Demons striking deals is an old archetype, and these deals always come at a high cost, whether you sacrifice your soul or karmic catastrophe.
Mephistopheles, who is now well-known from numerous depictions in media but who was initially a German legendary figure from the legend of Faust, may be the quintessential deal-making crossroads demon (whose name gives us Faustian bargain).
Who is the demon at the crossroads?
Mephistopheles is the devil’s representative in the Faust stories, and he trades with Faust for his soul.
Within folklore cross roads are important places. They often represented liminal spaces.
This is a fancy way to say that a crossroads is an ambiguous place that is neither here nor there – not at your destination, nor the place where you started, where you have to make a decision on what path to take.
If you were in unfamiliar lands, a crossroads was an easy place to get lost. If a sign was wrong, or you read your map wrong, you could end up far from your destination.
