North

North, a bearing of 0 or 360 degrees, is defined by the axis of the Earth's rotation, and in the northern hemisphere it is marked in the sky by the pole star, at present Polaris in Ursa Minor, around which the whole sky appears to turn. Because that point is fixed while everything else moves, north acquires in many traditions the sense of the unmoving centre of the heavens rather than of a mere direction. Chinese cosmology places the celestial pole at the seat of the Purple Forbidden Enclosure, the sky-palace of the supreme deity, and the emperor was seated facing south so as to occupy the northern position himself.

In Hindu Vastu Shastra the north is the quarter of Kubera, lord of wealth, and is regarded as auspicious for openings and for water. In the Norse world the north is the direction of Niflheim, cold and mist, and of Hel; in medieval Christian symbolism it was frequently the quarter of cold, of night and of the adversary, a reading drawn in part from Jeremiah 1:14.

Ritual practice is often more revealing than symbolism. In the ceremonial magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an influential nineteenth-century synthesis, the four quarters are assigned elements, north taking earth, and the practitioner faces each in turn in the opening rites; the assignment is not ancient and differs from other systems, some of which give earth to a different quarter.

In Jewish practice the ark of a synagogue is oriented toward Jerusalem, so its compass bearing depends on where the building stands, and in Islam the qibla works the same way; a mosque in northern Africa faces roughly east, one in Indonesia roughly west, and one north of Mecca faces south. This is worth stating because it cuts against the assumption that sacred directions are absolute. Where a tradition orients toward a place rather than toward a quarter, the compass direction is a consequence of geography.