You are surrounded
by four simple words. Four words
probably picked up sometime between third and fifth grade. The words are: West, South, East, and North.
Does it grate to
list these four words with West as the first on the list instead of North? Have no fear.
It will not be part of your permanent record if you do not list north as
the first on the list.
If asked what these
four words mean, nearly everyone from grade school through graduate school will
answer "directions”. If you thought
"directions”, you must understand when you were in school you were taught
definitions not meanings. Directions are
the definition of the four words, but not the meaning.
What do we put in
bread dough so instead of the dough remaining flat it gets taller? The answer is Y-E-A-S-T. Note the word east in the word yeast. We put yeast in bread dough to make the dough
"rise”. |
| Esther |
The word East means
to raise, after all the sun, moon, stars and planets all seem to rise in the
East. You knew East means to rise even before
breakfast this morning. You have heard
of the word "Easter”, which means to rise.
If you lived in Europe several centuries ago, there was a goddess named
Esther. It was Esther's job to make the
plants rise from the ground each spring. An observer can determine if the goddess
pictured in the painting before them is the goddess Esther because she is
always depicted either holding or surrounded by rabbits. These animals were known as Esther's rabbits,
the origin of the modern symbol of Easter rabbits.
If "east"
means to rise, "west" means “to go down.” The meaning of these two words simply
reflects what is happening in the sky.
Celestial objects appear to rise in the east and go down in the west.
South has the sense
of “the place of the sun”. When the sun
is in the south it is as high as it can be for that day. Instead of writing “the place of the sun” on
our maps, it is easier to write south.
Of the four words
north is perhaps the most interesting. If
we translate the word “north” into English, it means “left”, as in left and
right. In order for north to be on your
left, you must face the east. The Latin
word for “left” is the word sinister, which means evil.
Why is north
thought of as evil?
To understand this
you have to pay attention to the daily weather report. When cold arctic air moves out of Canada and quickly
heads south creating snow in Louisiana, citrus crops freeze in Florida, this
cold weather front is known as the Arctic Express. This is not just an American phenomenon. Several decades ago hundreds of Europeans died
when an Arctic Express covered much of Europe.
Picture This:
It is a dark and
stormy night 9th century in Europe. You want to find directions. What can you
do? The magnetic compass hadn't reached
Europe yet. It is dark and stormy so no
hint from the stars. You can find north
by looking for the local church. Back in
“the good ol’ days”, churches had their front doors facing east. Well, not exactly east. If the church was dedicated to St. Sophia, the
patron saint of wisdom, for example, the church would be
shifted slightly north
of east. This to allow on August 6th,
the feast day of Saint Sophia the first rays of the rising sun to pass through
a special window and illuminate the center of the alter on the other interior
side of the church. Another word for
east is “orient, this slight shift of the church known as its orientation, is
how the word “orientation” entered the English language.
It is difficult not
to notice we are dealing with opposites. Not just in the words, but their meanings as
well: North (cold), South (hot), East (rise), and West (set). The question is: “Where do these opposites
meet?”
It must be a
difficult question to answer with our Western civilization view of things
because having given this topic in over 700 lectures, there was only one
student who was able to answer correctly. The student was from the Navajo reservation,
well steeped in Navajo traditions. He
explained it was an easy question to answer because the Navajo sees himself or
herself as part of nature.
What answer did the
student from the Navajo reservation give?
Without skipping a
beat after the question was asked “Where do these opposites meet? His answer was: “They meet wherever you are.”
Something as simple
as West, South, North, and East… words learned as “directions” sometime between
third and fifth grade have a considerable cultural slant once you decide to put
your curious mind to work.
