divination compass

Divining compass, luopan, for fengshui. Black lacquered wooden disc with a glass-covered magnetic compass in the centre. The top surface is inscribed with 15 rings of Chinese texts in red and gold paint, the eight-trigram occupy the first inner ring of the compass.

See Stephan Feuchtwang, 1974, 'An Anthropological Analysis of Chinese Geomancy', Vientiane: Editions Vithagna. Part Two of the book, titled 'The indigenous model', explains the significance of the several rings and the symbols in them.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

The database sometimes uses language taken from historical documents to help research, which may now appear outdated and even offensive. The database also includes information on objects that are considered secret or sacred by some communities.

If you have any further information about objects in our collections or can suggest corrections to our information, please contact us: enquiry@horniman.ac.uk