Abstract
Feng Shui, still popularly practiced today, was closely related to philosophy, natural science, geography, environmental science, architecture, metaphysics, and astrology in ancient China. It is basically divided into the Form School and the Compass School. The latter deals with numerology, calculation, orientation, and time. Luo Shu [洛書], associated with the eight trigrams [八卦], being an ancient Chinese magic square, forms the foundation of the Compass School. The original Luo Shu, a 3 × 3 magic square, was not unique in ancient China but the extension of it to a total of 18 to 36 standard charts was unique, which are still used by all Compass School Feng Shui masters. In this article, modern linear algebra, developed only in the mid-19th century, is employed to prove that there is a strong coherence between the 36 charts if they are treated as 36 matrices and such correspondences conscientiously agree with ancient theories of Feng Shui. This article may help to form a scientific base for the systematic understanding, development, and further research of Luo Shu–related applications.
Highlights
Introduction to Luo Shuthe significance of Luo Shu to the Chinese culture will be discussed so that we could understand the reason why it is worth to take effort to study Luo Shu and related applications in a more scientific manner.According to Joseph Needham (Needham & Wang 1959), probably the mostly renowned scientist and sinologist studying the history of Chinese science, one ancient Chinese interest was in combinatorial analysis, the construction of magic figures, where numbers were arranged in such a way the logistic operations could be performed
There was no detail about the two diagrams mentioned in Lun Yu, that is, the exact arrangement of the dots on the diagram
The importance and history of Luo Shu have been briefly reviewed, with an introduction to two methods within the Compass School of Feng Shui that heavily rely on the operation of 18 or up to 36 variations of the Luo Shu
Summary
The significance of Luo Shu to the Chinese culture will be discussed so that we could understand the reason why it is worth to take effort to study Luo Shu and related applications in a more scientific manner. The logic of placement (forward or backward) of other stars in the Facing and Sitting Charts is beyond the scope of this article Based on these three charts, Feng Shui masters could tell whether the house in general is auspicious or not and could even make comments on the use of every room corresponding to each of the nine palaces.
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