Root

The Root 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 Root centre is classed as a "Pressure" centre and is the source of adrenalised pressure and drive, the fuel that sets things in motion under stress. 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

The Root sits at the base of the bodygraph and corresponds in position to the lowest of the classical seven chakras, which is also usually called the root.

A straightforward correspondence

Both schemes place a centre at the base of the series and both associate it with grounding, drive and the physical. Of the nine centres in the bodygraph this is among the least altered in the borrowing, which makes it a useful reference point when working out how far the other eight have moved.

The arithmetic

The classical scheme most often cited in modern Western usage has seven centres. The bodygraph has nine. The G or Identity centre and the Spleen have no classical counterpart at all. Of the remaining seven, the Head, Ajna, Throat, Sacral and Root correspond reasonably closely; the Heart and Solar Plexus positions carry assignments close to the reverse of the classical ones, which is set out in the articles on those two centres.

Both ends of the comparison

The sevenfold chakra scheme is one arrangement among several described in Indian tantric traditions, and the version in wide Western circulation is a popular settlement rather than a single original.

Human Design was published by Ra Uru Hu in 1987, and this atlas records it as a contemporary system rather than as ancient or inherited material.

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)