Lo Shu Square
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The Lo Shu Square, the 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.
In Chinese, the square is known as Luo Shu (Template:Zh-stp; Literal: Luo (River) Book) or the Nine Halls Diagram (Template:Zh-stp).
Chinese literature dating from as early as 2800 BC tells the legend of Lo Shu or "scroll of the river Lo". In ancient China, there was a huge flood. The people tried to offer some sacrifice to the river god of one of the flooding rivers, the Lo river, to calm his anger. A turtle emerged from the water with a curious pattern on its shell, with patterns of circular dots arranged in a three-by-three grid on the shell, such that the sum of the numbers in each row, column and diagonal was the same: 15. This number is also equal to the 15 days in each of the 24 cycles of the Chinese solar year. This pattern, in a certain way, was used by the people in controlling the river.
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; traditional Chinese cities and temples were laid out in a square broken into nine sections. It is also a diagrammatic representation of the seasons showing the ratio of yin and yang in the annual cycle.it:Quadrato Lo Shu zh:九宫图