Human Design Glossary — the terms, plainly defined

Reading the chart’s language

A chart is built from a small, fixed set of terms, each one a calculation rather than a guess. The definitions below stand alone — quotable, checkable, honest about where mechanics end and interpretation begins. Pages linked around this one carry each term further.

Type

Type is one of five categories — Generator, Manifesting Generator, Manifestor, Projector or Reflector — derived purely from which centres are defined and whether a motor centre connects to the Throat. It is the most structural fact in the chart, a straightforward read of connections rather than a personality label, though what it feels like to live is where the interpretive lens begins.

Strategy

Strategy is the decision posture paired to each type — the way opportunities and decisions are built to arrive for that particular wiring. A Generator’s strategy differs from a Projector’s because the underlying mechanics differ; strategy describes the shape of that difference, not a rule to be obeyed but a description of what tends to work with the grain of the design.

Authority

Authority is the chart’s decision anchor, assigned from a fixed hierarchy of defined centres — Solar Plexus first, then Sacral, Spleen, Heart, G, with Mental or Lunar authority used where none of those five are defined. It marks where a decision is most reliably tested, though how that testing feels remains a matter of self-observation rather than formula.

Profile

Profile is the pair of lines, one through six, drawn from the two Sun positions — the conscious line at birth sitting over the design line from roughly eighty-eight days earlier. Twelve pairings are valid, each read as two roles working together rather than a fixed character type, and each traceable to an exact degree on the wheel.

Gate

A gate is one of sixty-four positions on the wheel, each spanning 5.625 degrees of the ecliptic and keyed to a hexagram. A gate on its own is a consistent theme in the chart — present and active — but it does not define a centre until it is joined by its matching gate at the far end of a channel.

Channel

A channel is two matching gates, one at each end, joining two centres together. Only when both gates are active does the channel actually define those centres, turning two separate themes into one connected, consistent circuit that runs between them.

Centre

A centre is one of nine hubs in the bodygraph — Head, Ajna, Throat, G, Heart, Sacral, Spleen, Solar Plexus and Root. Defined centres are coloured in and run consistently; open centres take in and amplify whatever is around them, which is a structural fact about information flow rather than a verdict on strength or weakness.

Line

A line is one of six subdivisions of a gate, each spanning 0.9375 degrees. The two Sun lines — one from the birth moment, one from the design calculation eighty-eight days prior — combine to give the profile, so every profile pairing traces back to a precise, checkable slice of the ecliptic.

Definition

Definition describes how a chart’s defined centres connect up — single, split, triple split or quadruple split, or no definition at all in the Reflector’s case. It is a map of how consistently the different parts of a chart communicate with one another, and it shapes how self-contained or how relationally dependent that communication tends to be.

Not-Self

The not-self theme is each type’s early-warning signal — frustration, anger, bitterness or disappointment — read as a sign of moving against strategy rather than as a personal failing. It is a feedback mechanism built into the design, useful as a mirror for noticing misalignment rather than as a diagnosis of what’s wrong with someone.

Design and Personality

Design and personality are the two calculation moments behind every chart — personality from the birth instant, conscious, and design from the moment the Sun sat eighty-eight degrees of arc earlier, unconscious. Each contributes thirteen activations, and together the twenty-six positions form the full set of gates and lines that make up the chart.

Incarnation Cross

An incarnation cross is the set of four gates carried by the Sun and Earth across both the design and personality calculations, named with an angle — right, left or juxtaposition — determined by the profile. It reads as a broad thematic frame for the chart, a backdrop drawn from real degree positions rather than a fixed script to follow.