African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 87
CARDINAL DIRECTIONS
A cardinal direction is a pivotal line or course along which persons or things move. An
object is pivotal if a related part rotates around it or if it determines an effect. A direction,
for its part, is an act of management and guidance or a line leading to a place or point.
Cardinal directions, as the meanings of the term’s constituent parts suggest, are at once
among the products and the producers of culture. Cultural forms and practices from
across Africa and the African diaspora help clarify the nature of this dialectic.
Historical Developments
In cultures around the world, cardinal directions have figured prominently in navigating
the oceans and land routes, locating objects in referential practice, and addressing
ancestors, gods, and spirits. It is widely assumed that relatively early in human history,
cardinal directions were determined through such means as the rising and setting of the
sun and moon, seaward and landward paths, the course of rivers, and the movement of
the stars. Tied to many of these movements and positions, flora also signified direction.
In regions of North America, for example, bark grows thicker and its folds run deeper on
the north and west side of numerous tree species. Also, the branches of these same trees
tend to be thicker on the south and east side while their roots grow vertically to the east of
the tree.
Over time, key directions were given material form: crosses, circles, diamonds, and an
array of intersecting lines were chiseled into rock, cut into skin, carved into wood, and
woven into a host of oral cultural forms. Early Asian and Middle Eastern societies were
highly sophisticated with regard to this inscription process. Near 2500 BCE, Babylonian
astrologers charting star movements sketched a 360-degree circle in the sky, giving 30
degrees to each of their twelve constellations. At around the same time, Chinese
inventors constructed the first magnetic compass. It was discovered that magnetite (or,
lodestone), placed on wood and floated in water, reliably pointed due south (actually, the
earth’s magnetic north and a point halfway between sunrise and sunset).
It was around 1000 CE that the Chinese compass was introduced to Europeans,
initiating a process that would have profound import for world history. In the fourteenth
century, the Portuguese map maker Pedro Reinel drew the first thirty-two point compass
rose. Originally called a wind rose, this diagram was typically inscribed on maps and
nautical charts and depicted the eight major winds, the eight half winds, and the sixteen
quarter winds. In contemporary terms, these thirty-two directions map the cardinal points
along with the primary, secondary, and “tertiary” intercardinal points. Today’s
standardized cardinal points include north (0/360 degrees), east (90 degrees), south (180
degrees), and west (270 degrees). Of significance is the fact that Reinel first drew his
compass rose on a map of West Africa. Suffice it to say here that advances in navigation
were intimately linked to the context of trade expansion and a host of colonial ambitions.