Directions

The cardinal and intermediate directions carry meaning in many traditions. In Western magic the four quarters have their elements, colours, winds and guardian archangels, and the magic circle is oriented by them; the Chinese scheme counts five directions, adding the centre, each with a phase, colour, season and celestial animal; and the Vedic system of vastu, and many Indigenous traditions, assign the directions their own guardians and qualities.

A direction is rarely just a bearing: it is a region of the cosmos with a character, a guardian and a set of associations, and orientation, facing or building toward a particular direction, is a common feature of ritual and sacred architecture.

Sources Divinity Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition with The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923Ellic Howe, The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie, Medicine in China: A History of IdeasPaul U. Unschuld

The habit of orienting temples, altars, graves and rites toward a significant direction runs across cultures (the east of the rising sun, the Mecca-ward qibla, the auspicious directions of vastu and feng shui), and each tradition's directional scheme encodes its cosmology. The atlas records each direction's guardians, elements and associations across the traditions that use it.

The entries connect to the elements the directions carry, to the Chinese five-phase and feng-shui material under Eastern Systems, and to the guardian spirits of the quarters under the angelic and elemental categories.

Sources Divinity Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition with The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923Ellic Howe, The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie, Medicine in China: A History of IdeasPaul U. Unschuld, The Living Earth Manual of Feng-Shui: Chinese GeomancyStephen Skinner