Above

Cosmologies built on a vertical axis, an axis mundi connecting a sky realm, the ordinary world and an underworld, treat Above as a genuine direction in its own right rather than simply "up" in a loose sense. Norse cosmology's Yggdrasil reaches its branches into the sky realms while its roots run down into Niflheim and other lower worlds; Siberian and Central Asian shamanic traditions describe the shaman's journey along a comparable world-tree or world-pillar axis to reach the sky spirits above; and Mesoamerican cosmology places a world tree at the center of a similarly layered cosmos, its crown standing in for the heavens.

In each of these systems, Above names a real destination reachable along the vertical axis, not merely an empty direction, which is why it takes its place beside the horizontal cardinal directions in cosmological diagrams built on this model rather than being treated as a metaphor for them.

Several Indigenous North American traditions describe a directional scheme of six or seven directions rather than the four familiar from a compass rose: the four cardinal points, a Center, and Above and Below completing the set. Specific naming, ordering and ceremonial use of the scheme vary considerably between individual nations, and the atlas does not treat any one tribal version as representative of all of them, but the underlying structure, adding a vertical pair to the horizontal four, recurs widely enough to be treated as a distinct pattern in its own right.

East Asian geomantic systems handle the vertical dimension differently again: Feng Shui's compass work is built primarily around the horizontal plane and the twenty-four mountains of its compass rose, with height and elevation treated through separate principles of a site's form rather than folded into the same directional scheme as North, East, South and West.