Profile

Meaning

The profile is written as two numbers, such as 2/4. Each is a line, one of the six places of a hexagram. The first is the line of the Personality Sun, the Sun at birth. The second is the line of the Design Sun, the Sun about three months earlier. The Earth always shares its Sun’s line, so two numbers say it all.

Human Design reads the profile as the role a person tends to play: how they learn, and how they meet others. The first number belongs to the Personality, the side a person knows in themselves. The second belongs to the Design, which others often see more clearly than its owner does.

The profile is one of the keys Ulune shows first, beside the type, the strategy and the authority.

In practice

There are twelve profiles, never more. Each is named after its two lines:

• 1/3, Investigator / Martyr: study first, then learning through what fails.
• 1/4, Investigator / Opportunist: careful knowledge, shared through people already known.
• 2/4, Hermit / Opportunist: a private talent drawn out by friends.
• 2/5, Hermit / Heretic: retreat, with strangers asking for solutions.
• 3/5, Martyr / Heretic: trial and error that becomes advice others seek.
• 3/6, Martyr / Role Model: experiment, with the sixth line’s three phases underneath.
• 4/6, Opportunist / Role Model: a steady circle, and an example over time.
• 4/1, Opportunist / Investigator: a fixed, steady path.
• 5/1, Heretic / Investigator: projected solutions resting on solid knowledge.
• 5/2, Heretic / Hermit: called on by others, while preferring retreat.
• 6/2, Role Model / Hermit: three phases, and a natural talent within.
• 6/3, Role Model / Martyr: a wish for perspective, with life still full of experiments.

Each profile also sets the angle of the Incarnation Cross, which Human Design reads as the theme of a life. Profiles 1/3 to 4/6 give a Right Angle cross, a personal destiny that unfolds mostly through one’s own process. The 4/1 alone gives a Juxtaposition cross, a fixed path between the personal and the transpersonal. Profiles 5/1 to 6/3 give a Left Angle cross, a transpersonal destiny that unfolds largely through meeting others.

Origin and history

The profile is Ra Uru Hu’s idea, from the system he founded in 1987. It rests on the I Ching’s six places, which he named Investigator, Hermit, Martyr, Opportunist, Heretic and Role Model. The Definitive Book of Human Design, written with Lynda Bunnell, presents the twelve profiles and their link to the three angles.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune finds the line of the Personality Sun at the moment of birth. It then finds the Design moment, when the Sun stood exactly 88° of ecliptic longitude earlier, and takes that Sun’s line. The profile is the first line, a slash, then the second. Each line comes from the Sun’s longitude. Ulune subtracts 302°, cuts the wheel into gates of 5.625°, then each gate into six lines of 0.9375°.

The 88° arc explains why there are only twelve profiles. It equals about 93.87 lines. So the Design line always falls two or three places after the Personality line, counting round from 6 back to 1. For about 87% of each line’s span it is two places on, giving 1/3, 2/4, 3/5, 4/6, 5/1 and 6/2. For the remaining 13% it is three places on, giving 1/4, 2/5, 3/6, 4/1, 5/2 and 6/3.

The angle follows the profile alone. Ulune reads a Personality line of 1 to 4 as Right Angle, except 4/1, which is Juxtaposition. A Personality line of 5 or 6 is Left Angle.

The Sun moves about a degree a day, a little more than one line. Without a birth time, Ulune casts the chart at noon and every hour of that day. When either Sun’s line changes within that span, the profile is marked ~ as uncertain.

Correspondences