Lo Shu Square
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The Lo Shu Square, a unique normal magic square of order three, is an important part of Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art of qi direction with regards to the placement of physical objects and their placement's effect on qi flow.
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Missing image MagicSquare-LoShu.png Image:MagicSquare-LoShu.png |
| The giant turtle of Lo Shu. Dots on its back represent numbers. | Ba Gua Zhang (Wade Giles: Pa Kua Chang) (漢語: 八卦長) ('eight diagram palm'), containing eight trigrams, encountered in Feng Shui. | Modern representation as a magic square. |
Traditional Chinese cities and temples were laid out in a square broken into nine sections; the odd numbers in the Lo Shu Square are male or yang, while the even numbers are female or yin. The numbers 1, the beginning of all things, and 9, representing completion, are considered most auspicious, while the number 5 at the centre is the most powerful. The Lo Shu square, in the form of a trigram, gives the basis for determining the orientation of buildings, and is also a diagrammatic representation of the seasons showing the ratio of yin and yang in the annual cycle.zh:九宫图