This is incomprehensible, unless the wood, like
the ancient Chinese compass, contained a piece of magnetic iron hidden
in it, which would be attracted or repulsed, or even drawn downward, by
a piece of iron held in the hand of the priest, on the outside of the
bowl. If so, this trick was a remembrance of the mariner's compass
transmitted from age to age by the medicine men. The reclining statue of
Chac-Mol, of Central America, holds a bowl or dish upon its breast.
Divination was the ars Etrusca. The Etruscans set their temples squarely
with the cardinal points of the compass; so did the Egyptians, the
Mexicans, and the Mound Builders of America. Could they have done this
without the magnetic compass?
The Romans and the Persians called the line of the axis of the globe
cardo, and it was to cardo the needle pointed. Now "Cardo was the name
of the mountain on which the human race took refuge from the Deluge . .
. the primitive geographic point for the countries which were the cradle
of the human race." (Urquhart's "Pillars of Hercules," vol. i., p. 145.)
From this comes our word "cardinal," as the cardinal points.
Navigation.
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