Where It Comes From
The system arrived in 1987 through a Canadian named Ra Uru Hu, who spent the rest of his life teaching it. It knits together four older ways of mapping a human life with modern science. Western astrology supplies the planetary positions. The Chinese I Ching supplies the 64 hexagrams that become the 64 Gates. The Hindu chakra system underlies the nine Centers. The Tree of Life from the Kabbalah underlies the 36 Channels that join the Centers together. Alongside these sit genetics, astronomy and particle physics, which give the system its account of how the imprint actually happens. Each of those threads has its own page in this section.
What a Chart Tells You
Your chart gives you a handful of things you can use straight away. Your Type describes the way your energy works and how you are built to engage with life. Your Strategy is the practical rule that follows from your Type. Your Authority is the part of you that is reliable for decisions, which for most people is somewhere other than the mind. Beyond that sit your Profile, your Centers, your Channels and Gates, and your Incarnation Cross, each adding detail to the picture.
Why It Is Called an Experiment
Human Design asks you to believe nothing. It hands you a description of your mechanics and invites you to test it: follow your Strategy and Authority for a while and watch what changes. Ra called the whole system the Science of Differentiation, because at its heart is the recognition that no two people are built the same and that most suffering comes from trying to live as someone you are not. The word for the layers of borrowed behaviour is the not-self, and the slow process of shedding them is called deconditioning.
How to Use This Section
The pages that follow explain the pieces of the system in the order they build on one another: the diagram itself, the wheel it is calculated from, the two calculations, the four root systems, the science of the imprint, and the experiment of living it. Once the pieces make sense, the rest of the Knowledge Base, from Types through to individual Gates, becomes far easier to read.