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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Why four cardinal compass points?
From: Peter Hakel
Date: 2026 Sep 23, 18:27 -0700
From: Peter Hakel
Date: 2026 Sep 23, 18:27 -0700
It's an inherently two-dimensional situation (any direction is a combination of two selected non-parallel directions). Choosing those two to be as non-parallel as possible makes them perpendicular. Making one of them point toward the pole feels like the natural choice. And, if you do this before negative numbers would have been discovered/invented, then also add their reversed directions to the mix: 2x2=4.
Peter Hakel
