Channel

Meaning

A channel is one of the lines of the bodygraph, Human Design’s chart of nine centres. Each channel joins two gates that sit in two different centres. There are 36 of them, and together they draw the network that links the head of the chart to its base.

Every one of the 64 gates belongs to a channel. Sixty gates have exactly one. Four gates, 10, 20, 34 and 57, belong to three channels each, which is how 64 gates make 36 channels.

A channel is defined when both of its gates are activated, that is, when a planet stands in each of them. It does not matter which planets, nor which layer brought them. One gate may come from the Personality, the planets at birth. The other may come from the Design, the planets about three months earlier. See Personality and Design.

Human Design reads a defined channel as a theme that is always there, whoever one is with. Its meaning combines its two gates. Gate 34’s power and gate 20’s presence make Charisma; gate 64’s confusion and gate 47’s realisation make Abstraction. Each channel has its own page in this encyclopedia.

When only one gate of a channel is activated, the tradition calls it a hanging gate. It is half a channel, a theme that reaches out for its partner.

In practice

• Centres: a channel is the only thing that defines a centre. When a channel is defined, both its centres are too. A centre with active gates but no defined channel stays undefined.
• Type: the type is read from the channels. A defined Sacral makes a Generator. A chain of channels from a motor to the Throat makes a Manifestor, or a Manifesting Generator when the Sacral is defined too. With no defined channel at all, the chart is a Reflector.
• Authority: the defined centres, in a fixed order, give the authority.
• Definition: the definition counts how many separate groups the defined channels make.
• Circuits: the tradition sorts the channels into circuits, such as the Individual, Collective and Tribal circuitry. Each circuit has its own way of sharing energy with others.

Human Design also reads how two charts meet through their channels. When one person has one gate of a channel and the other has its partner, the channel is completed between them. The tradition calls this an electromagnetic connection and associates it with attraction. When one person has the whole channel and the other only one of its gates, it speaks of a compromise. There, the one with the full channel tends to set the tone. When both have the same channel, it speaks of companionship, an easy familiarity. Ulune draws one bodygraph at a time and does not compare two charts in this way.

Across traditions

• The Kabbalah: in the Tree of Life, paths join the spheres much as channels join the centres. Ra Uru Hu named the Kabbalah among the sources of the bodygraph.
• The I Ching: each channel pairs two hexagrams, one for each of its gates. Read together, they often echo the channel’s theme.

Origin and history

Ra Uru Hu taught the bodygraph from 1987, after an experience on Ibiza. He set out the 36 channels and their names with Lynda Bunnell in The Definitive Book of Human Design (2011). Chetan Parkyn’s Human Design (2009) presents them for general readers. Ulune gives each channel a short name of its own, close to the tradition’s.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune places thirteen bodies at birth and thirteen at the Design moment, when the Sun stood exactly 88° earlier. Each of the 26 activations colours one gate. A channel is defined when both of its gates are coloured, from either layer or both. Its two centres are then defined.

Ulune records whether the Personality alone, the Design alone, or neither alone completes the channel. On the bodygraph, each half of a channel takes the colour of its own gate. Ink means the Personality, red the Design, ink dashed with red both. Defined channels are drawn thicker, and a hanging gate lights only its own half. The Personality and Design views keep one layer each, so a channel made of one gate from each disappears there.

Type, authority and definition are computed from the defined channels of both layers together. Without a birth time, Ulune casts the chart at noon and again every hour of that day. Any channel that another hour could define or undo is drawn faint.

Correspondences