Frank Swetz's Legacy of the Luoshu: The 4,000 Year Search for the Meaning PDF

By Frank Swetz

ISBN-10: 1568814275

ISBN-13: 9781568814278

A logo of the Divine, a superb success attraction, a cosmogram of the realm order, a template for fengshui throughout the a long time, the luoshu, or magic squre of order 3, has interested humans of many alternative cultures. during this riveting account of cultural detective paintings, popular arithmetic educator, Frank J. Swetz relates how he exposed the formerly hidden heritage of the luoshu, from its chinese language origins, shrouded in legend, via its eventual organization with chinese language fortunetelling, Daoism, and fengshui, to its incorporation into Islamic astrology and alchemy and its migration into Kabbalistic lore and different occult traditions of the West.

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Additional resources for Legacy of the Luoshu: The 4,000 Year Search for the Meaning of the Magic Square of Order Three

Sample text

9 = 45; if the digits comprising 45 are then added together 4 + 5, the sum is 9. Thus one returns to or achieves completion at 9. But a more comprehensive association with “nineness” is obtained through various correlational analogies. During the Warring States period, scholars tended to divide things into groups of nine equal units of which the center unit held a position of special importance. This plan of organization may have been modeled on the concept of a rural village where eight families shared a central well.

Qxp:OC Luoshu rev 40 5/8/08 11:11 AM Page 40 Legacy of the Luoshu one method of fortune-telling in China use the numbers in a person’s date of birth and place them in the luoshu grid, thus creating a natal chart that can be interpreted to provide information about the subject’s personality traits, intellectual abilities, and prospects for future wealth and fortune. Talking to the Sky God in Mingtang Temples The magnificient Temple of Heaven Complex in the Beijing’s southern suburbs, with its white marble Altar of Heaven and its blue-roofed Hall of Prayer for the Good Harvest, was constructed in the fifteenth century by the Yongle Emperor, the third Ming ruler, and served as a platform from which the sovereign supplicated Heaven seeking reconsecration as a ruler, absolution for the sins of his people, and the assurance of a good harvest.

In order to honor the sky god, the emperor had to follow a prescribed path in the temple, moving from one room to another each month in a certain order and moving in a certain direction. Later, Daoist priests emulated a variation of this path as part of their spiritual practice. It became the Daoist dance known as the yubu (“steps of Yu”). The luoshu also became part of various other practices and devices that were intended to bring harmony or good luck or reveal information about the future. Practitioners of one ancient Chinese method of fortune-telling cast a set of rods to determine which of sixty-four possible “hexagrams” they indicate.

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Legacy of the Luoshu: The 4,000 Year Search for the Meaning of the Magic Square of Order Three by Frank Swetz


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