Book of Lo (Lo Shu)

Many theories of Feng Shui were said to be inspired by two very interesting and mysterious diagrams called River Map () and Lo Shu ().

Hsia Yu & the Lo Shu

Legends attribute China prehistoric personality, Hsia Yu () - he who tamed the Yellow River of floods ( ) to be the one who discovered the Lo Shu.

Yu saw some very interesting markings on the shell of a giant tortoise that emerged from the River Lo in Central China. This became Lo Shu. A reproduction of the original Lo Shu diagram is found below:

Lo Shu is often drawn in the form of a 9-square chart with each square representing a direction in the compass (see diagram below) namely North, South, East, West, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest and the center (total 9 locations).

Numbers & Their Meanings

The numbers in each square of the Lo Shu embrace a variety of meanings. Just to name a few:

The sum of each line (whether vertical, horizontal or diagonal) always equals fifteen. In other words, if you ignore the 5 in the center, you will notice that the number opposite each other all sums up to 10. (The River Map uses the difference while the Lo Shu Square uses the sum).

Similar to the River Map, the odd numbers (white dots) represents Yang and the even numbers (black dots) represents Yin.

Apart from the 5 in the center, the Lo Shu numbers are arranged such that after every Yang number, a Yin number follows, and, after every Yin number comes a Yang number.

Running in a clockwise direction starting from the centre (Earth), the combinations flow in the same manner as that of found in the cycle of destruction (Earth [5] destroys Water [1 & 6 in the River Map], Water destroys Fire [2 & 7 in the River Map], Fire destroys Metal [4 & 9 in the River Map], Metal destroys Wood [3 & 8 in the River Map], Wood destroys Earth and so on). The above explanation allows one to observe the pattern on how the Lo Shu numbers flow using the number combinations in the River Map.

Flow of the Lo Shu numbers using the Cycle of Destruction (River Map)

Cycle of Destruction