The Lo Shu Magic Square

Feng shui has a history   thousands of years, some say 2,000 years, some go as far as 5,000 years. Feng Shui is connected to the Lo Shu magic square, According to the ancient Chinese book I Ching,  which originates from an ancient  Chinese text dating over four thousand years ago  about the year 2800 BC The legend of  Lo Shu or "scroll of the river Lo" tells the story of a huge flood that destroyed crops and land. The people offered a sacrifice to the river god for one of the flooded rivers, the Lo river, to calm his anger.

Every time the river flooded, there emerged a turtle that would walk around the sacrifice. Emperor Yu noticed a unique pattern on the turtle On the back of the animal were some curious markings on the shell, Emperor had a scribe copy them formed by dots within a grid and the dots represented numbers.

The result of this, according to tradition, was the discovery of the first magic square, called 'Lo Shu'. This numbers are represented by dots - even numbers are black and odd numbers are white. Try adding up the numbers in the rows, columns and diagonals. It was discovered that when a line of these numbers were added together in any direction they totaled fifteen.  This constant sum is called the 'magic summation'.

Over time, these became connected to the Pa Kua, an octagonal shaped reference used in the practice of Feng Shui. The eight compass points correspond to the magic square, with magnetic North always placed at position 1 and South in position 9.

Magic Squares have been around for over 4,000 years and have been used in different cultures for their astrological, divinatory qualities, their usage ensuring longevity and prevention against diseases. For example, Indian and Egyptian cultures engraved magic squares onto stone or metal into gowns worn by talismans.