  It is often assumed that primordial perturbations are statistically
isotropic, which implies, among other properties, that their power spectrum is
invariant under rotations. In this article, we test this assumption by placing
model-independent bounds on deviations from rotational invariance of the
primordial spectrum. Using five-year WMAP cosmic microwave anisotropy maps, we
set limits on the overall norm and the amplitude of individual components of
the primordial spectrum quadrupole. We find that there is no significant
evidence for primordial isotropy breaking, and that an eventually non-vanishing
quadrupole has to be subdominant.
