Northwest

Northwest, a bearing of 315 degrees, holds the trigram Qian, the creative, heaven, the pure yang principle, in the Later Heaven arrangement, and in Chinese practice it is associated with the father, with authority and with helpful people. In Hindu Vastu the northwest is Vayavya, the quarter of Vayu, wind, and is assigned to movement, to guests, to storage of what will be moved on, and to the granary. The pairing of Qian with the northwest in the Later Heaven arrangement is one of the points at which that arrangement differs sharply from the Earlier Heaven arrangement attributed to Fu Xi, in which Qian stands in the south; the two arrangements coexist in Chinese cosmology and are used for different purposes, the Earlier Heaven for the ideal or static order and the Later Heaven for the working world.

In Hindu Vastu Shastra, the dikpala of the northwest is Vayu, the Vedic god of wind, and the quarter is favoured for storage of light or mobile goods, for guest rooms, and for spaces associated with movement and change, consistent with wind's own restless character. In Chinese Bagua cosmology, the corresponding trigram is Qian, Heaven, carrying the Metal phase and associated in Feng Shui applied to interior space with helpful people, mentors and travel, again a wind-adjacent theme of movement and outside assistance entering the household, even though the two traditions arrive at broadly compatible readings, mobility and outside connection, through entirely independent symbolic reasoning rather than through any shared source.

In Vastu Shastra the northwest belongs to Vayu, the wind, and the practical rules follow from that: it is the quarter of movement and of what does not stay. Guest rooms, storage for goods that will be sold, and anything intended to circulate rather than accumulate are placed there. Where a kitchen cannot be given the southeast, the northwest is the tradition's second choice, which is one of the few places the dikpala scheme permits an alternative at all.

The Chinese Later Heaven arrangement places Qian, pure yang, heaven, the father, in the northwest. In the compass schools this became the quarter of patrons, of authority and of help from outside the household, and it is treated as a direction to keep clear and well ordered. Qian holds the north-west only in the Later Heaven order; in the Earlier Heaven arrangement it stands in the south, so any statement that heaven belongs to the northwest is a statement about one of the two diagrams and not about the trigram.

The Greek wind rose called this quarter Skiron, and the Tower of the Winds in Athens gives it a figure carrying a vessel, conventionally read as the bringer of the season's change.

Between the Indian wind, the Chinese heaven and the Greek seasonal wind there is a loose family resemblance around movement and change, but it is loose enough that it should be treated as coincidence rather than as evidence of transmission.