Gate 48 · Depth

Meaning

Gate 48, Depth, is one of the seven gates of the Spleen, the centre of instinct and intuition. Its theme is depth of knowledge.

Human Design pictures this gate as a well, a store of understanding gathered patiently. Someone with it often studies a subject thoroughly and gives solid answers.

Each gate of the Spleen carries a fear in the tradition’s teaching, and this one is the fear of not knowing enough. It can show as hesitation: waiting to feel ready before teaching, sharing or applying what one knows. Human Design reads this kindly, as a signal to notice. Often the person is ready well before they feel it.

The tradition places gate 48 in the Logic circuit, also called the Understanding circuit, part of the Collective circuit group. It tests patterns and improves them for everyone’s future; gate 48 gives them depth.

In practice

A gate is coloured when a planet stands in it at birth or in the Design, as Gate and Personality and Design explain.

• By a Personality planet, at birth: the person tends to know their own depth, and may know their doubt about it just as well.
• By a Design planet, about three months earlier: others often see the depth first. They come for advice before the person thinks of themselves as an expert.
• By both: the theme is doubled, known and lived.
• Alone, as a hanging gate: without gate 16, the well waits for a way out into the world. People with gate 16, Skills, bring the enthusiasm for practice that lets the knowledge be used.
• Completed into a channel: with gate 16, the channel of the Wavelength is defined, joining the Spleen to the Throat. It makes talent steady: deep understanding joined to the will to practise. Years of repetition often turn it into mastery.

When this is a chart’s only channel, Ulune finds a Projector with splenic authority.

Across traditions

• The I Ching: hexagram 48, Ching, places Water above Wood. Its trigrams are K’an, the Abysmal, over Sun, the Gentle. Wilhelm titles it The Well: a wooden bucket lifting water up from below. Legge’s text stresses that the well serves everyone: “those who come and those who go can draw and enjoy the benefit” (Legge, 1882). Turned upside down, it becomes hexagram 47, the image of gate 47.
• Astrology: the gate spans 9°30′00″ to 15°07′30″ Libra, the sign of weighing and fair judgement.

How Ulune calculates it

• Gate 41 opens the wheel at 2°00′00″ Aquarius, 302° of tropical longitude. Each gate then spans 5°37′30″ (5.625°) in a fixed order.
• Gate 48 is the 45th, from 9°30′00″ to 15°07′30″ Libra (189.5° to 195.125°). Its six lines are 0°56′15″ wide and begin at 9°30′00″, 10°26′15″, 11°22′30″, 12°18′45″, 13°15′00″ and 14°11′15″ Libra.
• Ulune reads thirteen bodies at birth and again when the Sun stood exactly 88° earlier. The Sun, the Earth, the Moon, the true Nodes and Mercury to Pluto each colour the gate they stand in.
• When gate 16 is coloured too, at either moment, the channel 16–48 is defined. Ulune notes whether its gates come from the Personality, the Design or both.
• With the Personality Sun here, Ulune names the incarnation cross by the profile. Profiles 1/3 to 4/6 give the Right Angle Cross of Tension 3. Profile 4/1 gives the Juxtaposition Cross of Depth. Profiles 5/1 to 6/3 give the Left Angle Cross of Endeavour 2.

Correspondences