Spleen centre

Meaning

The Spleen is the triangle on the left side of the bodygraph, facing the Solar Plexus. Human Design calls it the oldest awareness centre: the awareness of the body, of instinct and intuition. It is also where the tradition places well-being, and what it links to health and the immune system.

The Spleen lives in the present moment. It speaks quietly, and only once: a faint sense that something is safe or unsafe, right or wrong for now. It does not argue and does not repeat itself. The tradition contrasts it with the Ajna, which can think about a choice for ever, and with the Solar Plexus, which needs time.

It is not a motor. Its seven gates are kinds of instinctive alertness, and the tradition also places here the fears linked to survival. Gate 57 gives intuitive clarity, gate 44 alertness to patterns from the past, gate 50 the sense of values that protect a group. Gate 48 gives depth and gate 32 a feel for what will last. Gate 28 seeks what is worth the struggle, and gate 18 the urge to correct.

Defined, the Spleen gives a consistent instinct and, in Human Design’s words, a steady sense of well-being. Its signals are quiet and do not come back. A sudden urge to leave a place, or not to trust someone, is worth following at once.

Undefined or open, the Spleen is very sensitive to health and atmosphere. One may hold on to people, jobs or habits because they feel familiar rather than good. Human Design reads this as a natural sensitivity, not a failing. People with an undefined Spleen often feel more at ease near someone whose Spleen is defined. The main lesson the tradition offers is letting go of what no longer serves.

In practice

• Defined: one of nine channels is complete, to the Throat, the G, the Heart, the Sacral or the Root.
• Authority: when the Solar Plexus and the Sacral are undefined, the Spleen gives splenic authority: following the first quiet instinct, in the moment.
• Type: the Spleen is not a motor, so a Spleen–Throat channel alone does not make a Manifestor. A motor beyond it, such as the Root or the Sacral, can still reach the Throat through it.
• Undefined, with active gates: a hanging gate here shows the theme in which instinct is borrowed from others.
• Open: no gate is coloured. The body takes in the health and mood of the room, and noticing what is one’s own takes practice.

Across traditions

• The chakras: the usual account says the solar plexus chakra, Manipura, split into two centres, the Solar Plexus and the Spleen. Other teachers find no chakra behind the Spleen at all, and see it as new in the nine-centred design.
• Instinct: many traditions speak of a knowing of the gut or of the body. Human Design gives it a precise place and its own voice, distinct from feeling and from thought.

Origin and history

Ra Uru Hu presented the nine centres from 1987, as a change from the seven chakras dated to 1781. He taught that the Spleen is the first and most ancient of the three kinds of awareness, the one that kept early humans alive. The tradition links it to the lymphatic system, the spleen and the immune system. These are correspondences the system teaches, never medical claims or health advice.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune colours a gate when any of the 26 activations stands in it, the 13 bodies of the Personality and the 13 of the Design. A channel is defined when both of its gates are coloured, and a centre is defined when a defined channel touches it.

The Spleen is defined exactly when one of its nine channels is defined. Otherwise it is undefined when any of its seven gates is coloured, open when none is. Ulune gives splenic authority when the Spleen is defined and the Solar Plexus and the Sacral are not. Looking for a motor joined to the Throat, it walks through a defined Spleen like any other centre. It never counts the Spleen itself as a motor.

Correspondences