Heart/Ego/Will

The Heart/Ego/Will 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 Heart/Ego/Will centre is classed as a "Motor" centre and is the motor of willpower and self-worth, associated with drive, ego and the making and keeping of commitments. 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

Comparing the nine centres of the bodygraph with the classical seven is mostly a matter of position. At the heart and the solar plexus, the comparison produces something odder.

The two schemes assign differently

In the classical chakra scheme as it circulates in modern Western usage, the heart centre is the one associated with feeling, love and compassion, and the solar plexus centre is the one associated with will, power and self-assertion.

In the Human Design bodygraph the assignments run the other way. The centre at the heart is the one concerned with will, drive and self-worth, and the centre at the solar plexus is the emotional one.

That is an observation a reader can check against either system's own published description of its centres, and it is recorded here as an observation rather than as anyone's stated claim about the relationship.

Why it matters

The bodygraph is frequently introduced as the chakra system with two centres added. At these two positions that description would mislead a reader who then reasoned from what they know of the classical scheme.

The arithmetic

Nine centres against a classical seven, with the G or Identity centre and the Spleen having no classical counterpart at all.

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 Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)