The framework beneath it all
Chinese Cosmology
One shared toolkit runs through the Chinese zodiac, feng shui, and traditional timing: yin and yang, the eight trigrams and their directions, the Luo Shu nine palaces, and the five phases.
The threads
Where to begin
The Yijing
The Book of Changes, its eight trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams. Read the Yijing.
He Tu and Luo Shu
The two numeric diagrams, and the magic square that drives Flying Star. Read the diagrams.
Stems and branches
The ten stems, the twelve branches, and the sixty-year cycle. Read the cycle.
The Four Pillars
The fuller system that our year-animal reading is one slice of. Read the pillars.
How it connects
From yin and yang to your animal
Two line states stack into the eight trigrams and then the sixty-four hexagrams of the Yijing. The trigrams become the eight directions on the compass, which feng shui applies to space. The Luo Shu overlays numbers on those directions and drives Flying Star. The stems and branches count time, and the twelve branches are the twelve zodiac animals. It is one cosmology expressed as meaning, as space, and as time.