Insights Into the 6 Essential Components of Human Design

In this article, I’ll be sharing my insights into the 6 essential components of Human Design. These include astrology, the I’Ching, genetics, the Chakras, the Kabbalah, and neutrinos.

ASTROLOGY

The first Human Design component is astrology. Astrology doesn’t play major a role in Human Design, as originally laid out by Ra. Meaning HD doesn’t pay any attention to the houses and Ra simply describes the planets as teachers.

Traditional astrology usually describes the planets in terms of their attributes and properties. Mars, for example, is “immature” or “aggressive” which is definitely a male energy, even warlike.

In his White Book, Ra took a different tack – talking about planets as teachers. He described the definition as the “student”, the undefined centers as the “school” and the planets as the “teacher”. Each planet teaches different material and also teaches in a different manner.

Looking at the planets from Ra’s perspective:

Mercury is “teaching a course in Communication”, whereas traditionally it is “what must be communicated.” If I were to teach a course in communication, I might teach about gossip, rumors, facts, lies, deceit, stories, misinformation, what it is used for, etc.

Venus is ”teaching a course in Sociology”, where traditionally she is described as being concerned with morality, common law, right and wrong. If I were teaching the course, I might talk about society, human behavior, and relationships. Love, morality, social class, government, and law, etc.

Mars is ”teaching a course in Energy Dynamics”, where traditionally he is associated with immaturity. If I were teaching the course, I might talk about energy pushing ahead or retreating or the strategic ways to use energy.

Jupiter is ”teaching a course in Law”, where traditionally he is associated with one who gives the Word of God, or the principle of divine reason and creative order. If I were teaching the course, I might talk about obligation, binding agreements, ethics, etc.

Saturn is ”teaching a course in Discipline”, whereas traditionally he is associated with being the judge. If I were teaching the course, I might talk about punishment, reward, knuckling down, focus, etc.

Uranus is ”teaching a course in Science”, whereas traditionally he is associated with unusualness. If I were teaching the course, I might talk about transformation, disruption, etc.

Neptune is ”teaching a course in Art”, whereas traditionally he is associated with the veil – what is hidden, what is being revealed.  If I were teaching the course, I might talk about the role of art in society, fantasy, significant changes in perception, etc.

Pluto is ”teaching a course in Psychology”, whereas traditionally he is associated with the truth. If I were teaching the course, I might talk about behavior, self-actualization, existentialism, consciousness, etc.

Summary

This is a very brief outline but I think it offers a different way of thinking about the planets and that is a big part of Ra’s methodology – a different way of thinking about ancient systems.

Both of those points of view seem very outdated and dusty, so I’m not really a big fan of either one. I prefer contextual choices of behavior – a little more in keeping with the Bhagavad Gita. But it doesn’t matter a great deal. What is truly important is that we train ourselves to be conscious of what drives us.

The planets also play a role in determining if a specific line is exalted or in detriment.

When you use Ra’s Rave I’Ching book, you will see that a line can be interpreted based on whether it is listed in the chart as being activated by a planet that is in detriment or exalted, or neither. How it is read depends on how it is activated in your chart.

I’CHING & GENETICS

The next components I want to address include the I’Ching and genetics. The Chinese I’Ching is the workhorse of Human Design. It contains 64 hexagrams each of which is made up of some combination of solid and broken lines. The 64 hexagrams align with the 64 codons of human genetics. Each hexagram describes a behavioral strategy. The 6 lines that make up each hexagram are said to align with the 6 amino acids that comprise your DNA.

The I’Ching is responsible for setting the general psychological overtone of your individuality in your thoughts, actions, and speech. These hexagrams and lines operate in you at conscious and/or unconscious levels. The 64 hexagrams embody a huge portion of the spectrum of human behavior. In the final analysis, they are behavioral strategies that have survived millions of years of evolution because they are successful strategies.

When he created the Profiles, Ra borrowed heavily from the I’Ching description of the characteristics of lines (well, technically of the line position in the hexagram). For example, in ancient China, the emperor had access to vast wealth, manpower, and resources. Thus, the 5th line in a hexagram is the ruler of the hexagram. The lower trigram (the bottom 3 lines in a hexagram) is ruled by the 2nd line – a provincial governor with limited wealth, manpower, and resources.

I was very infatuated with discovering the meaning of a line.

In my earliest days with Human Design, I, like many others in the analyst licensing program, was very infatuated with discovering the meaning of a line. They were intriguing partly because of their brevity and partly because they seemed so mysterious, so rife with hidden meaning.

Now many years later it occurs to me that they are kind of like strange little quirks in character. Good authors flesh out their characters using occasional short descriptions that give us a little more insight into the character. These quirks aren’t at all the main story of the personas, but they add to our empathic understanding.

As we read further in a book, these quirks all add up to create a complex dimension that, when seen emerging over time, helps us to better understand what motivates us. If the author is adroit, the characters suddenly and unexpectedly behave in a risky, foolish, or perhaps inconsiderate manner. The growth in complexity draws us more deeply into the story.

I look at the lines as being these little quirks.

They make us human by imbuing us with a collection of personal peccadilloes, little sorrows, and mistakes, as well as minor conquests and victories. These are the spices that season us, that give us more depth of flavor, and more subtle shades of behavior that aren’t necessarily central to the resolution of the plot.

When you read the lines in Ra’s Rave I’Ching, or in Chetan’s Book of Lines, or even for that matter in the I’Ching itself, it can often be difficult to discern a precise and clear meaning. It’s almost as though that meaning hovers slightly out of focus shrouded in a shifting mist. You reach for it but often do no more than just lightly brush against it. If you persevere over time, you eventually make its acquaintance and perhaps even become friends with it. But it always remains a bit elusive.

There really is no need to understand the lines deeply. Being occasionally aware and accepting of your quirks, and treating them with the respect that arises out of affectionate familiarity is enough to flesh out your personal existence and keep your journey always entertaining.

CHAKRAS

Chakras are the next components to discuss in Human Design. The Hindu chakra system is used as a convenient way of providing different homes to all of the behaviors represented by the hexagrams. Ra called them centers and divided them into 2 major types: Awareness and Motor. Neuroscience calls them hubs. I think of them as clusters. Various behaviors aggregate in certain centers so that you have emergent behaviors that result from that aggregation. Emergent behavior is the behavior of a system that does not depend on its individual parts but on its relationships to one another. Thus, emergent behavior cannot be predicted by examination of a system’s individual parts.

If you have studied the I’Ching, you can see why Ra chose the hexagrams as he did, why he named them what he did, and why he paired them with another hexagram in a logical subset called a channel. The channels link together specific Chakras which he called Centers located in specific Groups which he called Circuits adapted from cultural anthropology.

When Ra developed Human Design, he used the Chakra system as a guide for the centers.

The Chakra system originated in India between 1500 and 500 BC in the oldest text called the Vedas. Meaning it is between 2,000 and 3,500 years old. That’s not very old in terms of evolution. But Ra realized that modern man could reasonably be argued to have 9 centers rather than the 7 centers of the Chakra system.

Ra split the Heart off and added the G Center – the Self Center. He also split the Spleen off and added the Solar Plexus or Emotional Center.

Ra defined the Spleen Center as an awareness center that apprehends the energy outside us. This sensory data is then turned into a system of interpretation in which energy is classified and a given response is allotted to each classification. The 5 senses are one such classification and a different fear response is assigned to each specific sensory input. We, as humans, then act based on that fear awareness and our cultural interpretations.

Ra defined the Emotional Center as a combination of awareness and motor center.

Emotions originate as energy data that forms and fluxes in cycles inside of us. Very few animals require a sophisticated emotional system – making humans quite unusual as we require an extremely sophisticated system because of our very complex social structures.

When you look at the Spleen Center and the Emotional Center, you will see that the Emotional Center is a mirror of the Spleen Center. In terms of understanding human behavior, this is an excellent model.

Most modern models do not distinguish this separation of recognizing that “feelings” (I think it would be more appropriate to use the word “sensations”) arise because we have to process fields of energy patterns from outside and inside.

Our chemistry determines how we process internal sensations whereas our external sensations are processed through pattern recognition – systems that are ancient survival systems.

KABBALAH

The Jewish Kabbalah Tree of Life was the inspiration for how to connect the centers using “channels” that give rise to other specific emergent behaviors. The connections made by “channels” are loosely based on the Kabbalah Tree of Life. The channels are the result of pairings of “gates”. Of note, Ra rarely talked about the Kabbalah in Human Design.

Ra separated them into 3 major groups: Individual, tribal, and collective. You won’t find those terms in any traditional works on the Kabbalah. Those 3 groups first show up in cultural anthropology as a description of agreed-upon behavior constructs that are common to all people at all times, whether they are primitive or civilized.

According to Wikipedia, the “Sefirot are the 10 attributes/emanations in Kabbalah,^[2] through which Ein Sof (The Infinite) reveals itself and continuously creates both the physical realm and the chain of higher metaphysical realms (Seder hishtalshelus). The term is alternatively transliterated into English as sephirot/sephiroth, singular sefirah/sephirah, etc. … Understanding the sefirot throughout Jewish mysticism is achieved by their correspondence to the human soul. This applies to the outer, Kabbalistic structure of the sefirot. It applies even more to their inner dimensions, which correspond to inner psychological qualities in human perception.”

NEUTRINOS

And finally, neutrinos are the last of all the components. This is the essential glue that holds everything else together. Neutrinos from their discovery (detected by an experiment) in 1956 are subatomic particles emitted in massive quantities that, until 1998, were thought to have no mass. It made sense because they pass through literally everything. Sometime around 1987, Ra worked out the early understanding that neutrinos have mass, and because of that, the planets were able to affect people. Science validated that they had minuscule mass in 1998.

Ra explained it like this:  Imagine two cars. One car is red, the other car is white. They’re moving in opposite directions. As they pass close to each other, they just barely brush. On the white car will be left just a little bit of red paint and on the red car just a little bit of white paint. Likewise, as neutrinos pass through a planet, they pick up some properties from that planet, and just a tiny smidgen of mass is transferred from the neutrino to the planet.

Because there are so many of them, when they pass through a human fetus, they actually have an effect on the entire fetal system including tiny snippets of DNA that haven’t yet completed their job of building specific cells in our organs. This is how the planets affect us at birth and even months before.

This is how the planets affect us at birth and even months before.

For example, let’s say that Mars is in the sky in the area of gate 36 just at the moment you are born. Every second, billions of neutrinos from the sun are passing through Mars and then through you. You would see it in your chart on the conscious side.

Approximately 3 months before your birth, Venus might have been in gate 25. The neutrinos then would have streamed through Venus and through you. You would see it on the unconscious side of your chart. These activations are hard-wired in your brain.

The neutrino flow doesn’t stop when you are born. Planets move and as they move they activate gates in your consciousness. As these gates are activated, they often make connections with your birth activations, perhaps defining a channel and a center. As they continue to move, those channels and centers lose their activation. This is how a planetary transit might possibly affect us.

Conclusion

In sum, the Human Design System is a synthesis of astrology, the I’Ching, genetics, the Hindu Chakra system, the Kabbalah, and neutrinos.

You don’t need any real expertise in any of these components to work with Human Design effectively. However, you do need a basic understanding of the “foundations” of the system, so to speak.

It is so important to grasp that the Human Design System is only a theory. There is no body of experimental science to demonstrate the truth of any of the general statements that HD makes. Even Ra’s story about The Voice and what it said is unverifiable – nobody else was present.

Nonetheless, I think the system that Ra brought into the world is absolutely stunning.

He gave the Human Design System form and meaning and he made it manifest through his efforts. It is stunning in its depth, its scope, and its insight. Ra himself was always very dedicated to and very vocal about treating Human Design as a logical system. He was very adamant that every bit of it should be tested. As a very logical and analytical person, I found that appealing. So my 24+ years of study have focused on HD from an analytical point of view.

Lots of people now teach Human Design wrapped in mystical or spiritual packaging. But I want to talk about what it really is – a brilliant and logical description of human behavior.

If you liked this post, you might also like Tracing the Blueprint: The Origin of Human Design and Human Design 101: Understanding the 6 Postulates of the System.

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