So, you first look at a Human Design bodygraph and you may see two columns on either side of the chart.
In this post, you will learn about the gates and line expressions represented in the columns.
Every gate you have defined is represented along the columns, as well as the bodygraph itself.
(The symbols in the columns are labeled on the left side of the image below. They are the same on both sides, in the same order, and they represent planetary bodies and points in our solar system (north node and south node). You can learn about the planets in this post.)
The left side represents unconscious energies that lay in your body. The right side represents the mental energy that is part of your conscious awareness. Traditionally, it is black on the right side and red on the left side, but different software programs and people's branding have changed the colouring.
The left side can be referred to as unconscious or Design while the right side can be referred to as conscious or Personality. This person's conscious Sun or Personality Sun is in Gate 31 and their unconscious Sun or their Design Sun is in Gate 27.
If you look at gate 63 at the top of the bodygraph (in the Head centre), it is red. This means this gate is unconsciously defined and you will be able to find it along the left, red column. You can it in this example in Jupiter.
GATES
Every gate that is listed along the columns is a defined gate in your bodygraph, as seen below. Sometimes, you might have the same gate defined multiple times in different planets, for example, below this person has Gate 46 defined twice consciously (in the black column) in their South Node and Mars.
LINE EXPRESSION
Each planet has a specific gate and a line expression (the number after the decimal).
As you see in the image above, the Gate 27 is in their Sun, with a line expression of 5. The Gate 28 is in their Earth and has a line expression of 5 as well.
The line expressions comes from the i'Ching's 6 lines. There are 6 lines so there are 6 line expressions in Human Design.
Full lines are yang energy and dashed lines are yin energy.
The 6 lines are stacked on top of each other in particular sequences which form hexagrams. There are 64 hexagrams in the i'Ching and the 64 gates reflect those in the Human Design system. You can see the hexagrams laid out in a circle in the image below with their associated Chinese characters.
And below you see them laid out in the Human Design rave mandala with their associated number. They are laid out in a different orientation from the i'Ching.
Time goes counter clockwise around the mandala. The tiny lines for each gate represents the 6 lines. So, for each gate, counter clockwise, it goes from 1-6. So you could count along the lines.
In the image above, gate 32 would have a line expression of 4 in the conscious South Node, gate 50 would have a line expression of 4 in the unconscious South Node and Gate 28 shows up 3 times in the Earth and both Plutos, in line expressions 3 and 5.
Take a look at the bodygraph below to match up how it is reflected in this view.
If you'd like to know what the planets mean, you can read this.