North Across the Traditions

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.