According to popular feng shui legend, the magic square of nine that we know was revealed on the back of a huge tortoise that arose from the waters of the River Luo giving it its name.
The numbers of the LuoShu is a depiction of the Later Heaven sequence.
Before we go a little further, a brief explanation of the terms Earlier Heaven and Later Heaven is necessary.
According to popular theory, the arising and continuance of our universe is explained this way. In the beginning there was ‘emptiness’ which can be taken to mean that everything was in a state of equilibrium, in a silent hush as it were. From this ‘emptiness, arose the ultimate infinity. Pardon this difficult term but in simpler words it means the state where the twin forces of yin and yang arose.
This manifestation of yin and yang is self arising. They just came into existence on itheir own. Life came into being. This is the TaiJi and the well know symbol is the circular TaiJi symbol of two ‘fishes’ or sperms intertwined with each a dot each.
From these state of TaiJi arose the two complementary opposites – the yin and the yang. These two are the familiar well known solid and broken lines of the trigrams of the YiJing.
As we all know, these yin and yang lines eventually gave birth to the trigrams which are the foundation for the hexagrams.
The status at the time of formation of the universe is represented by the eight Gua (or trigrams) arranged in a sequence called the Earlier Heaven.
As life began or as the universe breathed life, the change that resulted is represented by the Later Heaven sequence.
At this point, mention need to be made that from the perspective of applied feng shui, the concept is a little different but we shall leave that for another write on this.
Some have called the LuoShu the magic square which is not correct but the permutations that are possible do make this label an apt one.
Luo Shu Sequence
The key points of the LuoShu are:
1 the elements associated with the LuoShu and those associated with the HeTu are different.
2 All sequences start from the center which in this picture is occupied by 5
3 The four cardinal directions and the four sub-cardinal directions are set out from this center point. Without a center nothing exists. There is no absolute only relativity in practice. This point is the core of the LuoShu which is often missed by many students and experienced practitioners which accounts for strange permutations and interpretations of the Luoshu grid.
4 The numbers corresponds to the Gua of the Later Heaven Sequence. The numbers are there for ease of convenience and on their own means nothing.
5 The relationships of the elements are important maybe second only in importance to point (3) just mentioned. The relationship referred to is that expounded in the five element principle of productive, reductive and neutral sequences.
There are many approaches to take when studying the LuoShu but the two common ones are the philosophical approach and the application approach. For the feng shui student, the relevant approach would be to understand its nuances and to apply them.
As a final note, these points though brief are very important. They are very simple, easy to understand and learn, yet to master them; even a lifetime may not be enough. If not, the sage Confucius would not have dedicated a major part of his life and yet confess he has more to learn.
This book is a translation of a text by FengShui Master Jiang Da Hong (ca1640) with my explanations and comments. The root text is a section on yang dwellings from his book “5 Songs of the Heavenly Principles”.
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