Take compass directions inside the main door and again a few feet further inside.
Take a third compass direction from the center of your home. If your home is an irregular shape, mark in missing areas on your floor plan and draw diagonal lines (as shown) to find its center.
12 – understanding the lo shu square
The next step in practical feng shui is to familiarize yourself with one of the most important, and effective, feng shui symbols that can be used on your floor plan.
This is the Lo Shu Square, which is a ninesector grid, each containing a number from 1 to 9. The numbers are arranged in the grid so that when any three numbers are added, they add up to 15, which is also the number of days it takes the moon to grow from a new moon to a full moon, and vice versa. The Chinese Taoist scholars regard the Lo Shu as a magic square and believe that it provides the key to unlocking many of the secrets of feng shui’s other important symbol, the eight-sided Pa Kua (see here and here.)
According to legend, the magical Lo Shu Square of numbers was carried on the back of the celestial tortoise and brought to the attention of the Chinese Emperor, Fu Hsi. So today, the tortoise is revered as an auspicious creature whose body and shell are said to conceal special design motifs that contain all the secrets contained in heaven and earth.
I started writing books about feng shui soon after I picked up the shell of a dead turtle that had been washed up on the shore on a seaside vacation trip to Pangkor Island with my family. That was in 1992. At that time I failed to note the significance of that omen, and although I brought the shell back home, I discarded it soon afterwards. I only realized the symbolism while one day meditating by my pond where my pet terrapins lived (terrapins are domestic tortoises and turtles are the marine relations of the freshwater tortoise.) It was while I observed the patterns on the back of these playful creatures that the significance of that symbolic find struck me.
Later, as you go deeper into your practice of feng shui, you will discover how important and clever the Lo Shu Square of numbers is when it comes to both hiding and revealing the secrets of formula and compass feng shui. For now, just familiarize yourself with the Lo Shu Square, its numbers and directions, and how it can be used to demarcate the layout of your floor plan.
13 – placing the lo shu square over a floor plan
Now you have learnt the basics about the importance of the Lo Shu Square, you can experiment with placing it over your home’s floor plan.
While this is easy enough to do if the layout of your home is a perfect square, unfortunately this is seldom the case – most homes do have an irregular layout.
Modern homes are rarely, if ever, perfectly square or rectangular. In hallways or in the rooms there will be missing corners and protruding corners, and sometimes the shapes are so irregular that even the real chi that enters gets confused by the flow which is created by the unusual shape of the home.
You also need to know whether to include or exclude portions of the home that appear to protrude. Also, what about including areas occupied by garages, patios, decks, or verandas? In view of the great many variations of house plans and shapes, superimposing the nine-sector grid is therefore something of a challenge to those unfamiliar with feng shui applications. Here are a few specific guidelines that I have put together, based on my experience and advice given to me by practicing feng shui masters.
To superimpose the Lo Shu Square over an irregular-shaped home, extend the missing areas on your floor plan. When you overlay the square you will see which area of it you are missing. Here, the southwest is missing, which is associated with love and relationships.
Lo Shu lore
For interiors in both houses and apartments, the Lo Shu Square should be superimposed onto all the built-up areas that share a roof mass. This means that for apartments you should first superimpose the Square onto the whole building, then apply it to the apartment space itself. This will give a much more accurate assessment of the apartment’s feng shui and its suitability for a resident.
When there is more than one level, each level should be treated separately, since different floors usually have different areas and dimensions.
When the floor space is irregular, some masters superimpose two different Lo Shu Squares. Personally, I prefer to use one grid and treat areas that are empty as missing corners.
When a floor plan is narrow and deep or broad and shallow, some masters look at the way the rooms in the home have been arranged and use a six-grid Lo Shu instead of the traditional nine-grid Lo Shu. This means dropping the center grids. I prefer to continue using the nine-grid Lo Shu, with the demarcated sectors equally worked out in terms of floor area. Therefore, in effect, the Lo Shu Square can be stretched vertically or horizontally.
Superimposing the Lo Shu onto a floor plan is the most practical method of demarcating sectors within the home. This enables the practitioner to identify the different corners for purposes of applying the different formulas, and also energize the corner according to the Elements that are allocated to each of the sectors. In short, superimposing the grid enables you to start understanding the energy of your space and take action to enhance it.
For regular floor plans, the Lo Shu Square should fit proportionally over the available space. Here, the rectangular shape of the individual squares reflects the overall shape of the floor plan.
14 – understanding the two pa kuas
The Pa Kua is an eight-sided symbol which signifies many of the secrets of feng shui. It is a special tool that is a central part of feng shui practice. It can be used for assessment or protection.
Each of the eight sides of the Pa Kua has several associations, including a direction, an element, a member of the family, and an organ.
Most significantly, on each side of the Pa Kua is one of the eight root trigrams of the I Ching. How these trigrams are placed around the different sides of the Pa Kua determines what kind of Pa Kua it is. There are two arrangements to these trigrams and therefore there are two kinds of Pa Kua: the Yin Pa Kua and the Yang Pa Kua.
The Yin Pa Kua
Here the trigrams are arranged in what is described as a cyclical pattern, where the trigrams are arranged as pairs of opposites. This arrangement is generally referred to as