Human Design is a comprehensive system for understanding ourselves and our purposes. If you believe such a thing is possible.

The system was channeled by Ra Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower) in 1987 and combines elements of astrology, chakras, Kabbalah, I Ching and quantum physics. I'm actually most skeptical of that last one.

I don't know or understand a lot about astrology. I did read someone say that if we are the microcosm, our Solar System is a really convenient macrocosm, because it's big enough to see but not too big to observe (don't try to find the quote, that is some serious paraphrasing plus also probably colouring it with why it made sense to me at the time). I do believe in a fractal universe, so I honestly cannot discount it. And I am such an obvious Pisces.

Chakras I do know a lot about. I have a pretty good understanding of what they are, although I admit I keep forgetting what some of the lower chakras represent.

For those who don't know, chakras are energy centres within the human body - or I think of them more as interface points between our central nervous system and the layers or the aura, or energy body. The energy body does literally look like an onion, and if you imagine each layer has a power cord and it plugs into a power strip that runs the length of our bodies (perineum to just above our heads). Each layer has a designated socket, or chakra, to connect to.

The mystic Jewish branch of Kabbalah is contained within the Tree of Life. History's first infographic, if you will.

I will do a whole post on Kabbalah and Chakras so I'll just give some fundamentals now.

The Tree of Life explains how energy becomes solid, travelling down the Tree from Keter, at the top, which is Source (but the source that IS something rather than that which is POTENTIALLY something) to Malchut, at the bottom, which is our 4D world. Or, if you prefer, how 4D humans can ascend to connect with their essential nature. Each circle on the tree, or Sephira (plural Sephiroth), is a transformer, ramping the energy up or down.

You will notice almost no consistency of spelling for Kabbalistic words because they are Anglicised from Hebrew.

But one spelling difference means something else: Kabbalah is the original Jewish mystical system; Cabala is the Christian form, developed to try to convince Jews that Christianity wasn't that different after all (spoiler alert: it didn't work; you'll not see very many references to this version); and Qabala(h) which is the Hermetic system.

Kabbalah is such an amazing, logical way of viewing reality, that early magick users wanted to use it for their own systems. "Hermetic" refers to Hermes Trismegistus (who may or may not have been a real person) who mastered alchemy, astrology and theurgy. Hermetic is a wide branch of occult practice.

I do not know much about i Ching. But I do know it comprises all the possible combinations of 6 lines, either whole or broken, and they appear all around the outside of this bodygraph so that's good enough for me!

This seems a good time to introduce the bodygraph. I'll probably do some more blog posts about the bodygraph, what it contains, and how to read it, or create some resources, but like Kabbalah, I'll just hit a high point here.

Each person's bodygraph is unique. Unless two people were born at the same minute in the same city. Which is absolutely feasible. So not exactly unique but ... there are a lot of different ones, so even amongst people your own age, there will be lots of different charts.

The shapes inside the body are referred to as centres. They are head, ajna, throat, G, heart, spleen, solar plexus and sacral. These correspond somewhat to the chakras so maybe as I understand them better, I can relate them to Kabbalah, too. I'm really just getting started with HD.

The lines between centres are channels. The numbers at the ends of the channels are called gates, and these correspond to the numbers and hexagrams around the outside of this illustration.

So I said I was skeptical about Ra's claims that HD was based in quantum physics. Here's why:

Planets and stars shoot out particles called neutrinos. They pass through solid matter constantly, and don't seem to even notice it (or we) are there. So far so scientific.

Not only do neutrinos not notice us, there is no measurable evidence that we notice neutrinos. But the Voice that gave HD to Ra explained that at the moment our skin hits the air, we are imprinted by data contained in the neutrinos that pass through us. This is how the positions of solar bodies affect our design.

Not only are we imprinted at the moment of birth - and this is our conscious stuff - we are also imprinted about three months before birth with an unconscious design.

I am very unclear how we are imprinted three months before birth but not one or four or literally any other day. Or how we can be imprinted at birth.

I am willing to believe that neutrinos carry data. They have no electric charge, which is a null unit of data, they have half a unit of spin (no I don't know what that means), they have a mass which varies but is very nearly zero. They carry a charged particle called a lepton. And because this is quantum physics we're talking about, a single neutrino can carry the potential of a bunch of different characteristics that are mutually exclusive, The neutrino just hasn't made up its mind yet which is real. Which sounds like a wave, not a particle, but that's pretty much the extent of my understanding of quantum physics.

There is no reason to believe that neutrinos imprint anything on a fetus or newborn. There is no way to measure such a thing one way or another. I'm more inclined to believe it is some sort of entanglement, but there's no way to measure that, either.

So given my skepticism, you may wonder why I use Human Design at all. It sounds like a bunch of hogwash.

I use it simply because I, and hundreds of thousands of other people, find Human Design charts to be useful and accurate. This is as close as we are ever likely to get to being able to test it. We may never fully understand how it works, but my experience is just that it does.

If you'd like to see your own Human Design, there are loads of websites that will create them and most will provide a very basic interpretation. 

Karen Curry Parker has taken HD forward into what she calls Quantum Human Design. You can get your chart done on her site at https://freehumandesignchart.com/

Here's my chart, from the QHD site:

Until next time, fly safely.

The Alchemist