rested at night. The moon indicating night ,a room to rest in. Bathroom being a place to bath and rest. Think about the evolution of outhouse to watercloset. Language and words are the purest form of Magick. We make bowel movements in a toilet bowl. Symbols are devices of universal language, even in the subconscious mind. Son being male as a homonym of sun the symbol would speak to the gender difference.

As an outhouse is designed with one person in mind and our culture at the time did not place great consideration on gender difference concerning this matter, I doubt it was actually used.

Cartoonists are masters of symbology and their meanings. Al Capp appears to be one these Cartoonists who propagated the use of the Crescent moon on outhouses making the symbol more modern than the actual outhouse. It might be that the symbol and the structure have become fodder for a modern sense of humor.

About a man who made a living building outhouse. The crescent moon is mentioned. The difference between and is probably not much. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. January 3, Karl Smallwood 16 comments. Literally Everyone asks: Why are outhouses traditionally depicted with a crescent moon on the door?

Why did the doors of outhouses have cutouts like that? These cutouts actually served a practical function — they were needed for ventilation and lighting. In fact, even if there is no cutout in the door, some ventilation holes are still present somewhere else. The advantage of the cutout is that some light gets in as well, making the loo a bit more comfortable to use. Meanwhile at night the light from a candle or a flashlight would shine through the cutout, indicating that the outhouse is currently being used.

Those that do have a cutout typically display one of three most common shapes — a rhombus, a crescent moon or a heart. Rhombus-shaped cutout was more popular in Central and Eastern Europe.

The reason for this shape is actually very simple — it is very easy to make since it has no curves and it combines male and female bathroom signs. It is basically two triangles put together, indicating that a particular outhouse is unisex. The story of the origins of the crescent moon symbol on the doors of the outhouse is not as clear.

If you had gone to the loo in the middle of the night and taken a lantern with you, the moon and star would have shone through and let anyone else wanting a turn know that it was already occupied. As explained by the Missouri Historical Society, there is no evidence that the symbols referred to gendered outhouses or any contemporary accounts of outhouse usage that explain it.

So we have to wonder what the basis for the gendered outhouse explanation is. A Google-image search for "old" and "outhouse" suggests that most authentic specimens had no door-cutouts at all, but rather utilitarian cutouts high on the side-walls if any such refinement appears at all , though the impulse to ornament may have produced a nicely-framed diamond cutout.

Sometimes an eminently practical V-notch at the top seems to have sufficed:. And the same principle operates in a Louisiana example. Another Louisiana specimen forgoes two separate opportunities to use a crescent moon:.

And a Tottenville Staten Island example , sketched from memory, gets a practical, easy-to-cut circle. My own speculation is that an additional function may have been served by the shape, and later displaced. My grandparents' farm near Hannibal Missouri had an outhouse built between and The door, as faced from the outside, had its hinges left, and no knob or pull.

Rather, it had a cutout, shaped roughly like a boomerang, with the concavity of the shape opening towards the right, so that one could slip one's fingers in to grasp it.

It permitted light, ventilation and easy opening. I suggest that this simple expedient came to have some traditional force, and once hardware became available, was still felt to be useful or attractive, and was displaced to the center of the door, to break up the flat plane. The process of displacement may be better understood in light of this familiar story accounting for another kind of post-functional, atavistic retention of practices once pointed and practical; the yarn is regularly used in linguistics and anthropology courses:.

After Uncle Herschel married Aunt Martha he noticed that whenever she cooked a roast she would prepare it by cutting off the end.

He asked her why she did that. When the roast was served Uncle Herschel noticed that the end had been cut off before it was cooked. Uncle Herschel asked Aunt Martha's mother why she did that. Uncle Herschel was in the kitchen and noticed the grandmother cutting the end off a roast. Uncle Herschel asked why she did that. She replied, "When I first got married, we went out and bought utensils to set up housekeeping. I got a roast pan that was too small. So I've always had to cut the end off the roast to get it to fit in my pan.