Human Design turns your birth date, time and place into a chart. Here is how that chart is built and how to read it, without the jargon.
What is Human Design?
It is a system created in 1987 by a Canadian man who went by the name Ra Uru Hu. He mixed pieces of astrology, the Chinese I Ching, the Kabbalah and the chakra system. From your birth data it draws a chart with 9 centers, 36 possible links between them and 64 gates.
Fans see it as a user manual for themselves. At Cartaora, we treat it as a tool for reflection and a bit of fun. No study shows that it works, and we explain why on our page about the criticism. That does not stop it from raising useful questions about how you make decisions or manage your pace.
How your chart is calculated
The calculation looks at two moments. The first is your birth, which gives your conscious side. The second is about 88 days earlier, when the Sun sat 88 degrees behind its birth position. That gives your unconscious side, also called the design.
For each of those moments we record where 13 bodies were: the Sun, the Earth, the Moon, the lunar nodes and the planets. That makes 26 positions. The zodiac is split into 64 gates of 5.625 degrees each, so every position falls into a gate, and then into one of that gate's 6 lines.
Your birth time matters most for the Moon, which moves to a new gate in less than a day. A few minutes off can sometimes change your profile or your authority, so use the time written on your birth certificate if you can.
How to read your chart, step by step
- Your type. The starting point. It describes how you use your drive day to day. There are 5.
- Your strategy. A simple rule tied to your type: respond, inform, wait for an invitation, or wait a full month. Each type page explains it.
- Your authority. The way of deciding that tends to serve you best. For some it is a gut response, for others it is letting a feeling settle for a few days. There are 8.
- Your profile. Two numbers, like 5/2 or 1/3. They describe how you learn and the role other people tend to give you. There are 12.
- Your 9 centers. Each one is defined (colored in) or open (white). A defined center works in much the same way all the time. An open one picks up what the people around you are going through.
- Your definition. It tells you whether your defined centers form one connected block or a few separate islands.
- Your channels. A channel links two centers when the gates at both of its ends are active. Channels are what make a center defined.
- Your gates. The finest level of detail. The gates of your Sun and Earth carry the most weight.
Worth keeping in mind
A chart describes tendencies, never facts about you. If a sentence does not sound like you, drop it. And please do not make a health, money or relationship decision based on your chart alone.
Curious whether your type is rare? We calculated 20,000 charts to answer that with real numbers: see the frequencies. If you want to see real charts, we published those of 40 well-known people whose birth times are well documented.