Origin 1987
Gate 40 sits in the Heart or Will centre and is read as the willpower to work, held in balance against a real need for aloneness and rest. Its number belongs to the fortieth hexagram, Deliverance, whose image is a thunderstorm that clears the air and whose counsel is that once tension is released one should return to ordinary conditions rather than press an advantage. Human Design keeps the release and reads it as the moment of stepping away, pairing the gate with Gate 37 in the channel of Community. The idea that the will has a finite reserve which must be recovered in solitude is the modern system's, not the I Ching's.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1987 2Tradition: Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987) Origin PeriodAloneness and Will is gate 40 of the sixty-four gates of the Human Design system, corresponding to Hexagram 40, Deliverance of the I Ching; the system itself was 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 Identity
PositionSourced to the subject's own account Correspondences
CenterSourced to the subject's own account Channel PartnerSourced to the subject's own accountGate 37 (Channel of Community) 1 I Ching CorrespondenceSourced to the subject's own accountHexagram 40, Deliverance 1 Learn More
The Gate and Its I Ching Hexagram
Gate 40 of the Human Design system carries the name "Aloneness And Will," and this entry describes it as the system itself presents it. 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.
The gates take their numbers from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, so Gate 40 corresponds to hexagram 40, Deliverance. The link is one of numbering and binary structure only: the hexagram belongs to a genuinely ancient Chinese text, while the gate's psychological keynote, here summarised as "Aloneness And Will", was formulated in the late twentieth century and is not drawn from the classical commentaries. The two meanings are best kept side by side rather than merged.
The Gate in the Bodygraph
Within the bodygraph, the composite body-map at the centre of Human Design, Gate 40 is placed in the Heart/Ego/Will centre, one of the nine centres the system maps onto (and expands from) the seven-centre chakra model. Gates do not act alone in the model: each pairs with another gate to complete a channel joining two centres. It belongs to the Channel of Community (37-40), which it forms with Gate 37 ("Family Friendship"). These placements and pairings are features of Ra Uru Hu's 1987 design and describe the system's internal mechanics; they are presented here as the system's own claims, not as verified facts about human beings.
The Heart/Ego/Will centre carries a specific function in the system's own account: willpower and self worth, read as the capacity to make and keep material promises. Gate 40 is one of 4 gates the bodygraph assigns to this centre, and its reading is built from that placement rather than from anything in the classical hexagram commentary.
The same number appears elsewhere in this atlas as Gene Key 40, Richard Rudd's later, contemplative rereading of the identical hexagram. Where Ra Uru Hu gives the gate the fixed keynote "Aloneness And Will", Rudd spreads the same number across a spectrum: the Shadow of Exhaustion, the Gift of Resolve and the Siddhi of Divine Will. The two accounts share a hexagram and a number and diverge in almost everything else, since one issues a fixed mechanical reading and the other asks for years of contemplation.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Corresponds To
Human Design Gate 40, Aloneness And Will, corresponds to Hexagram 40, Deliverance, per its own iching-correspondence fact.
Human Design Gate 40, Aloneness And Will, and Gene Key 40, From Exhaustion to Divine Will, are the same wheel position, both keyed to Hexagram 40, Deliverance.
Design Earth in These Crosses
Design Sun in These Crosses
Located in Center
Personality Earth in These Crosses
Personality Sun in These Crosses
Sources
1. The Human Design System
Ra Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower), Human Design America, 1992Gate 40, Aloneness And WillView the 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 corresponding King Wen hexagram 40View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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