Article one surveys directional schemes largely as static systems of orientation. Yoruba and diaspora Ifa cosmology adds a case article one does not reach, organised less around fixed directional meanings than around the crossroads itself, the point where paths and, by extension, realms of existence intersect.
Eshu, the orisha of crossroads, thresholds and communication, mediates between the human world and the divine at that intersecting point, and is invoked first in Ifa divination and ritual precisely because nothing passes correctly between realms without going through the junction Eshu governs. This is a different logic from the fourfold, colour-and-element schemes article one describes for Chinese, Vedic and Mesoamerican cosmology: the directions matter here chiefly as they converge on a threshold figure, rather than as four discrete quadrants each carrying a separate association.
Physical evidence for directional cosmology in North America predates any tradition article one names in writing. The Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, a stone construction with spokes radiating from a central cairn, is one of dozens of comparable structures across the northern Plains, though their builders left no texts explaining the intended meaning, and claims about astronomical alignment remain debated among archaeoastronomers. Indigenous nations with living traditions connected to such sites have objected to the "medicine wheel" and "four directions" ceremonies now sold in commercial spirituality, on the ground that specific teachings belong to specific nations and are not a shared inheritance open to anyone to repackage; that objection concerns who may teach the practice, not the facts of any particular site.