Human Design, explained piece by piece
Human Design is a system created by Ra Uru Hu in 1987 that combines astrology, the I Ching, the Kabbalah, the Hindu-Brahmin chakra system and ideas from quantum physics into a single chart called the body graph. It is read from your birth date, time and place, and it gives you a structured way to look at how you are designed to operate. It is not a prediction of what will happen to you.
Start here
Each piece of your chart answers a different question. Together they build into a fuller picture of how you are designed to operate.
Pick the piece you are curious about, or work through them in order below.
- TypesThe five types, with the Strategy, Signature and aura of each.
- ProfilesThe 12 profiles and the six lines they are built from.
- Gates and Gene KeysAll 64 gates, their centers and channels, with each Gene Key's Shadow, Gift and Siddhi.
- CentersThe nine centers, and what defined and undefined mean.
- AuthorityThe seven kinds of inner authority and how to find yours.
- Incarnation CrossThe four gates that describe your life theme.
How the pieces fit
Your type and Strategy describe the basic way you are built to engage with life and the correct way to initiate action, whether that is waiting for an invitation, responding to what comes to you, or something else entirely. Your Authority is how you actually decide, once Strategy has done its work and narrowed down what is actually yours to consider.
Your centers show which parts of you run on a consistent, defined pattern and which parts stay open and take in the world around you, shifting with whoever is nearby. Your profile describes the role you tend to play while you do all of this, built from two numbers drawn from your chart's Sun lines. Your gates are the specific themes activated in your chart, in Human Design terms and in the Gene Keys' language of Shadow, Gift and Siddhi.
Your Incarnation Cross draws all of that toward a single life theme, built from four gates: your conscious and unconscious Sun and Earth. None of these pieces work alone. A chart reads as one connected whole, and the point of learning the pieces separately is to be able to see that whole more clearly when you put them back together.
Human Design was developed by Ra Uru Hu. The Gene Keys are the work of Richard Rudd. This guide is Project Me's own summary of both systems.