Origin 1987
Joins the Throat to the Spleen, carrying Gate 16 and Gate 48. The hexagrams are the sixteenth, Enthusiasm, thunder coming out of the earth, on the readiness that moves a whole people; and the forty-eighth, The Well, whose image is a source that is never exhausted and never filled, and whose warning is of a rope too short to reach the water. Human Design reads the pair as talent: depth that must be practised into skill before enthusiasm about it means anything. The fear of inadequacy the system attaches to the deep end of this channel is its own addition.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1987 2Tradition: Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987) Origin PeriodChannel of The Wavelength, connecting Gate 16 and Gate 48, is one of the thirty-six channels of the Human Design system, synthesized in 1987 out of the I Ching, the chakra teaching, Kabbalah and astrology. 2 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseThe I Ching of China, the chakra teaching of India, Kabbalah and astrology are drawn on here inside a scheme assembled in 1987 and offered as an instrument of psychological counselling. The four traditions it draws on are old; the arrangement that joins them is not, and none of them produced it. 2 Correspondences
Gate PairSourced to the subject's own account Connects CentersSourced to the subject's own account I Ching CorrespondenceSourced to the subject's own accountHexagram 16 (Enthusiasm) and Hexagram 48 (The Well) 1 Learn More
The Channel in the Human Design Bodygraph
The Channel of The Wavelength (16-48) is one of the thirty-six channels of the Human Design bodygraph, a system originated in 1987 by Ra Uru Hu and described here as a modern esoteric framework rather than an ancient tradition. A channel is a defined pathway joining the Throat centre and the Spleen centre, and it is completed by two gates: Gate 16 ("Enthusiastic Skill") and Gate 48 ("The Well Of Depth"), whose numbers come from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching. The channel idea and its Tree-of-Life-style pathways, the gates' I Ching numbering, and the centres' chakra roots were combined for the first time in the 1980s; the channel is part of that composite, presented as the system's own model, not as verified fact.
In the system's own account, the Throat centre carries communication and manifestation, the single centre through which every other centre's energy is turned into speech or action, and the Spleen centre carries instinctive awareness: intuition, bodily wellbeing and a sense of present moment safety; the channel is read as a direct circuit between those two functions whenever both gates are defined in the same chart.
The same two numbers appear elsewhere in this atlas as Gene Keys 16 and 48, Richard Rudd's later, contemplative reading of the identical hexagram pair. Gene Key 16 runs from the Shadow of Indifference through the Gift of Versatility to the Siddhi of Mastery; Gene Key 48 runs from Inadequacy through Resourcefulness to Wisdom. Rudd's system drops the bodygraph and its channels entirely, so this particular pairing is a Human Design structure only, with no equivalent in his contemplative method.
The Two Hexagrams Behind the Gates
The Channel of The Wavelength joins the Throat centre to the Spleen centre through Gates 16 and 48, and both of those numbers are borrowed. They are positions in the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, the Chinese divinatory classic whose sixty-four hexagrams Human Design maps one to one onto the sixty-four gates of its bodygraph. Read as I Ching rather than as Human Design, the two numbers name two independent oracle texts.
Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm (Yu). Thunder breaking out of the earth. It is readiness and accord, the movement that meets no resistance, the principle by which music was made and helpers and armies are set in motion.
Hexagram 48, The Well (Jing). Water drawn up through wood. The town may be moved, but the well cannot be moved; it is the unchanging source, spoiled only when the rope falls short or the jug breaks.
The I Ching itself never sets these two hexagrams in a pair. Each stands alone in the sequence, consulted about a changing situation and answered in counsel that passes. The pairing is a construction of Ra Uru Hu's system, published from 1987, which fixes each hexagram to a position in a birth chart and reads the joined pair as a lasting trait of the person. The correspondence of number is real, and both hexagrams can be followed into their own entries in this atlas; the pairing, and the character read out of it, belong to the modern system alone.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Corresponds To
Channel of The Wavelength bridges Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm, and Hexagram 48, The Well, per its own iching-correspondence fact; this edge names the 16 side.
Channel of The Wavelength bridges Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm, and Hexagram 48, The Well, per its own iching-correspondence fact; this edge names the 48 side.
Disciplines That Use This
Sources
1. The Human Design System
Ra Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower), Human Design America, 1992The channels of the bodygraphQuote, The channels of the bodygraph
The pairing of two hexagram numbers into a channel, the centres it connects and the meaning assigned to it are all Ra Uru Hu's construction, dating from 1987 and published in 1992. None of it is present in the Chinese source.
2. Über den Tellerrand, ein Blick ins Human Design System (HDS)
Petra Stute, Virineya Würgler and Johnny Würgler, Springer, Journal für Gynäkologische Endokrinologie/Schweiz 24 (2021), pp. 50-51, 2021p. 50: the four systems synthesised, and the use made of the synthesisView the Source The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Richard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), Princeton University Press, 1980The hexagram at each end of the channelQuote, The hexagram at each end of the channel
The classical judgement and image of the two hexagrams whose numbers the channel carries, given here to keep the ancient text distinct from the modern reading placed on it.
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