The luopan — concentric rings of directional and elemental correspondence.
The luopan is a compass wrapped in concentric rings — trigrams, stars, mountains, the sexagenary cycle, degrees of the heavens — each circle a different symbolic system, all rotating around a single magnetic needle. It is an instrument for reading the qualitative character of a place and time.
The Feng Shui compass unlocks the idea that space is not uniform but differentiated, that every direction carries meaning, and that many cosmologies can be layered into one operational device. It is, in effect, an analog interface: dozens of data systems stacked into a single dial you can turn and consult.