Human Design Gates
The Well of Depth
Also Known As Well of Depth
Spleen Center Gates
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Origin 1987
Gate 48 sits in the Spleen and is read as depth: a well of instinctive knowledge that is not yet useful, and a corresponding fear of being inadequate to what is asked. Its number is that of the forty-eighth hexagram, The Well, whose image is a well that serves a town unchanged while the town itself changes, and whose warning is that a well left unrepaired, or a rope too short, brings misfortune. The correspondence is unusually exact. Human Design joins the gate to Gate 16 in the channel of the Wavelength, where depth meets the willingness to try. The attachment of the gate to a named fear is modern doctrine.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1987 2Tradition: Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987) Origin PeriodThe Well of Depth is gate 48 of the sixty-four gates of the Human Design system, corresponding to Hexagram 48, The Well 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 16 (Channel of The Wavelength) 1 I Ching CorrespondenceSourced to the subject's own account Learn More
The Gate and Its I Ching Hexagram
Gate 48 of the Human Design system carries the name "The Well Of Depth," 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 48 corresponds to hexagram 48, The Well. 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 "The Well Of Depth", 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 48 is placed in the Spleen 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 The Wavelength (16-48), which it forms with Gate 16 ("Enthusiastic Skill"). 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 Spleen centre carries a specific function in the system's own account: instinctive awareness: intuition, bodily wellbeing and a sense of present moment safety. Gate 48 is one of 7 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 48, Richard Rudd's later, contemplative rereading of the identical hexagram. Where Ra Uru Hu gives the gate the fixed keynote "The Well Of Depth", Rudd spreads the same number across a spectrum: the Shadow of Inadequacy, the Gift of Resourcefulness and the Siddhi of Wisdom. 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 48, The Well Of Depth, and Gene Key 48, From Inadequacy to Wisdom, are the same wheel position, both keyed to Hexagram 48, The Well.
Human Design Gate 48, The Well Of Depth, corresponds to Hexagram 48, The Well, per its own iching-correspondence fact.
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 48, The Well Of DepthView 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 48View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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