Hetu and Luoshu

In the account that draws the history of the Wu and Yao clans and the human trigrams into one line, the Hetu and the Luoshu came into the world with Dijun. The dots, lines and quarters on the two documents answer to sun, moon and stars, and to the turning of the mountains and rivers of the world.

Dijun and Donghuang Taiyi gathered the demon hosts and raised the Yao Heavenly Court in the heavens. When its halls were finished Dijun spread the Hetu and Luoshu in the hall and called the demon gods to fix the stations of the stars by their markings.

Three hundred and sixty-five demon gods each held a star banner, with the sun, the moon and the ruling stars set in the array. Dijun worked from the Hetu and Luoshu at its centre, and so the Zhou-Heaven Star Formation opened above the Heavenly Court.

After the Twelve Ancestral Witches set out the Twelve Capital Gods and Demons Formation, Dijun carried the Hetu and Luoshu into the star formation. Starlight lit along the markings in order and struck head-on against Pangu’s true body rising from the earth.

In the final Wu–Yao battle Dijun and Donghuang Taiyi fell one after the other. The common continuation has the preceptor Kunpeng carry off the Hetu and Luoshu in the confusion, leave the Heavenly Court and return to the northern sea.

After Fuxi was reborn among humankind, the Hetu and Luoshu came back into the world along that same northern line and were brought into his hands. Fuxi spread them out beside the river and watched, day after day, the signs of the sky, the mountains and rivers, and the marks left by birds and beasts.

Fuxi arranged the matching lines of yin and yang into trigrams, and so the primordial eight trigrams took shape. He then taught the figures to the tribes, to record the quarters, the seasons and the changes of human affairs.

Fuxi cut the finished figures into wood and stone and gave them to the tribes to keep. The Hetu and Luoshu stayed in his own house and passed down with the trigram charts to later ages.