The Janus, IPhone 6.0 photograph, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

oday I’d like to share the IPhone photograph of Figure 1 that I took at our local garden center. It is a stone carving of a Janus, the two faced god of ancient Rome. This one is worm-like with the second face, I believe, at the other end. I looked Janus up on the Wikipedia and learned a number of interesting points. Jaanus was unique to the Romans. There was no Greek equivalent.The Janus is commonly regarded as the god of the new year, one face looking forward the other backwards. But according to the ancient Roman farmer’s almanac, Juno was the goddess that presided over the month of January. I cannot quite wrap my mind around the thought that ancient Roman farmers had their own almanac. Perhaps it was sold at the ticket window at the Colosseum.

We learn that Janus presided over the beginning and ending of conflict. He was the God of war and peace and also of transitions like birth and the beginning of journeys. Transitions are the rites of liminal passage and it strikes me as curious to see him portrayed as a worm, since in physics the wormhole is the ultimate transition, a doorway through which you pass from one place and time to another place and time, potentially with no regard for time’s arrow.