Phew, I just went down a rabbit hole and Iām not sure I actually found THE answer, but I found some interesting stuff. Iāve also rewritten this response several times as I stumbled across something new each time I was about to post it. First Iāll go over those things, as there might be something to gleam from each layer deeper I went. So letās go in order of newest to oldest. First I found a ton of images like the one above liked back to facebook groups, but most were private and I couldnāt get any good dates on them, many were recent, as in this and last year.
Then I found an article on Witchipedia from late 2019 that included this:
Recently, a trend among witches of painting their doors purple to mean āA witch lives hereā has sprung up. This seems to have started with a Facebook meme a few years ago, though it has been reported to me that some occult stores were selling signs saying āA purple door means a witch lives hereā even before the meme appeared. Since I donāt have exact dates for either, I canāt say which came first and I have no idea who came up with it or where they got it from.
So that confirmed that itās at least somewhat recent. Google has a search by custom date feature, so I went back year by year, starting in 2019 to see if I could spot the first time something like that was mentioned.
I found A LOT of articles about Feng Shei, the mystical meaning of colored doors, witchcraft and protection spells on doors. Many of those posts all used similar wording, saying pretty much the same thing, in that āI rewrote an articleā kind of way you see often if youāre reading a lot of articles on the internet. So it had to come from somewhere, and all of these poorly paid authors were just copying each other, who copies an original. For anyone whoās not familiar, thatās how a lot of online journalism works.
For the past decade, THIS 2010 ARTICLE by Home Curb Appeal has been quoted and plagiarized by every website I found that talks about the meaning of a purple door. And Iām not even a little bit sure where Home Curb Appeal got this idea or if theyāre the original, but itās the oldest version I could find and itās important either way. The only difference is that at some point they suddenly started adding in the idea that a purple door means a witch lives there. I canāt nail down that date yet, but and I suspect it was after 2013 and becomes gradually more popular from 2015 on. Hereās why.
August 17, 2013. Tumblr user @onetwistedpixie-blogā made this post, quoting the same HCA article above, but saying that it sounds like a witch to them. It only got about 70 notes, with one follower saying they were leaning towards painting their door purple.
About a year passes, Sep 23, 2014 and the only post I could find was from a facebook group. Itās the exact tumblr post, taken nearly 1 for 1, but to a group that has a lot more people. Iām messaging the group owner to ask some questions about the groups population back then. Now the group has nearly 10k followers. Even if it didnāt have many back then, itās one of those posts that can easily be shared to other larger groups. There are about 70 shares from that post, most are private groups, one groups that shared it the same day also has about 6k followers currently, some individuals have between 400 and 1k friends. The post is still being shared from this post as recently as September of last year.
So far, and I bet I could spend another several hours checking into this and find an actual linage of shares and spreading of the idea, it looks like that tumblr post getting put on facebook might have been the spark. It was easily memeable, easy to spread, made itās rounds on facebook, got really popular on pintrest as well, and has made itās way home to Tumblr. Thatās my best guess and unfortunately all the time I have to research on the topic. What a rabbit hole.
All that said and done, Iām probably going to paint my door purple. Itās my favorite color and everyone already knows Iām a witch. Might as well go with the meme, since itās already got traction.
Side note: As I write this, I find an other interesting mystery. I found some posts from pinterest of a similar image, dated 2006. Pinterest didnāt exist until 2010... So I guess google is a little messed up. Because of this, Iāve excluded pinterest results from all of my research as well as some other websites that have similar problems of the dates on google and their pages not matching up. It just seems unreliable and Iād rather go by the publish date on the website I find stuff on.
pixelskylines
titsay
andulkaphoto
gummygunk
discoholicmusic
