Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

The Northwest in Vastu and in the Later Heaven Order

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
The Northwest in Vastu and in the Later Heaven Order

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.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.