Head

The Head centre is one of the nine centres of the Human Design bodygraph. Human Design is a modern esoteric system, originated in 1987 by Ra Uru Hu (born Alan Robert Krakower, 1948-2011), who presented its content as received teaching rather than as an inherited tradition. It is roughly four decades old and is best read as a contemporary synthesis, not as ancient wisdom or established fact. Ra Uru Hu combined four older systems that had never before been joined: the I Ching supplies the sixty-four gates, the Hindu chakra model the nine centres, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life the connecting channels, and Western astrology the method of calculation.

Where the Hindu chakra model it draws on has seven centres, Human Design maps nine, a difference the system explains by a claimed mutation in human form, a claim about the species that has no support outside the system and should be reported as its own, not as fact. In the model the Head centre is classed as a "Pressure" centre and is the source of mental pressure and inspiration, the urge to make sense of things and to ask questions. A centre may be "defined" (consistently active) or "undefined" (open and conditioned by others) in a given chart. These are features of a contemporary esoteric framework dating from 1987, described here as the system presents them.

Sources The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower) with Über den Tellerrand, ein Blick ins Human Design System (HDS)Petra Stute, Virineya Würgler and Johnny Würgler

Human Design adapts the chakra model, and the adaptation is not one to one. The classical scheme most often cited in modern Western usage has seven centres. The bodygraph has nine.

Where this one lines up

The Head sits at the top of the bodygraph and corresponds in position to the crown centre of the classical seven, the highest of that scheme. This is one of the centres where the correspondence is straightforward: same position, comparable role as the topmost point of the series.

What the numbers mean

Two of the bodygraph's nine, the G or Identity centre and the Spleen, have no counterpart in the classical seven at all. They are additions. The rest correspond roughly by position, though not always by function.

Recording that arithmetic is the honest way to describe the borrowing. Human Design does not present a chakra system; it presents a nine-centre model that took its starting point from one.

The other side of the comparison

The sevenfold chakra scheme is itself a simplification. Indian tantric traditions describe chakra systems with varying numbers of centres, and the standard seven of modern Western usage is one arrangement among several that circulated. A reader comparing nine with seven is comparing a 1987 construction with a modern popular rendering rather than with an unchanging original.

Human Design was published by Ra Uru Hu in 1987 and is recorded here as a contemporary system.

Sources Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland with The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth CenturyGeoffrey Samuel, The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)