Above and Below — The Vertical Dimension of Sacred Reality
Native American traditions recognize two additional sacred directions beyond the four cardinal points: Above (Sky Father, celestial knowledge, the realm of eagle and thunder) and Below (Earth Mother, ancestral wisdom, the realm of roots and foundation).
The Navajo understand the sky world (Diyin Dine'é — Holy People) and the underworld (the place of emergence) as real and accessible realms that interpenetrate daily life through ceremony, prayer, and shamanic practice. The Hopi sipapu — a small hole in the kiva floor — represents the original emergence point from the underworld: the place where humanity came from, and to which the dead return. Above, the sky world holds the patterns of the stars, which encode destinies and guide ceremonies. The Pawnee astronomy was so precise that star maps were embroidered on buffalo robes and ceremonies were timed to specific stellar events. In the teaching of the six directions (East, South, West, North, Above, Below), the human being becomes the seventh — the consciousness that integrates all six into present-moment awareness.
Look to the sky and see your relatives. Look to the earth and see your ancestors.
Astronomer Von Del Chamberlain documents in When Stars Came Down to Earth that Pawnee ceremonial star maps preserved on buffalo robes encode precise astronomical knowledge of stellar positions, rising and setting points, and seasonal sky patterns.
Lakota oral tradition