Little is known about the mystic sources of the popular game Sudoku. It was originally called “Number Place” and was developed by puzzle designer Howard Garns.
According to Eugenia Victoria Ellis, PhD, AIA Drexel University who specialises in religion and ancient history, Sudoku’s nine- square grid has been known as the magic square of three since antiquity, across all cultures. But the sudoku square by itself is not magical; to be one it has to be a mathematical square, not just a number square. The numbers must sum horizontally, vertically and diagonally to the same magic number, the number of the square times the middle number. The first magic square was the square of three, which has the number five at its center and when multiplied by three, the number of the square, yields the magic number fifteen.
Ellis says in her dissertation, ‘Ancient Mathematical Origins of Modern-day Occult Practices,’ that according to Chinese legend the magic square appeared first on the back of a sacred turtle 2,500 years ago in the waters of the Lo River—open circles were for yang odd numbers, the solid circles for yin even numbers. This became Lo Shu, or “Lo River Writing.”
The 6th century Taoist Chên Luan positioned the numbers in specific order: “2 and 4 make the shoulders, 6 and 8 make the feet; 3 is at the left, 7 is at the right; 9 is worn on the head and 1 is underfoot and 5 is at the center.” Ellis says, “Lo Shu was a concise representation of the universe in a microcosm, an imago mundi that related to both the heavens and the earth through the harmonious balance of its numbers around the strong central number five, located at the center of the axis mundi, the cosmic axis connecting these two worlds.’
It took thirteen hundred years for the arcane Lo Shu magic square to became public knowledge in China in the tenth century. Ellis feels that the magic square was a secret because of its occult use. History records two major public book-burnings in Old China: Shih Huang-ti, the first emperor of the Ch’in dynasty (221-207 BC), had all books burned in 213 BC, in an effort to ensure national unity; except those on magic and divination for which he had a special affinity; Yang Ti, of the Sui dynasty (589-618 AD), a follower of Confucius, this time ordered all occult books to be burned in 605 AD because they were outlawed in Confucianism. Ellis says that however by the tenth century, Lo Shu became part of Chinese culture, used in protective charms and divination methods. However, by that time it had lost its cosmological significance, says Ellis because it was no longer used for magical purposes; the pattern obscuring its distinctive mathematical properties, and hence it degenerated into a riddle. Ellis notes how during the Sung dynasty (960-1280 AD), the Tao, which had been represented by the magic line that connected the numbers in sequence in the magic square of three, became a simple circle divided in two by an S-shaped line. Thus Lo Shu was replaced by the symbol commonly known today as the Yin- Yang. As contemporary culture becomes more pop, ancient symbols are degraded to become part of the current cultural fabric. A fabric that is forever being torn and mended, as the cycles of Tao predetermine.