Human Design, explained from your first chart to your cross

What is Human Design?

Human Design is a map of how you take in and give out energy. It starts from the same data as an astrology chart, the exact moment and place you were born, but instead of placing planets in signs and houses it places them in 64 gates spread over a body-shaped diagram. The diagram is called the bodygraph, and it is what people mean when they say their Human Design chart.

The bodygraph has nine centers, drawn as triangles and squares, joined by 36 channels. A center is either defined (colored in) or open (left white). The pattern of colored and white centers decides your type, one of five, and each type comes with a strategy: a simple rule for how to move through life without wearing yourself out. On top of that sit your inner authority, the part of you that makes reliable decisions, and your profile, the role you tend to play with other people.

That is the whole idea in a sentence: your chart describes how you are wired, and your strategy and authority describe how to work with that wiring instead of against it. Everything else in Human Design, the gates, the lines, the incarnation cross, adds detail to that core. If you have not seen your own bodygraph yet, put in your birth details above, or open the full human design chart page, and read the rest of this guide with your chart beside you.

Where Human Design comes from

Human Design was set out by Ra Uru Hu, the name taken by Alan Robert Krakower, a Canadian former media executive and magazine publisher. He said that in January 1987, on the island of Ibiza, he spent eight days receiving the system from a voice. He taught it from then until his death in 2011, and the organization he founded, Jovian Archive, still publishes the original material.

The system is a synthesis of older traditions. The gates are the 64 hexagrams of the Chinese I Ching, in the same order. The way they are placed on the wheel comes from Western astrology, and the planets are read at birth just as an astrologer reads them. The centers echo the Hindu chakras, though there are nine instead of seven. The channels between them are drawn on a frame inspired by the Tree of Life in the Kabbalah. Ra Uru Hu also borrowed the language of physics, particularly neutrinos, to explain how the planets imprint a person.

Knowing the sources helps you read the chart. When a gate seems to echo an I Ching hexagram, it is because it is one. When a center seems to resemble a chakra, that is intended. Human Design is best understood as a modern system built from very old symbolic languages, and it should be read that way.

How your chart is calculated: two moments, not one

This is the part that makes Human Design different from a birth chart. It reads the sky twice. The first reading is the moment you were born, called the personality, and it is drawn in black. The second is the moment about three months earlier when the Sun stood exactly 88 degrees of the zodiac behind where it was at your birth. That moment is called the design, and it is drawn in red.

The 88 degrees are measured along the Sun's path, not counted in days, so the gap shifts slightly with the season because the Earth moves faster near January than near July. In practice the design falls between roughly 86 and 92 days before birth. Human Design teaches that the personality is what you know about yourself, your conscious side, and the design is what others see in you before you see it yourself, your body and your unconscious side.

At each of the two moments, 13 points are read: the Sun, the Earth (the point opposite the Sun), the North and South Nodes of the Moon, the Moon, and Mercury through Pluto. That gives 26 activations. Each one falls in a gate and a line of that gate. Printed charts traditionally show the personality in black and the design in red; the calculator above lists all 26 in gold for personality and rose for design, with the gate and line of each.

• ✦The wheel of 64 gates starts at 2 degrees of Aquarius with gate 41, so the Sun enters gate 41 around January 22 every year, the start of the Human Design year.
• ✦Each gate is 5.625 degrees wide (360 divided by 64) and splits into six lines of under a degree each.
• ✦The Sun moves through a whole gate in under six days and about one line a day; the Moon crosses a gate in roughly ten hours.

How to read a Human Design chart, step by step

A first chart looks crowded. Read it in this order and it falls into place, from the broad strokes to the fine print.

1. 1.Type: one of five, set by which centers are defined and how they connect. It tells you how your energy works.
2. 2.Strategy: the rule that comes with your type, such as waiting to respond or informing before you act.
3. 3.Inner authority: the center you make decisions from. It overrules your mind, which in Human Design is for thinking, not deciding.
4. 4.Profile: two numbers, such as 3/5, from the line of your personality Sun and the line of your design Sun. It describes your role and how you learn.
5. 5.Definition: whether your defined centers form one connected group or two or more separate ones.
6. 6.Centers: which of the nine are defined (consistent in you) and which are open (where you take in other people).
7. 7.Channels and gates: the specific themes that are always switched on in you.
8. 8.Incarnation cross: the four gates of your two Suns and two Earths, read as your life theme.

The five types at a glance

Type is the headline of any chart. It is decided by mechanics, not by a description you pick: whether your Sacral center is defined, and whether a motor center connects through defined channels to your Throat. The shares below are the figures commonly cited by Human Design teachers, not survey data. The human design types page compares all five in full, and the manifesting generator page covers the most searched type of all.

Inner authority: how you make decisions

Your authority is the most practical thing in your chart. Human Design says the mind is a wonderful tool for research and for advising other people, and a poor one for your own decisions, because it can argue any side. Authority names where the reliable signal comes from instead. It follows a fixed order: the first defined center on this list is your authority. The shares in the table are what we found running 4,000 random birth moments from 1950 to 2010 through the calculator above: about half of all people decide emotionally, which is why sleeping on it is the most common advice in Human Design.

1. 1.Emotional: a defined Solar Plexus. Ride the wave and decide once you feel clear, never at the high or the low.
2. 2.Sacral: a defined Sacral and no defined Solar Plexus. Trust the gut sound in the moment.
3. 3.Splenic: a defined Spleen and neither of the above. A quiet instinct that speaks once.
4. 4.Ego: a defined Heart. Ego manifested when the Heart is wired to the Throat, directly or through the G center, which only happens in a Manifestor; ego projected when the Heart reaches only the G center, which happens in a Projector.
5. 5.Self-projected: a defined G center and none of the above. Talk it out and listen to your own voice.
6. 6.Mental, or sounding board: only the Head, Ajna and Throat can be defined. Hear yourself think aloud with people you trust.
7. 7.Lunar: Reflectors only, with no defined centers. Give big decisions about 28 days.

The nine Human Design centers

The centers are the hubs of the bodygraph. A defined center works the same way all the time and is something you broadcast to others. An open center is where you take in and amplify the energy of the people around you. Neither is better. Open centers are where you can become wise about something, and also where you are most easily conditioned to be someone you are not.

Four centers are motors, which supply energy: the Heart, the Solar Plexus, the Sacral and the Root. Two are pressure centers, the Head above and the Root below. Three are awareness centers, the Ajna, the Spleen and the Solar Plexus. The Throat is where energy turns into speech and action, and the G center holds identity and direction.

Human Design channels and gates

Each of the 64 gates sits in one center. Gates come in pairs, and each pair forms a channel between two centers, 36 channels in all. When both gates of a channel are activated in your chart, by a planet in your personality, your design or one of each, the channel is defined and so are the two centers it joins. That is the only way a center becomes defined.

A gate on its own, with its partner not activated, is called a hanging gate. Its theme is still yours, but it shows up as a reaching out: you look for, and feel drawn to, people who carry the other half. When two people each bring one half of a channel, it lights up between them. Human Design calls that an electromagnetic connection, and it is one reason some people feel instantly familiar. The human design gates page lists all 64 gates and every channel by name.

Human Design definition, and what split definition means

Definition describes how your defined centers hang together. If every defined center connects to every other through defined channels, you have single definition, and you tend to process life on your own and at your own pace. If your defined centers form two groups with no channel between them, you have split definition. Three separate groups is triple split, and four is quadruple split, which is rare. A Reflector, with nothing defined, has no definition at all.

Split definition is common and often misunderstood. Across thousands of random birth moments run through the calculator above, it is actually the most frequent, at nearly half of all charts, with single definition at about four in ten, triple split near one in eight and quadruple split under 1%. It does not mean you are broken in two. It means two parts of you run separately, and you can feel a gap between them. People with split definition tend to feel most whole around others who carry the gates that bridge their split, and can mistake that relief for needing a particular person. Knowing the mechanics helps: the bridge is just a gate, and it can be met by many people, or by time spent out in the world.

Your profile, in brief

Your profile takes the line of your personality Sun and the line of your design Sun. There are six lines: 1 the Investigator, 2 the Hermit, 3 the Martyr, 4 the Opportunist, 5 the Heretic and 6 the Role Model. Because the design is always 88 degrees before birth, only 12 combinations are possible, from 1/3 to 6/3. The first number is the side of yourself you recognize, the second is the side others meet first. Every one of the twelve is described on the human design profile page.

The incarnation cross in Human Design

The incarnation cross is read from four gates: your personality Sun and Earth, and your design Sun and Earth. Together they are seen as the theme of your life, your purpose in the broadest sense. The cross takes its name from the gate of your personality Sun, so two people with the same Sun gate share a family of crosses.

Every cross has an angle, set by your profile. Profiles 1/3, 1/4, 2/4, 2/5, 3/5, 3/6 and 4/6 give a Right Angle cross, described as a personal destiny that unfolds through your own life. The 4/1 alone gives a Juxtaposition cross, a fixed path that runs between the two. Profiles 5/1, 5/2, 6/2 and 6/3 give a Left Angle cross, a transpersonal destiny bound up with other people. Most teachers suggest leaving the cross until type, strategy and authority are lived in, because the cross is said to unfold by itself when they are.

Crosses also have names, such as the Right Angle Cross of the Sphinx or the Right Angle Cross of Planning, taken from the gate of the personality Sun. The calculator above gives your angle and your four cross gates in the order personality Sun, personality Earth, design Sun, design Earth; with the gate of the first, any Human Design reference will give you the name.

Circuits, variables and the deeper layers

Past the basics, Human Design keeps going. The 36 channels are grouped into circuits: individual channels are about mutation and doing things your own way, tribal ones about support, family and resources, and collective ones about sharing patterns and experiences with society. A chart dominated by one circuit is said to color how a person relates to everyone else.

The four arrows beside the head of a full professional chart are the variables. They come from the color and tone beneath each line of the two Suns and the two nodes, and are used to describe diet (called digestion), the best environment, what motivates you and how you see the world. They are advanced material, they depend heavily on an exact birth time, and our free calculator does not show them. Beginners lose nothing by skipping them for a year.

The same goes for the idea of deconditioning. Ra Uru Hu taught that it takes about seven years of living by your strategy and authority for the body to shed the habits learned from others, which he tied to a seven-year renewal of the body's cells, a popular idea that biology does not support. Take that as a reminder to be patient rather than as a fact: nobody should expect a chart to change their life in a weekend.

Is Human Design real? Criticism and evidence

Plainly: there is no scientific evidence that Human Design is true. No study has shown that the position of the planets at birth, or 88 degrees before, shapes personality or energy. The system came from one person's account of a mystical experience, and its use of words like neutrino borrows the language of physics without the method. That is why critics call it pseudoscience, and on the question of evidence they are right.

Other criticism is worth hearing too. Labels can become boxes, and a Projector told to wait for invitations can use it as a reason not to try. Some coaches sell expensive readings built on a free chart. Personality descriptions that are general enough feel personal to most people, which is called the Barnum effect, and Human Design is not immune to it.

Why do so many people still find it useful? Mostly because of what it asks you to do. It invites you to notice how your energy actually works, to stop forcing decisions from your head, to rest when you are spent, and to stop judging yourself against people built differently. You do not need to believe the cosmology to test whether waiting to respond, or sleeping on an emotional decision, makes your life better. Treat it as a mirror for self-reflection, keep what helps, and drop the rest.

Human Design and astrology

Human Design uses the same planetary positions as astrology, so the two sit comfortably together. Your Sun sits in one gate and one zodiac sign at the same moment, and many people read both: astrology for the themes and timing of a life, Human Design for the mechanics of energy and decision making. If you know your Human Design and want the astrology side, your birth chart shows the same planets in signs and houses.

Getting started with your own chart

Start small. Look up your type and strategy and try them for a few weeks before reading anything else. Notice your not-self theme, frustration, anger, bitterness or disappointment, because it is the alarm that tells you when you have drifted from your strategy. Then learn your authority and practice deciding from it on small things first.

Only after that does the rest of the chart start to matter: your open centers, where you pick up other people's pressure, your profile, your channels and finally your cross. Ra Uru Hu called this an experiment, and that is the right attitude. Nothing in a chart is worth more than what you notice when you live by it.

Questions people ask

Every human design page

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