Lines

Now, the first thing to do when you think about this lower Trigram and upper Trigram is to imagine that we have a two-story house. The twostory house has to be built on a foundation. So many people struggle with the essence of a Hexagram. There is a rule, 6 5 4 3 2 1 3 4 and this is the rule: The 1st Line, every 1st Line, all 1st Lines describe the essence of their Hexagram. Because what a 1st Line represents is that it is the foundation of the whole house. It's upon this first Line that the whole structure has to be built, the whole structure of the Hexagram. So think about the nature of what a 1st Line is. The 1st Line here is coded in the keynote introspection. Every first Line has this keynote. It doesn't matter where it is in your design. Please understand something. You have two kinds of 1st Lines: you have a yin one and you've got a yang one. This is a yin and a yang world. So every 1st Line is keynoted introspection.

The next thing to understand is that because we're dealing now with a Hexagram as a two-story house, as two Trigrams, the first thing to realize is that the first floor, the first story is only involved with itself. What that means is in the language of Design it is strictly limited to its Gate. What that means is, let's say that you have the 7th Hexagram, 1st Line. That 1st Line doesn't know that there is a 31 on the other side. It doesn't know it's there. What that 1st Line is involved with is being introspective and trying to come to grips with what its true nature is. That's why you can always look at the first Line to see the true nature of the Hexagram because that's the job of a 1st Line. For example, in my design I have 11 first Lines. That's why you get foundation knowledge from me. And because that 1st Line is introspective and always looking inward, it doesn't have social skills. The first three Lines of a Trigram, because they are focused on the Hexagram itself, do not have the skills to deal with the other side, because they don't know it's there.

So we have this foundation and we call this foundation 1st Line introspection. Think about what that means. You look at your Chart and you see an activation that has a 1st Line. Right away you know something about that. You know that's an aspect of yourself that's looking inward. If it's in the 10th Gate, behavior, you're looking in to see what real behavior is. If it's the 25th Gate, 1st Line, you're trying to find out what real innocence is. If it's the 14th Hexagram, Ist Line, you're trying to find out what real power to empower is. If it's the 55th Hexagram, you're trying to find what the real nature of spirit is. In other words, that 1st Line is always saying, "Ah ha, that part of me is looking inward into that process."

So when you get to the 2nd Line, you're getting to the binary in this first duality: the 1-2. In other words, the 1 is one thing, but the 2 is the other side of it. The 2 that's the other side of it is projection. What the projection does is it projects out the quality of the Hexagram without knowing what the depth is behind that. In other words, it's not introspective. Because it's not introspective, it does not know whether what it is projecting outwards whether it has the depth when it is encountered by the outside world. All 2nd Lines project out the quality of that Hexagram.

If you look at the 7th Hexagram, 1st Line, which is the authoritarian, you see that the foundation of leadership is the role of authority. We all know that. But you look at what is projected outwards by the 2nd Line, that's the democrat. Whether or not democracy can survive without being authoritarian is another story. In other words, that too can be a paper tiger and the democrat can turn into a bigot and a dictator. But what you have is that the 1st Line looks inward, and in that sense, nobody knows if they're even there because they're not offering anything, they're looking inward into the foundation.

The 2nd Line people are people that are projecting outwards the quality of the Hexagram. Remember, they're not social in that sense. By projecting that out they're just projecting out the way a radio is turned on and it's out there. Whether anybody picks up the frequency or not is not the point. The 2nd Lines can't do anything other but project out the qual- ity of that Hexagram. Because of that, when they are young they have many difficulties. Because, of course, they do not know the depth of the Hexagram itself, they simply project out the quality of the Hexagram. And they can get caught up many times when they don't have what it takes to back up what they're projecting outwards.

And then you get to the 3rd Line. When you get to the 3rd Line you are completing the lower Trigram itself, so this is a point of completion. And in this point of completion you have neither the nor the 2, because the 3rd Line is something entirely different. The 3rd Line is keynoted adaption. All third lines represent a process as we know of as trial and error. In other words, whenever you look at a Chart and you see a 3rd Line, let's say like me the 43.3 in the mind, you know that I'm going to have to go through trial and error in my knowing, and that I will make a lot of mistakes in my knowing.

If you see somebody who has the 3rd Line in the 12th Hexаgram, you know they're going to make a lot of mistakes in their social contacts. Trial and error-every time you look at a 3rd Line what you see is the path of trial and error. This is not about the morality of whether making mistakes is good or bad. The 3rd Line proves that mistakes are the path to wisdom, because as you will see when you get to the 6th Line you get to the opportunity of wisdom and this is another story.

The 3rd Line represents the hard road, trial and error. Whenever you see a 3rd Line in somebody's Chart, it's telling you right away that's an aspect of their nature where they are going to have to go through trial and error. And for them to understand that it is ok. We have an anti-mistake racism in our culture. And of course, if you're a 3rd Line this is something that's deeply frightening because you think that making a mistake is as close to being a serial killer as possible. This is not true, obviously.

If you're a 3rd Line person you're going to make mistakes, and out of those mistakes are going to come some extraordinary things. It's like looking at Louis Pasteur and seeing all the 3's in his Chart. This guy madea mistake and it turned out to be wonderful for humanity. Mistakes are like that. So it's very important to understand that when you're looking at 3rd Lines what you're looking at is this component within us that demands that we go through trial and error, which means that there are a lot of things that are grasped and bonded to, and the bonds are broken. That, by the way, is the 3rd Line wave of the emotional system-bonds made and broken. And of course, this is the 3rd Line reality.

It's adaptation. And because it's adaptation it carries within it elements of the 1st Line and elements of the 2nd Line. After all, it's completing their process. It has both an aspect of introspection and an aspect of projection within it. But it's ready to adapt in its process because it knows it's not the top of the house. It knows it's the completion of the lower Trigram.

The 4th Line is not simply the foundation of the second floor, but because the 4th Line is in resonance to the 1st Line it carries with it all of that introspective background so that it can act as a force of externalization, and that's what the 4th Line does. It externalizes. By the way, to understand that term clearly through a simple keynote is to understand the term fixed. This is a onetracked-it's like the one-tracked mind. All 4th Lines are one-tracked. And they're one-tracked on externalizing the nature of that Gate and Line, the quality of it, they're fixed on that. And you can't budge them from that. They don't want to externalize anything other than what they're there to externalize,which means that though this is trans-personal they can annoy a lot of people because they have a one-tracked mind, or a onetracked emotion, or a one-tracked intuition, or a one-tracked direction, or whatever because they carry all this 4th Line information.

When you get to the 5th Line you get to the completion of the Hexagram. The 5th Line is the completion of the Hexagram. It is the ultimate position in the hierarchy of the Hexagram. There is a very simple thing to recognize about Hexagrams and their energy in terms of how they are perceived. The 1st Line provides you with the essence of what the Hexagram is. But the 5th Line is what everybody else thinks it is. The 5th Line is called the Line of universalization.

Think about how this works. We know that we have such a thing as resonance in the Hexagram. And we have seen that the 2nd Line projects outward the quality of the Hexagram without necessarily having the depth. It isn't to say they don't have the depth, but usually it's just a matter of time. When you get to the 5th Line, the 5th Line is exact mirror of that; everybody projects onto the 5th Line. So let's say you have the 5th Line of 45, everybody projects onto you that you have money, even if you don't. I have the 51.5, that's my personality Sun; I'm projected on all my life. But to think about the nature of projection is that the moment that people are projecting on you that's your opportunity to fulfill that projection, which means 5th Lines bring oppor- tunity for universalization. If you're projecting on me that I'm a wise man, I get a chance to be wise or fall on my face. This is the nature of the 5th Line and how it works.

The 5th Line represents the windows on the second floor. They have a different perspective. If you look out this first floor window, you don't see very much. That's the nature of projecting outwards. But when you get up to the second floor, you can see all of that coming in on you; you can see that whole field. Of course, it's difficult. Please understand when you're looking at somebody's Chart with these keynotes and what you know about a Gate and a Center, it's very easy for you to understand what kind of process is going on in these people. If you have somebody who has the 37.5, you know that it's always being projected on them that they're the friendly one. Well, sometimes they don't feel like it. And it's very important in reading to say to them, "Look, you know people are always projecting on you that you're the friendly one."And they go, "Oh, I know." You can help them by revealing the mechanic. And you don't even have to read the line. If you read the Line 37.5, which is called love, and you just know that it's a 5th Line and this is what happens to 5th Lines, you're doing the same job.

This is the whole thing about understanding what kind structure you're working with. This is a magnificent tool. Because what it does is it takes all the weight off of you of having to be Moses translating God's wisdom in the Rave I'Ching. You simply have a framework for these things. You have a framework to see the type, and then you have a framework to look at every single Line, and very, very quickly have a way of looking at that Line. That's what these keynotes are about, and this is the nature of a Hexаgram.

When you get to the 6th line, you get to something else. If you go around the wheel and you go Line-by-Line, Line-byLine, Line-by-Line, and you go all around the wheel, you have the story of our genetic evolution. There is a magic in Human Design that comes from many different places. For me the wheel has always been a magical thing because I recognize that it is the incarnation matrix, it is what it's all about. Every time that you look at a 6th Line there is something to remember. The very next thing is the 1st Line of the next Hexagram. All 6th Lines are not focused on the Gate. They are not trans-personal in the sense that they are focused on the harmonic Gate; they're interested in the whole Circuit. Because their view is so broad, it is so hard to get them to do something. They sit on the roof of the house; they are not part of the house at all. As a matter of fact, they're very blasé about everything that goes on within the house because it's all "done that, been there."

It sits there up on top of the roof and it looks out at the whole community around and says, "I'm not getting off this roof until I get what I want." This is the 6th Line; this is the Line of transition. Think about the 59.6, one of the more abused Lines in Human Design. The 59.6 is the one night stand. Now think about that. Here you have 6th Line transition. If you look at the 59.6 what you know is that there's a person that's sitting on the roof of the house of intimacy. They're not in the house of intimacy; they're on the roof of the house of intimacy. And sitting up there on the roof they're saying, "Well, I'm not going to go into that bedroom unless I'm going to get everything that I want out of this. That is, I want a marriage bond that has a secure contract, I want to know exactly how many children we're going to have, I want to know where we're going to live, I want to make sure that I'm going to have a good job and I'm not going to be fired, I want to make sure the community is functioning properly, I want to live in a place that's peaceful and clean, and why should I go downstairs and make love unless I'm not going to be sure that I'm going to get all of that." And everybody thinks that this is somebody that goes out and makes love every night.

If you have the 6th Line you may never have sex, you may never eat because the 6th Line sits on the fence. It needs to see that there is something transcendent in that sense, beyond the Channel that is possible before it can make a commitment. I have Venus in the 20th Hexagram in the 6th Line. This is an exalted position. This is providing wisdom for society. Well, that's not exactly what I did for most of my life. The things that I knew and the things that I could tell and teach people in most cases I never shared it. 1 wasn't interested. What for? Why bother?

This is the whole thing about 6th Lines to understand. They're sitting on the roof. And if you really want to see what they need to know, look at the 1st Line of the next Hexagram, and it tells you right away. If you go from the 20th Hexagram to the next Hexagram you get to the 16th Hexagram-wisdom requires skills. This is the magic that's built into the structure.

Think about the nature of what it means for you in terms of looking at your own Chart. You see, what you have here is you have a framework of looking at all of these Lines without having to read them. This is a way for you to look at a Chart. And while you're working with a Chart, before you even open up the book looking for your Line, you already know what the Line is all about and you're just putting it in context, nothing more, nothing less. Because the moment that you follow the pattern of the Lines and you see the essence of what they're telling you, you always have the proper framework for what you're going to in either the Rave I'Ching or the Book of Letters or whatever lines that you use in your analysis. But if you have this as a back- ground you're never going to give misleading information. You're not going to make a mistake unless you're all 3's, and that's what you get, and what to do.