Sunday, September 24, 2017

Flag for the Southwestern Quarter of the Earth



The design for the Southwestern Quarter of the Earth flag is a tribute to Whitney Smith.  The Southwestern Quarter is where the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres overlap. The dart or chevron points to the fly, like the flag of Guyana, which was Smith's original idea for the flag of Guyana.

However the colour scheme stems from ancient Chinese Cosmology.  Red is associated with the South and white is associated with the West.  Of consequence to Southerns in the USA is the mythical animal associated with the South - the Phoenix.  In case you forgot the Phoenix like rises up from the ashes, as the would be forlorn chant that "the South will rise again." Yellow is also included, since it acts as the reference point from a center.

More recently these colours have been popularized in Japanese pop culture, with the red phoenix of the South and white tiger of the West. Furthermore, nearly the entire world under the age of 30 has some notion of these concepts due to the rise of Anime and Pokemon.

This flag can be flown over any area of the Earth in the Southwestern Quarter: most of South America, French Polynesia, and the Easter Islands. 

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