Determination (Variable)

Meaning

Determination is one of the four arrows of Variable, the finest layer Human Design reads in a chart. It comes from the Sun of the Design, the sky about three months before birth, when the Sun stood 88° further back. In the tradition’s drawing it is the arrow at the top left.

The Design is the layer Human Design reads as the body, unconscious and often clearer to others than to oneself. Its Sun carries the most weight in that layer. Determination is the Design Sun’s finest shade, and the tradition reads it as the body’s own way of taking in food. Teachers also call it Digestion, or Diet.

The arrow carries two things. Its colour, one of six, names a theme about eating, with a single word such as Appetite or Taste. Its tone, one of six within that colour, gives its direction.

• Pointing left, tones 1 to 3: Human Design reads a focused, active way of eating, at its best with a clear and specific routine.
• Pointing right, tones 4 to 6: a receptive, open way, at its best taking food as circumstances bring it.

Neither side is better. The tradition presents both as styles of the same function. Its wider idea of the not-self, living by conditioning, applies here too: eating by someone else’s rules rather than one’s own.

In practice

Human Design treats Determination as an experiment to observe, not a rule to obey. Teachers suggest working with it only after a long time of living by type, strategy and authority. It is a teaching of the tradition, not dietary or medical advice. Anyone changing how they eat for reasons of health is best guided by a doctor.

• Someone with a left arrow might notice, in this reading, that meals at a steady time and in a steady form suit them.
• Someone with a right arrow might notice they do better with a looser rhythm, eating as the day allows.
• Two people at the same table can follow two different styles, and the tradition sees nothing wrong in either.

Determination is read together with its partner on the same side, Environment. The two Design arrows describe the body: how it is fed and where it is placed. On the other side, Motivation and Perspective describe the mind.

Origin and history

Ra Uru Hu founded Human Design in 1987. He divided each line of the wheel into colours, tones and bases, levels the I Ching does not have. Determination belongs to the later, advanced part of his teaching. His school teaches it, with Environment, in its course called Primary Health System.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune finds the Design moment, when the Sun stood exactly 88° of ecliptic longitude before its place at birth. It takes the Design Sun’s longitude, subtracts 302°, where gate 41 begins, and counts the result in bases of 18.75″. From that one count come the gate, the line, the colour, the tone and the base. A colour spans 0.15625°, a tone about 1′34″.

The colour gives the word shown with the arrow. The tone sets the side: 1 to 3 left, 4 to 6 right. The Design Earth, exactly opposite, shares the Sun’s colour and tone. Ulune computes the base but does not read it.

The arrow sits on the Sun row of the Design column, on the left of the bodygraph. Choosing that row opens its reading. In the Keys table, Determination is the first letter after D: in PLR DLL it points left.

The Design moment moves with the birth time, at about the Sun’s own pace. One tone is about 38 minutes of birth time, one side about two hours. Ulune therefore casts the chart half an hour before and after the given time. If the colour or the side changes in that hour, the arrow is marked as unsteady. Without a birth time, Ulune shows no arrows.

Correspondences