Knowing Your Way - Compass

  A working model of the oldest instrument in the world which is known to be a compass. The spoon or ladle is of magnetic lodestone, and the plate is of Bronze. The circular center represents Heaven, and the square plate represents Earth . The handle of the spoon points south. The spoon is a symbolic representation of the Great Bear. The plate bears Chinese characters which denote the eight main directions of north, north-east, east, etc., and symbols from the I Ching oracle books which were correlated with directions. Separately marked are the finer gradations of twenty-four compass points, and along the outermost edge are the twenty-eight lunar mansions. This type of compass has been scientifically tested and found to work tolerably well - It was used not for navigation, but for quasi- magical purposes.