Twenty-Four Mountains Luopan Calculator

What the compass page does

This page takes one number: the facing degree, the mark the compass rests on at the facing end. Due north counts as 0° and the circle runs clockwise to 360°; any degree from 0 to 359.9 is accepted, and selecting a cell on the board sets it to that mountain center. The result gives the sitting and facing mountains, each cell center and span, whether the line is on-center or leaning, and the reading on the three needles.

Twenty-four mountains

The twenty-four mountains cut the circle into 24 cells of 15°, stems, corner trigrams and branches in rotation: Ren-Zi-Gui, Chou-Gen-Yin, Jia-Mao-Yi, Chen-Xun-Si, Bing-Wu-Ding, Wei-Kun-Shen, Geng-You-Xin, Xu-Qian-Hai. Each name sits at its cell center and the boundary lines fall 7.5° either side, so a degree on a boundary counts as the next cell clockwise. Zi, Mao, Wu and You land on 0°, 90°, 180° and 270°; Qian, Gen, Xun and Kun on multiples of 45°.

Facing and degrees

The verdict depends on the distance from a center: within 4.5° either side (the middle 9° of a cell) the line is on-center and Xuankong flies the original chart of that trigram. Past 4.5°, in the 3° band against the boundary, it is a leaning line and the substitute chart is used. A facing of 183° is 3° off Wu and stays on-center; a facing of 187° is 7° off, so it reads sitting Zi, facing Wu, leaning to Ding.

Links to other charts

Three rings carry the same twenty-four names, each turned half a cell: the Earth Plate regular needle sits on these degrees and sets sitting and facing, the middle needle falls back 7.5° to read the ridges and rooflines around a site, and the seam needle moves ahead 7.5° to read water coming and going. Half a cell apart means one line never reads more than one mountain apart, and the cells and degrees here follow the regular needle.

Purple-White, periods and almanac

Below the form is the Twenty-Four Mountains Degree Table: 24 rows in cell order across six columns, Mountain, Trigram, Direction, Center, Span and Opposite (facing), where the opposite cell is the far end of the same line. Once the line is fixed, the twenty-year cycle is on the Feng Shui Nine Periods Lookup page, the star flying into a palace for a year or month on the Feng Shui Purple-White Stars Chart page, and day-by-day ground-breaking notes on the Chinese Almanac page. What this page charts is the twenty-four mountains and the three needles, not the 120 divisions, 72 dragons, 60 dragons or lunar mansions.

Twenty-Four Mountains Degree Table

The 360° circle divides into 24 cells of 15°. Each mountain name sits at its cell center, the boundary lines fall 7.5° either side, and the opposite cell is the far end of the same line.

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