You get a job offer, and before you have even put the phone down there is a small council of advisers around you. “Take it at once, offers like this don't wait!” One friend thinks you should ask for more money, another is convinced you should listen to your intuition, and your mother has probably already reached the question of whether it comes with private health insurance. Love is no different. “Text him.” “Don't text him.” “If he wants to, he'll text.” “It's the twenty-first century, why wait?” In the end you no longer know whether you are making a decision or running an opinion poll.
Human Design starts from an interesting idea: people reach the decisions that are good for them by different roads. The advice “just act”, which for one person opens exactly the right door, manages beautifully for another to open a door through which, six months later, they are desperately looking for a way out. One person needs to feel a response straight away, another needs to let the emotion pass, a third needs to be invited, and a fourth really is the kind of person who can say “I've decided, I'm doing it” and simply go.
That is why the first question in Human Design is far more practical than “Which profession suits me?” or “Is this person the love of my life?”: how do I make decisions, and how do I recognise my own “yes” and my own “no”?
The chart needs your date, exact time and place of birth. The calculation uses two positions — the moment of birth and a second moment roughly 88 degrees of solar arc before it, which is about three months earlier. From them come the activations you see in your body chart.
The time matters, so “I think it was in the afternoon” is a lovely family memory and a rather weak astronomical parameter. If you don't know the exact time, some of the main features may stay the same across a certain range of hours while others can change, so whenever you can, use the time from your birth certificate or another reliable document.
When the chart appears for the first time, most people react more or less like this:
“Is that me?”
Yes.
“Why do I look like the wiring diagram of a lift?”
Because you don't yet know what you're looking at.
In the middle is the body chart — a figure with nine geometric centres joined by lines. At first it really does look as if someone took the human body, a wiring diagram and a bit of geometry and decided to introduce them to each other. Once you understand the basic elements, though, the picture becomes much easier to read.
The nine centres relate to different themes — thinking, expression, direction, will, life energy, emotions, instinct, pressure. Some of yours are coloured in and others are white. In the language of Human Design the coloured ones are called defined and are seen as the more constant ways in which you experience and express that energy. The white ones are undefined, or open, and according to the system they are more sensitive to the influence of your surroundings and of other people.
This becomes much clearer with an example. Imagine that your solar plexus is open and you walk into a room where someone is seething with anger.
“What's wrong with you?”
“With me? Nothing.”
Five minutes later you are irritated too, even though you walked in a moment ago in a perfectly good mood and your only serious concern in life was what to have for dinner. In Human Design an open centre like this is seen as a place where you can strongly feel and amplify someone else's emotional state. Part of the irritation may well be yours, which is why the chart gives you one useful question: “Did this start with me, or did I pick it up after I walked into this room?”
With an open heart centre the story can look different. Someone says: “I don't believe you'll manage it by Friday.” And instead of the sensible “Yes, you're right, not a chance”, what comes out of your mouth is: “It'll be done on Thursday.” From that moment you are defending the family honour, and the task is only an excuse. The chart won't settle this for you, but it can show you why certain situations press your buttons so easily.
The lines between the centres are the channels. When a whole channel is defined, it connects two centres and in the system it is seen as a constant part of the way your chart works. And when you start looking at the centres and channels together, what first looked like a wiring diagram begins to tell a far more connected story.
One of the first things you will see in your chart is your type. In Human Design there are five: Generator, Manifesting Generator, Projector, Manifestor and Reflector. Each has its own strategy — the way in which, according to the system, it is best for it to engage with opportunities and with the people around it.
The Generator has a defined sacral centre, and its strategy is to respond. Responding means there is something real for your body to react to — an offer, a question, a person, an idea, an opportunity. Sitting on the sofa waiting for life to ring the doorbell in person with flowers and a job offer is not part of the deal.
“Do you want to come with us on Saturday?”
Before the head starts with “I should”, “it's the right thing”, “they'll be offended”, there may be one very clear bodily “yes” or “no”. The sacral response is often described exactly like this — as an immediate bodily reaction. The Generator starts to struggle when the mind decides what it “ought” to want and then tries to make the rest of the being follow.
The Manifesting Generator also has a sacral response, but speed often comes right after it. It sees the opportunity, feels the “yes” and is already on step three while everyone else is still discussing step one.
“Hang on, weren't we going to check first?”
“I checked.”
“When?”
“While you were talking.”
This type often experiments, changes direction, comes back, skips something and then discovers that the skipped step was exactly the one it needed. That is part of its way: to move fast, as long as there is first something to respond to, rather than the mind inventing the direction and slamming its foot on the accelerator.
The Projector doesn't have the constant sacral energy of the generator types, and in Human Design its strategy is connected with recognition and the invitation, especially in the big areas such as relationships, work and major life roles. The Projector often sees very clearly what isn't working for someone else, which creates one of the most human temptations in the world.
“Do you want me to tell you where you're going wrong?”
“No.”
“Fine, but I already know.”
And that is exactly the difference between seeing and being invited to share what you see. When someone asks of their own accord “What do you think?”, the very same words can be heard in a completely different way.
The Manifestor is the type whose strategy is to inform the people who will be affected before acting. The aim is simple: for people to know what is coming, so that there is no resistance when it sets off.
“Tomorrow I'm moving the desk into the other room.”
That sounds very different from the situation where everyone else comes home to find the desk gone, the bookcase standing in its place and, apparently, a coup having taken place in the house without anyone being told.
The Reflector is the rarest type and has all nine centres undefined. In Human Design it is strongly connected with its surroundings and the people around it, and for big decisions the traditional strategy is to give it about one lunar cycle. This is about decisions that can really change your life — a job, a move, a serious relationship, a big commitment. For tea or coffee, twenty-eight days are not required.
Knowing your type is interesting, but when you have to decide whether to take the job, start the relationship or sign the contract, the next important question arrives: what in myself can I trust when I decide? In Human Design this is called inner authority.
With sacral authority the reaction can be very immediate. Someone asks: “Do you want this job?” and the body responds before the mind has prepared a 46-slide presentation titled “Pros and Cons”.
With emotional authority the picture is different. You get an offer at 11:00 and you're over the moon: “Yes! This is it! At last!” By 19:30 you've reached “What have I done? I don't even want this.” The next morning both extremes are a little quieter. According to Human Design, that is why with emotional authority clarity comes after the wave has had time to change — the peak of excitement and the bottom of doubt are only two points on it.
There are other authorities too: splenic, ego, self-projected, mental and lunar — you will see them under exactly these names in your own chart. That is why two people of the same type can make decisions in different ways. “I'm a Projector” or “I'm a Generator” is only the start of the story.
The most interesting thing, to my mind, is to take your strategy and authority and watch them in real situations. Reading the description and deciding at once “Yes, that's me!” is easy, because a person can recognise themselves in a good many well-written descriptions.
Say you are a Generator and a friend suggests a trip. Instead of going straight to the calendar, the ticket prices and the question of whether you own the right jacket, first notice your reaction to the suggestion itself. If you are a Projector and you have a brilliant idea for how a colleague could solve a problem, see what happens when you wait until they actually ask for your opinion. If you have emotional authority and receive an important offer that makes you want to shout “Yes!” straight away, give yourself time and see whether the same “yes” is still with you once the first excitement has passed.
You may find that the system describes something you have long been doing naturally. You may spot a habit you had never noticed. Or some part may not speak to you at all, and that is information too. Human Design is at its most interesting when you watch it in your own life, rather than turning the chart into a new boss who now also tells you when you are allowed to answer a message.
At FatedWays you can first simply calculate your chart. You enter the date, time and place of birth and you get the body chart, your type, strategy, authority, profile, definition and channels, along with a short explanation of the centres in your chart. If you have already entered your birth details in “The Celestial Teacher”, there is no need to fill them in again — the chart uses the same details.
That means you can come in out of pure curiosity with the question “All right, what type am I?” and a few minutes later have some far more interesting questions. Why do I make my worst decisions exactly when I'm in a hurry? Why do certain people tire me out so much? Why do I feel I can do anything in one setting, while in another, after two hours, all I want is for nobody to speak to me? Why do I say “yes” when my whole body has actually said “no”, and I have decided to hold a meeting and overturn the result?
The chart itself is free. You pay if you want a reading — you can ask a specific question of your own chart, look at two charts together, or choose a full reading, in which the separate parts come together into one whole and it is looked at how exactly your combination shows up in your decisions, work, relationships and the situations that keep repeating in your life.
For subscribers there are also 28 days of practice with the strategy of your type, because reading “wait to respond” is one thing, and remembering what that means for you at 14:17 on a Tuesday when an offer arrives is quite another. Every day you get a short question that you answer with a single tap, and on the fourteenth and the last day you can see what has actually changed once you started paying attention to the way you make decisions.
And that is what I find most interesting about Human Design. You may have spent your whole life hearing “Think more”, “Act faster”, “Don't wait”, “Take the risk”, “Be sensible”, “Listen to your feelings” and fifteen more pieces of advice that contradict each other beautifully. And then a chart asks you a far more personal question: how do you work?
What type are you? There's no longer any need to guess.
Human Design is a system created by Ra Uru Hu. FatedWays is not affiliated with Jovian Archive and does not present its official materials; the chart is calculated and drawn here, and the texts are our own.
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