Variable

Meaning

Variable is the finest layer Human Design reads in a bodygraph. It appears as four small arrows, two for the Design and two for the Personality. The tradition reads them as the particular way a body and a mind work. They describe how the body best takes in food and surroundings. They also describe what drives the mind and how it looks out at the world.

The arrows come from below the line. Human Design divides each of the 384 lines of the wheel into six colours. Each colour holds six tones, and each tone five bases. These levels are far too fine to read for every planet. The tradition reads them in four places only: the Sun and the North Node, at birth and in the Design.

Each arrow carries two things. Its colour, one of six, gives its theme, which Human Design names with a single word, such as Appetite, Markets, Hope or Possibility. Its tone gives its direction: tones 1 to 3 point the arrow left, tones 4 to 6 point it right.

Human Design reads a left arrow as focused and active, at its best with a clear, specific way of doing things. It reads a right arrow as receptive and open, at its best taking things in as they come. Neither side is better. They are two styles of the same function.

The four arrows each have their own page:

• Determination, from the Design Sun: the way of eating that Human Design associates with the body.
• Environment, from the Design Node: the kind of place where the body does well.
• Motivation, from the Personality Sun: what drives the mind.
• Perspective, from the Personality Node: how the mind sees the world.

The two Design arrows belong to the body, the side of the chart read as unconscious. The two Personality arrows belong to the mind, the side a person knows in themselves. The page on Personality and Design explains the two layers.

In practice

Teachers suggest living by type, strategy and authority for a long while before working with Variable. The arrows are refinements, not the foundation.

Variable is often written as letters. Ulune’s Keys table writes P, then the Personality’s two arrows, then D and the Design’s two, the Sun’s arrow first each time. PLR DLL therefore reads: Motivation left, Perspective right, Determination left, Environment left.

• Four left arrows describe, in this reading, a body and a mind that like a precise, chosen way of doing things.
• Four right arrows describe a body and a mind that take in what comes and sort it afterwards.
• Most charts mix the two, and the tradition reads each arrow on its own terms.

The arrows are offered as something to observe over time, not as rules. The Determination arrow, in particular, is a teaching of the tradition about eating, not dietary or medical advice.

Origin and history

The I Ching knows six lines in each hexagram and nothing below them, as in Wilhelm’s translation. Colours, tones and bases belong to Human Design alone. Ra Uru Hu, who founded the system in 1987, taught Variable as one of its later and more technical layers. His school teaches the two Design arrows in its course on diet and environment, called Primary Health System. It teaches the two Personality arrows in Rave Psychology.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune reads four rows: the Sun and the North Node at birth, and the same two at the Design moment. That is when the Sun stood exactly 88° of ecliptic longitude earlier. The node is the true node.

For each longitude, Ulune subtracts 302°, where gate 41 begins, and counts the result in bases. The wheel holds 64 × 6 × 6 × 6 × 5 = 69,120 bases, each 18.75″ of arc. From that single count Ulune cuts the gate, the line, the colour, the tone and the base. So the finer levels always agree with the gate and line shown elsewhere. A colour spans 0.15625°, a tone about 1′34″.

The tone decides the side: 1 to 3 left, 4 to 6 right. The colour gives the word shown with the arrow. Ulune computes the base but does not read it. The Earth shares its Sun’s colour and tone, and the South Node its North Node’s, since each stands exactly opposite.

The arrows sit on the Sun and North Node rows of each column. The Design column is on the left of the bodygraph, the Personality on the right. Choosing either row opens its reading, with the colour and the tone. The Keys table adds a Variable line, such as PLR DLL.

A tone is small. The Sun crosses one in about 38 minutes, and one side, three tones, in about two hours. So Ulune casts the chart again half an hour before and after the birth time. An arrow whose colour or side changes in that hour is marked as unsteady, and the Variable line is marked ~. Without a birth time, Ulune shows no arrows and no Variable line.

Correspondences