The luopan compass
A luopan is the Chinese feng shui compass: one needle, many rings of meaning.
Take a reading in three steps
Stand clear of metal
Cars, steel beams, appliances and phones pull the needle. Move a few paces away before you read, usually at the front door.
Hold it level at your waist
Stand with your back to the house, facing out the door. Keep the plate flat, with the square base parallel to the door wall.
Turn the dial, read the line
Rotate the round plate until the needle settles along the red line in the pool. The crossed threads then show the house's sitting and facing mountains.
Heaven is round, earth is square, and the needle sits between.
Before you buy one
A luopan measures direction. What that direction means for your life is tradition, so keep it out of medical, legal or money decisions.
The luopan compass
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Good to know
What is a luopan used for?
A luopan is used in feng shui to read which way a building faces. A practitioner then matches that direction to the trigrams, stems, branches and stars on its rings.
How is a luopan different from a normal compass?
Both read the same magnetic field. A normal compass stops at a bearing. A luopan places that bearing in the 24 Mountains and other rings a practitioner interprets.
Can I use my phone compass for feng shui?
For a rough direction, yes. Each of the 24 Mountains spans 15 degrees, and a phone set to true north can miss by a whole Mountain in parts of the US. Use magnetic north, away from metal.
