Also called hexafoil, witch mark, apotropaic mark, threshold ward
The daisy wheel, a six-petalled flower drawn with a compass, is the most common of the ritual protection marks carved at doors, windows and fireplaces of old English buildings. This page explains that history and adapts the mark as a ward for the digital threshold: a login page, a router or a firewall.
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
Take care: Never carve or burn marks into rented or listed buildings; use paper or stickers. Keep any image on a login page light and accessible so it does not hide form fields or text from users with low vision.
Teardrop-shaped scorches on beams and doorframes were long thought accidental, but many seem to have been burned on purpose with a candle or taper, perhaps to protect against fire by giving it a small share.
Interlinked V shapes, read as Virgo Virginum, and the letters AM for Ave Maria were scratched near doors and fireplaces to call on the Virgin Mary's protection.
A very different, living religious practice also marks the threshold: a parchment scroll of scripture fixed to the doorpost. It shows how widely people have treated doorways as places that need marking.
Ritual protection marks are found in thousands of English buildings, clustered at doors, windows and fireplaces, the places a household felt most open to harm. The daisy wheel or hexafoil is the most common. It appears in churches, barns, houses and caves. Historic England launched a public appeal in 2016 to record examples, and researchers such as Timothy Easton and Brian Hoggard have studied them as part of a wider system of house protection.
The marks guarded physical entrances, and no historical source ever placed one on a network. Our adaptation rests on a simple parallel. A login page, a router and a firewall are the doors of a digital house, the places where something unwanted could get in. Drawing the daisy wheel there is a modern reminder to tend the threshold, and the real protection comes from the locks you set beside it.
Compass-drawn flowers, interlaced lines and Marian VV marks scratched near doors, windows and hearths to block evil from entering a building.
Round, brightly painted star and rosette designs on the barns of southeastern Pennsylvania. Whether they were ever meant as magic is a real scholarly debate: the name hex sign only appeared in the 1920s, and many historians see the old barn stars as decoration and pride.
An Epiphany custom in which Christians write the year, crosses and the letters C, M and B in chalk above the front door. The letters stand for the Magi Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar and for the Latin blessing Christus mansionem benedicat, May Christ bless this house.
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