03. Main Human Design Concepts & Lingo

Kelsey: 00:00:00

The mind is only able to operate via duality via the binary. That's why it's so important to let the mind be the passenger, passenger consciousness, and let the body lead the way, which is how it how we've always been designed to be Because the mind can only orient us to duality, and the body can hold all of the secret third things, all of the the non binary aspects of our reality, the multidimensional aspects of our reality. Welcome to the Living Your Design podcast. I'm your experimenter, Kelsey Rose Tortorice. This podcast is an audio only release of the full length in-depth human design foundations course I've been teaching over the last several years.

It is a no bullshit, comprehensive, embodied introduction to the human design system that will challenge your ego mind and support you in your process of reuniting with the unique wisdom of your body. In episode one, I speak a bit about the process that led me to releasing this course for free in podcast form, and I offer a few notes that might be useful to contextualize and clarify what you'll hear in this episode and beyond. I recommend giving that short intro episode a listen if you haven't yet. The LYD podcast is part of a larger living body of work, a growing archive of my teachings about consciousness through the languages of astrology and human design, hosted in an online community space where I stay in orbit with my students, mentees, alumni, peers, and collaborators. For more information about how to connect with me and tune in to my archives and ongoing live teachings, including how to access the original LYD course complete with videos and slides, stay tuned to the podcast or check out patreon.com/kelseyrosetorte.

Thank you for tuning in to my transmission of living your design. It's a deeply personal and somewhat vulnerable share that I feel honored, humbled, and excited to release into the world. I hope that it helps you remember and come home to yourself. Now we're gonna move into the main concepts and lingo within human design. And I kind of said this in the first part of unit one, but I wanna say it again here that especially everything from this point forward are going to be terms and lingo and concepts and principles that we are constantly returning to.

ign was the knowledge that in: 1781

to the discovery of Uranus in: 1781

There's a correlation there. Modern astrologers often say with gaining these more subtle senses, gaining access to different dimensions of our consciousness. So to me, this seven to nine centered mutation, when I first learned of it just made sense based on that premise that I had already learned within my astrology studies. So I understand this to be aligned with an expansion of consciousness that came when the discovery of Uranus came, the development of our additional senses, our additional access to new awarenesses. Another thing I wanna point out is that human design is a system that includes various binaries.

We're often talking in terms of binary within human design. We talk about homogenization versus differentiation. I've already talked about that a bit. We talk about the personality versus the design or the conscious versus the unconscious, or sometimes referred to as mind versus body, which is somehow both, sometimes used synonymously with personality versus design, but is also its own thing, mind versus body. There's a little trickiness there we'll return to.

We talk about the binary of self versus not self or true self versus not self. Within the centers, we talk about defined versus undefined. And so I just wanna point that out that we are orienting to the binary in our study of human design, in our experiment with human design, and it's still important to be mindful of binary traps so far as good bad and more morality judgements. The way, one way that I kind of look at it is like we are these multidimensional non binary beings and reality is not binary from certain vantage points with certain awarenesses, but this third dimension that deals with time and space and the mind, the mind is only able to operate via duality via the binary. That's why it's so important to let the mind be the passenger, passenger consciousness, and let the body lead the way, which is how it, how we've always been designed to be because the mind can only orient us to duality and the body can hold all of the secret third things, all of the the non binary aspects of our reality, the multidimensional aspects of our reality.

But we understand the system of human design on a mental level first from the mind, from the realm of the mind. And so these various binaries that we use within human design are just tools for us to be able to take it in from a mental place. They're not the end. They're not the end all be all, and they're not the only truth. They're just a facet of how we're able to interpret the system and the knowledge.

One of the main premises, principles of human design is its suggestion that every individual has both the autonomy and the tools to navigate life according to their own inner wisdom. And human design, the knowledge of human design serves as an instructional manual for how you, as a unique individual, navigate life in a way that no other person navigates or will see or will interface with life. And in my opinion, human design invites us to look at the ideas of fate and free will in a new and nuanced way. My orientation towards fate and free will changed and continues to change and be a big question mark, but also clarify in some ways, spiralically, through my own experimentation with human design. So human design suggests that we have a very specific energetic role, function, and frequency.

So, again, that idea of absolute mechanics. Right? They are a limitation of our form. And that the only free will we really have is in how we adjust our awareness of that specific fixed energetic role function and frequency. So when once we're aware of it, once we see it, once we reckon with that limitation, we can choose our awareness can choose as an iffy word, but can surrender to it.

Right? So one way that I've I've looked at this for myself in my own study is that the only choice we have is to surrender. And is that a choice at all? Right? We don't have the power to change it.

We have the power to surrender, to accept. And in that surrendering, in that acceptance, in that passenger consciousness, the mind accepting and watching so the body can lead, that is where we can have a different experience, perhaps an easier experience, perhaps a more aligned experience, perhaps one with less suffering, but it's not we still are not in control. Right? There is still an absolute surrender to the, the absolutism of our form. So notice as this comes in, what feels uncomfortable about it?

What feels true about it? This is the beginning of your own experimentation with human design is taking everything that I bring in and filtering it through your own process, noticing which parts of it you want to make right or wrong, being aware that that is a function of your mind. And instead attuning to bringing your attention to what feels like what in your body, which again, human design is the instruction manual for how. So notice it now. But as we move through the content of the LYD curriculum, there is going to be very specific, practical tools for you to notice how.

Human design is an experiment. It is all your own and self verifiable. There's no rules, only tools to support your awareness and witnessing your experience. Continuing in the thread of sort of orienting you to language often used, You'll hear people including myself in human design, say things like, when did you meet human design? Or how long have you been in your experiment or in the experiment?

Some people in the experiment will call human design, a living entity. And I know that stuff that stuff can feel really creepy at first to some, not to everyone. So just, again, notice how these things hit your body. Notice how it feels when people talk to you about the experiment or meeting human design or human design being this living entity, and just trust your own body to guide you in and out of those frameworks and those orientations as is correct for you. If the language is weird to you, if it doesn't feel true or resonant or creeps you out in any way, just don't use it.

You're in charge of every single aspect of how you engage with human design. In a similar vein, others are always gonna have things to say about their perception of your experiment. If you if you enter your human design experiment and you really surrender to your form, to your strategy and your authority, there will be people in your life not in the experiment that are gonna have a lot to say and think about that, and there are gonna be people either in your life or who you witness online, me, other teachers, guides, Instagram human design influencers, who are going to be sharing their experience, maybe from a real sense place of clarity and truth, maybe from a very dogmatic distorted ego mind place is both. There's a lot of both out there. And all of those things have the potential to be external authorities or influencers of your understanding of your own design, but all of those things are external authorities.

They are not your inner unique subjective authority. Everything that anyone else has to say about their perception of human design in general or about your human design and your human design experiment is subjective and is not your truth, and that includes anything I ever, ever say. No one's experiment is the same. No one is watching the same movie. We'll talk a lot more about the movie as we get into definition, and conditioning and openness and deconditioning.

But for now, I guess I'll just read this human design quote, from one of my teachers, Alakha Nandias, who often refers to life as your movie. Your life, your experiment is your movie, and no one else is watching that same movie besides you. It's a very Sagittarian way of thinking. I'm very Sagittarian. Alok is a Sagittarius sun.

So that's always the piece of the Zodiac that I tend to tune into when I think about your unique history, your unique movie, your unique vantage point and perception. So Alok said, supposedly human design is the absolute of the mechanics of the Maya. It says we all have a unique Maya. We all have a unique movie. So you've got to see for yourself if this has absolute value for you and for your movie, which is not my movie.

So starting to get into the actual, content concepts that we'll be looking at in Living Your Design, this is basically it. This is gonna be our curriculum. There are four energy types, also sometimes referred to as aura types. Each of the types has their own aura, strategy, and themes. So for example, all generators have what's called an open and enveloping aura, a strategy of waiting to respond, and signature theme of satisfaction, and a not self theme of frustration.

We have that whole group of qualities for each of the four aura types, and that's a huge part of what this curriculum will show. Authority is impacted by, but not entirely tied to type. So there's a list of different authorities that someone can have, and usually it's a center in the body, one particular function of your actual physical form that is your trusted inner guidance system. In rare cases, instead of it being a center, it's a process for some projectors and for reflectors that we'll talk about. And authority is not explicitly tied to type, which all I mean by that is not all generators have the same authority, not all manifestors have the same authority, etcetera, but certain types can only have certain authorities.

So we'll break that down in the latter part of LYD. But everything above type, strategy, themes, and authority are all based on center definition or openness. So right here, I have an image of a body graph. I don't have any channels filled in in this body graph. Those are the lines, but I do have six of the nine centers colored in, which is depicting that they are defined.

So these are the six centers that I have defined in my body graph and the three that I have undefined in my body graph. And your center definition and how they do or don't connect to each other through channels is what gives you all of the above. K. So type strategy, just reading this section again. This sec I forgot I can't use my mouse.

This section again. Type strategy, themes, authority are all based on which centers you have defined and which ones you have open, and that's a fundamental concept within design and what is depicted in the body graph. And so again, this middle chunk here, this is essentially what we're learning in LYD. We're covering these basics of type strategy authority themes, but we're rooting them in why that type, why that aura, why that strategy, why that authority, why those themes based on the functionality of your defined and open centers. Once you understand the concept of definition and openness, and you understand the basic function of each of the centers and what it means for you to have, what centers you have defined, defined, and which centers you have undefined, undefined, then these practical tools of a type strategy and authority and themes make sense because you can feel them in your own body based on the fundamental understanding of definition and centers through the body graph.

Another main piece of language that we'll talk about a lot is not self, which is language used to refer to the characteristics of a certain type of being out of their strategy. So I use generators for an example. The majority of the population strategy is wait to respond. When generators are not waiting to respond, when they're initiating instead, that's their not self strategy or the strategy of their not self. But we use the word not self in a lot of different areas.

So in addition to that, we'll also use not self as, like, the theme, the signature theme for generators of satisfaction for the not self theme for generators is frustration. When they don't use their strategy or they use the not self strategy, generators will likely experience frustration. We also refer to the not self when we're talking about characteristics of any of the individual centers being stuck in conditioned patterns. So I'll talk about my undefined Ajna, this second white center here often, because it shows up a lot in everything I do. And so I will be meta and name it to you, name for you when I know I'm in the not self of my undefined Ajna.

And that's what I'll say. I'll say, oh, this is a not self Ajna thing. And then profile, which we are gonna talk about in this unit on the next slide, is not connected to any of the above and is typically not or I should say it's not as connected to any of the above as they all are to each other. Typically not offered in LYD, but I refer to it in passing so much, even when I'm teaching this content that I just want to at least introduce it at the top here, and then we'll add it at the end as like an extra unit to dive into a little bit more. Okay.

So getting into profile. And I'm just doing a really quick overview of profile here, and then we're not revisiting profile, and we're not looking at it really in-depth until the end of LYD once we've actually gotten through the LYD content. So here's a super brief profile orientation. In human design, rather than transiting through 12 signs, like in the zodiac, the planets move through these 12 signs cyclically, Instead, the planets transit through 64 gates. So we take the same three sixty degrees of sky that in astrology is referred to as the zodiac, and instead of dividing it into 12 signs, in human design, it's divided into 64 gates, 64 sections of sky.

And, this is where the I Ching comes in. This is extra information, but the 64 gates in Human Design or of the Rave Mandala, which I'll show you a picture of in a moment, are corresponding to the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, an ancient Chinese divinatory tool. And then we further subdivide those gates. So for example, we would say the sun is right now in Gate 51, or we would say you were born with the sun in Gate 12, right? Instead of Gemini, because gate 12 is inside of Gemini.

We would say the sun, your sun is in gate 60, sorry, gate 12. But within each of those 64 gates sorry. There's a bug. Within each of those 64 gates, we continue to subdivide each of the 64 gates into six, what we call lines or profile lines, and your profile, which you probably already know if you've decided to take LYD, but you might not know that much about, your profile are the two numbers usually depicted with a slash in between them. So for example, I'm a five two, and it'll say on my design that I'm a five slash two emotional manifestor.

Five two is my profile. Those profile numbers come from the line that your sun is in of its gate. So you've got 64 gates. Your sun is in one of those gates, and each of those gates are further subdivided into six lines. And your sun has two placements, more on that in a bit, but those profile numbers come from your sun's placement.

So basically, one through six, these lines one through six are six repeating sections throughout the zodiac. As we as planets move through the zodiac, they move through lines one through six of a gate, and then they move through lines one through six of the next gate, line one through six of the next gate, so on and so forth until it's completed all 106 360 of the zodiac. And your profile comes from your sun's placements, which then takes on the characteristics of the line it's in. So just a really brief orientation to these six lines, to these six characteristics that planets take on as they move through the subdivisions of the gates, which is the subdivision of the zodiac. So I'm gonna go from bottom up here.

One, two, three, four, five, six. All of us have two numbers in our profile. Most profile combinations have one number from the lower trigram and one from the upper, but the one three profile only has lower trigram characteristics, and the four six profile only has upper trigram roles. But all the other 10 profile combinations will have one upper trigram and one lower trigram number, but they could be in any order. They could be the upper one first and the or the lower one first.

I'll say more about that placement in a moment and a lot more at the end of LYD when we're officially covering profile. But for now, I just wanna go over the basics of these lines. So I've already mentioned the trigrams. I see the sixth lines, the six lines as a a process that we repeat over and over. So I also see this as a process that we're constantly moving through regardless of what our actual profile is.

We all engage with every step of this process over and over throughout our lives. The lower trigram, sometimes referred to as the personal trigram, is the part of a process where we're taking things in and we're learning, and it's a personal process of understanding. Once we get to the upper trigram, or what's sometimes referred to as the transpersonal trigram, we're taking what was learned and and understood and synthesized and confirmed in the lower trigram, and we're now above that in the transpersonal realm. So this has something to do with interacting with the other, influencing the other. So the investigator, the hermit, and the martyr are people who are parts of us that are engaging in a personal process having to do only with ourselves, not focused on the other, but the opportunist, the heretic, and the role model are building on that personal process in the transpersonal realm.

So just quickly going through them, the first line is referred to as the investigator. This is the part of the process where we're just taking in information. We're building a foundation through learning, through research, through investigation. The second part of the process, the second line referred to as the hermit, is we're done researching, we're done taking it in, now we're hermitting and we're practicing. Sometime the herm sometimes the hermit is also referred to as the natural.

The two is where we're taking what we researched, what we investigated, and now we're marinating in that information so that it becomes natural. And we can only do that when we're in our own energy, the second line, the hermit. Three, the final part of the learning process of the the personal lower trigram part referred to as the martyr is where we take what we learned, one, and what we practiced and got natural with during the hermit phase, two, and we actually go apply it and we try it for real. We get our hands dirty and we try it. So the three is the martyr because they they make the sacrifice for all of us of going and actually doing the thing to find out what works and what doesn't.

So it can be kind of a messy process, that third line process. The ones and the twos are a little more theoretical, and then the three is like, here we go. Let's try it. I'm willing to, like, you know, get a bruise, bump into things to see what actually works. So it's the the one and the three to me are like these bookends of the learning process.

You find things out with the one, and then with the three, you fuck around a bit and you find out for real. When you get to the upper trigram, the four, one thing to note about how these profile numbers relate to one another is that the four is what we call harmonic with the one because both the four and the one are foundational. The four is the foundation of the upper trigram. So when we get to the four, some of the themes of the one of, like, building a foundation and finding everything out will still be present with the four, but the four is doing this on a relational transpersonal level. Fours are looking for opportunities to influence and be influenced by the other.

They work laterally building networks of connection where they can take what they now know and they can spread that through their network laterally. They're looking for opportunities for that. Fives, harmonic with the two. Right? So with the one, we're finding out, we're building our knowledge base.

With the four, we're building that network for influence. And then with the two and the five, it's sort of like synthesizing, getting more in-depth with the foundation that was built in the one and the four. So while the four is sort of like at that entry point of how do I influence the other? Where are my opportunities for exchanges of information and learning and knowledge on the transpersonal realm? The five, the heretic, is concerned not necessarily with that, like, one by one exchange based opportunity for influence.

The five is looking for how can I get really good at carrying this information far and wide? So the five, the heretic is the messenger, the universalist who takes that fourth line process. The fourth line builds the foundation of transpersonal information exchange, but the five takes it and says, how can this be broadcast far and wide? So fives bring universal messages or the fifth line part of the process is often associated with like teaching because a fourth line is going to spread the information through its network where the fifth line is gonna go, how can I share this in a way that will project out and reach as many and influence as many people as possible? So it's sharing the information in a more universalized way.

And then the six is the ultimate. The six is the embodied version of whatever it was that was just learned, practiced, concretized, shared, broadcasted. The six is the embodiment of it. So the six, the role model is I'm not there's nothing I'm finding out anymore. In fact, I'm not even actually all that concerned with this process I just went through of one through five, because now I have reached the pinnacle of that.

I am embodying that, and I'm actually kind of detached from it as I model it to you because what comes after the six but the one of the next gate? So the six has this transitional energy to it where it's simultaneously embodying everything from the process before, but looking ahead to something new. And we're gonna talk so much more about profile when we get to the added bonus of profile at the end because, again, profile is not usually in LYD, but I wanted to include it. But I wanted to orient you to that basic framework because I will talk about it. And then to kind of apply that to your profile, again, you have two numbers, and I'll mention why when we look at the body graph in the next unit.

I'll talk about why you have two numbers, why you have two sun placements, giving you two numbers in your profile. But for now, just note that whichever two of these characteristics or roles or traits you have, you're gonna probably relate to them a little differently. The first number in your profile is the role, character, or traits that you consciously identify with that are led by your mind. Excuse me. And the second number in your profile is the role, character, and traits that are unconscious and led by your form.

So perhaps already right off the bat, you resonated a little bit more with one than the other, but the absolute mechanical nature of your form requires the non negotiable nature of your your second profile number as well. Alright. One other kind of concept within human design that I'll talk about quite a bit, and so I wanna orient you to here, is that there's a very evolutionary orientation to how a lot of this information is laid out and conceptualized. One of them is the profile lines and color tones and bases, which I'll mention color tones and bases in unit two, when we look at the body graph and the Rave Mandala, but even just the profile lines, which we looked at on this slide here, they tell a story of evolution. We start with the one we evolve to the six, and then we start with the one again and build on that.

ings until pretty recently in: 1781

So that's out of the scope of human of LYD, but it's one of the ways that we see evolution in the knowledge of human design as a whole. There's an evolution of type Neanderthals were all reflectors. I'm sorry. I don't know at what point generators came online, but I believe generators were the next evolution. Manifestors came online when we started to have complex language and started to organize in civilizations.

ich are the newest type as of: 1781

ve, or if you've heard of the: 2027

I've already talked about it a bunch. This is a fundamental concept within human design knowledge. It's probably the biggest component of LYD is orienting to the fact that we have all been conditioned and human design is a tool for your specific path of deconditioning. I will talk more about conditioning and deconditioning in unit two, after we go over the body graph, because I can place these concepts in specific functions of your being, and then it becomes really a significant basis for how we talk about the rest of what we'll talk about in LYD. Thanks for listening to the Living Your Design podcast.

Stay tuned for the rest of the curriculum. New batches of episodes are released every Tuesday. For immediate complete access to the full course and to explore other perks like learning and community, extracurricular astrology and human design workshops, and meeting with me face to face, go to patreon.com/kelseyroestore. You can also listen to me on my other podcasts, the Maya games and conversations with the zodiac, and find me on Instagram at kelsey rose tour.