Daily Threshold Care: Water Sprinkle, Cow-Dung Lepan and Zone-Colour Rangoli
Sprinkle a little water on the main door threshold every morning and make a rangoli to welcome the Sun. For a wrongly placed door, plaster the ground in front with cow dung daily and make the rangoli in the colour of that zone.
1Every morning sprinkle a little water on the dehleez
2Make a rangoli at the door
3For a door on a wrong pada, plaster the ground in front of it with cow dung daily
4Make the rangoli in the colour of the zone in which the door stands
Cautions
Daily lepan is hard to keep up; a permanent cow-dung swastik bandhanwar is the easier alternative
Explanation and notes
South India still follows this daily, welcoming the Sun devta who brings a great store of energy. Done daily with the zone colour, it removes the dosh of the door.
A water kalash with five mango leaves and a coconut, set on a cow-dung-plastered spot with rangoli at the Shikhi pad, with white mustard, yellow mustard or pukhraj added by need, makes the yogi Shikhi fulfil the wishes of the residents.
Make round discs of desi cow dung, mark a swastik on each and string them into a bandhanwar for the main door. The teacher calls it his Kohinoor: it ends the defects of a door built in any wrong place.
For a defective East door, hang a toran of wood and brass or of metal with gems, or a green square swastik bandhanwar made on leaves or another base, put up on a Monday.
Four practices protect a person from even a thousand vastu doshas or a wrongly placed door: a daily navgrah herb bath, tirth darshan in eclipses and vyatipat yoga, full use of swar all day, and daily abhishek with charan raj.
For a main door on a wrong North pada, hang a toran of flowers or of wood and silver, or a blue swastik bandhanwar of 9, 11, 13 or 15 swastiks in a crescent shape. Mercury rules the North and is pleased by flowers.
The full purification done where a bone has been dug out, the land's equivalent of the rites after a death: vastu registry with five coconuts, removal of the affected soil, agni sanskar with mango wood, water, gomutra and cow-dung purification, lime and sulphur, a 24-hour lamp and mercury.
The main door is the door of fortune: like the two nostrils it draws nature-given positive energy into the whole house and lets negative energy out. Its two shutters stand for ida and pingala, the two breaths that alternate roughly every hour.
Design the main door like a face: two shutters as the nostrils, two small niches as the eyes, two jharokhas as the ears, an Om or swastik as the tilak, and the threshold and upper frame as the lips. Ancient texts say such decoration multiplies the power of the main door many times.
Divide the 360 degrees around the centre of the house into 32 padas of 11.25 degrees each, one for each of the 32 guardian devtas of the outer ring, named E1 to E8, S1 to S8, W1 to W8 and N1 to N8. The pada in which the main door falls tells its result.
In the East, E3 is the best door with abundant wealth and E4 brings government support and respect, while E5 suits administrators only. E1, E6, E7 and E8 should not hold the main door.
In the South only S4 (Grihakshat) gives happiness, peace, prosperity and business profit. S2, S3, S5, S6, S7 (the debt door) and S8 bring lack of children, servitude, suffering, selfishness, debt and disease.
In the West, W4 (Pushpadant) showers wealth and W5 (Varun) also gives wealth, while W1, W2, W3, W6, W7 and W8 bring short life, overspending, loss of money, government trouble, disease and a destructive mind.
In the North, N3 brings sons and wealth, N4 (Bhallat) is the best of all 32 doors with windfall wealth, and N5 gives wealth with dharma and fame. N1, N2, N6, N7 and N8 bring suffering, enemies, family stress, faults in women and poverty.
Large business doors and shop shutters often span two to four padas. When the favourable pada, for example S4, is fully included and open, the door gives the results of that pada.