What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Religion ? The Challenges of Philosophy

Since when has the North-South Dialogue become a task and a necessity? Maybe since the terms have lost their features of being solely geographic distinctions and gain a political, social and economic characterisation. But has a true geographic distinction ever existed? North and south are cardinal points by which one is guided and have become even more noteworthy since the invention of what has led to the recognition of these points: the compass. This item shows us that to find north and south and therefore to orient or guide oneself, we need a tool to leads us, as we could not make it on our own. This tool guides us because it is manufactured to correspond to the way the earth is made. Earth is, in fact, a large magnet that, as such, creates magnetic fields. This natural feature of the earth enables orientation thanks to the compass that allows us to identify north and south. We know that the compass identifies the magnetic north and not the geographic one. Moreover, as Amir D. Aczel notices in "The Riddle of the Compass", «the magnetic north pole of our Globe has not always been north, neither has the South always been south. The terrestrial magnetic polarity changes at intervals of some hundred thousand years, moving the magnetic north pole southward and the opposite for the south pole». If therefore north and south are not pre-defined realities, but rather orientation points that we owe to sailors, travellers, merchants, spies and to all those who moved through the world, the invention of the four cardinal points is useful as guides to reach a wished goal or to discover an unknown one. That again does not create any fixed or “encaged” reality, taking into account that there is a difference between the magnetic south and the north pole and the geographic poles.