If, after a consultation, you are able to see a fung shui master's notes, you will know if he is practising a Flying Stars method if there is drawing of a noughts-and-crosses grid on his pad, with nine squares, each containing a number. The basis for these calculations is the Luo Shu or the Luo River book.

Legend has it that a tortoise emerged from the Luo River (near the ancient capital of Luoyang, in modern-day Henan province) with a sequence of numbers engraved on its back.

The Flying Stars method dictates that nine numbers are arranged in three rows: the top row has four, nine and two, the middle, three, five and seven and the bottom has eight, one and six. This sequence is not random; when laid out, any three numbers in a straight line (vertical, horizontal or diagonal) add up to 15. The Luo Shu sequence forms the basis of how the stars, or different types of energies, behave in any given year. You need to be familiar with the sequence to work out which energies are present in a specific sector in a specific year.