Have you ever read the essay, "Rethinking the Watchtowers"? It's been on the internet for a long time now. I first ran across it maybe twenty years ago. The writer's thesis was that Air belongs in the North, and Earth in the East -- something I had actually figured out for myself, but he had more support than I did.

I kind of think whoever set up the system with Earth in the North was doing what some occultists have always done: introducing errors into their material to keep things out of the hands of the uninitiated. As you can see when you read the article, there are many reasons for switching North and East.