The Seba library treats Cardinal Points in 9 passages, across 7 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Jodorowsky, Alejandro, Nichols, Sallie).
At the four cardinal points we see human figures: at the top, an old man in the attitude of contemplation; at the bottom, Loki or Hephaestus with red, flaming hair… Together they indicate four aspects of the personality
Jung interprets the mandala’s cardinal-point figures as archetypal aspects of the personality arrayed around the periphery of the Self.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
the circle appears combined with the quaternity, as a silver bowl with four nuts at the four cardinal points, or as a table with four chairs.
Jung documents the recurrent dream-image of a circle anchored at cardinal points as a spontaneous expression of quaternary wholeness.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
The only analogy I can think of to such a symbol is the design of the horoscope. It too has four cardinal points and an empty centre.
Jung identifies the horoscope as the closest cultural analogue to the mandala-clock symbol precisely because both share four cardinal points around a vacant center.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
just as the establishment of a temple requires it to be placed in relationship to the four cardinal points, and alchemy requires fire, air, water, and earth to establish the four primordial elements, so does the mandala need to set its four corners.
Jodorowsky aligns temple orientation to the cardinal points, alchemical quaternary, and mandala structure as homologous acts of sacred spatial ordering.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004supporting
The four cardinal virtues (justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude)… Four is also a number connected with the creation of man.
Nichols situates the cardinal virtues within a broader catalogue of quaternary symbols through which humanity has oriented spiritual and physical life.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
1. The Pole of Orientation 1 2. The Symbols of the North 4… 1. The Cosmic North and the “Oriental Theosophy” of Sohravardi
Corbin’s table of contents reveals that his entire inquiry into the Man of Light is structured around the cosmic North as the supreme pole of spiritual orientation, implicitly privileging one cardinal direction above the others.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting
the true world is always in the middle, at the Center, for it is here that there is a break in plane and hence communication among the three cosmic zones.
Eliade argues that cardinal-point orientation presupposes a Center: the sacred cosmos radiates outward from the axis mundi, giving the directions their existential meaning.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957supporting
life emanating from the centre and going towards the centre, systole and diastole… right and left, above and below, is checked in itself.
Jung describes the ankh’s cross-shaped symbolism as encoding the four directions of life-force, tangentially illuminating how cardinal orientation structures generative energy.
, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984aside
from it the new world of ‘Rome’ radiates in all directions like a circle from its centre… Roma quadrata… the rectangular form of that ‘primal furrow,’ the sulcus primigenius.
The foundation ritual of Rome — simultaneously circular and quadrilateral — encodes cardinal-point orientation in the act of cosmogonic city-founding.
, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949aside