The Three Building Blocks
The nine Centers are hubs. Each one has a job, such as pressure, awareness, identity, will, emotion, life force or expression, and each connects to a system in the body. Their layout comes from the Hindu chakra system, expanded from seven to nine.
The 36 Channels are the pathways between Centers. Their structure comes from the Tree of Life in the Kabbalah. A Channel joins exactly two Centers and carries a specific theme, which is why each has a name like the Channel of Curiosity or the Channel of Charisma.
The 64 Gates are the points where a Channel opens into a Center. Each Gate corresponds to one hexagram of the I Ching and carries that hexagram's theme, refined by six Lines.
Defined and Undefined
When your birth calculation places a planet in a Gate, that Gate is activated. When both Gates at the two ends of a Channel are activated, the Channel is defined, and both Centers it joins become defined too. Defined parts of the chart are coloured in. This is called your definition, and it is the part of you that is consistent: it works the same way every day of your life, regardless of who you are with.
Centers left white are undefined or open. Here you do not have a fixed way of operating. Instead you take in and amplify the energy of the people around you. Undefined Centers are where conditioning enters, and over a lifetime they are also where you grow wise, because you experience every variety of that energy from the outside.
Reading the Colours
Activations show in two colours. Black marks the Personality calculation, taken at the moment of birth; this is the part of you that you consciously recognise. Red marks the Design calculation, taken about 88 days earlier; this is the unconscious, body-level part of you that others often see more clearly than you do. A Gate can be striped in both when both calculations activate it. The page on Personality and Design explains the two calculations in full.
What the Whole Picture Shows
From the pattern of definition the system derives your Type, your Strategy and your Authority. From the way the defined areas connect or fail to connect it derives your Definition, such as single or split. The Channels that are defined show which circuits you carry, and the Gates activated by the Sun and Earth form your Incarnation Cross. Every page in the Knowledge Base shows where its subject sits on this diagram, so you can always trace a term back to the map.