羅盤, the compass
The Compass and the 24 Mountains
The master instrument of compass-school feng shui, and the reason the zodiac sits on the directions.
The instrument
What the luópán encodes
The 羅盤 (luópán) has a magnetic needle at the center of up to forty rings that encode the trigrams, the eight directions, the five phases, the ten Heavenly Stems, the twelve Earthly Branches, and the formulas of systems like Flying Star. Its distant ancestor is the Han-dynasty diviner's board.
The zodiac on the compass
Twenty-four mountains
The circle is divided into twenty-four sectors of fifteen degrees, three to each direction, which is why the classics say one trigram governs three mountains. The twelve Earthly Branches are the twelve zodiac animals, and they are compass sectors: the Rat, 子, is due north; the Rabbit, 卯, due east; the Horse, 午, due south; the Rooster, 酉, due west. So your year animal has a home direction on the compass. See how that ties to your animal.
Keep exploring
More of the Feng Shui hub
See how this shapes your own space in the Habitat, or find your animal on the Oracle.