Master Human Design’s 5 Types! I : Energy Type is not Personality Type (Or Zodiac “Sign”)
I’ve decided to start up a short series on this topic, because I feel like many people have an understanding of the 5 types which is relatively superficial and also fundamentally conditioned by their familiarity with other astrological systems. By the end of this series, I hope you have a more complete understanding of the 5 types and how they actually work.
Keep in mind this isn’t exactly a “beginners” series. Neither is it only of value to someone who already has a deep understanding of the system, but it’s something in between. It’s mostly intended for someone who is looking to deepen their understanding of the mechanics involved in Human Design. Understanding these things isn’t necessary to experimenting with Human Design, and if you’re just looking to understand the 5 types in a more applicable way, I recommend this article series, instead:
But, if the pursuit of a more refined understanding of HD is your goal, let us start with this:
It’s an energy type, not a personality type.
(Or a zodiac “sign”)
It seems basic, but it’s where a lot of people new to the system stumble. The energy types tell you practically nothing about a person’s personality. In that way, they can be fundamentally un-sexy. No doubt we all lust after the capacity to leverage the 12 signs of the zodiac as a way to categorize people; ourselves included.
Oh, we get along great with the personable Leos, but we always have trouble with those shifty Scorpios.
You may never need to ask an Aries what’s on their mind, and good luck getting a Taurus to do something unfamiliar.
As a Pisces, I tend to be a little too willing to sacrifice what I want in the interest of harmony.
It’s fun, right?
It’s SO fun, that when being introduced to human design, many people can and will “check out” when they hear “Okay, well there’s 5 types, but 70% of people fall into just 2 types, which are actually just variations on each other, and you’re one of those.”
It’s a rough start, admittedly.
Don’t worry, by the end of this series, I’ll have you really appreciating the 5 types. Understanding them and their interrelation in a way that will hopefully illuminate the power of “type.”
However, we must start with what they are not, and they are not personality types. There are other things you can look at in the system to get a feel for a person’s personality, but the energy type is not it.
So, what exactly is “an energy type,” if it’s not much connected to our personality, why is it so important? Isn’t astrology about learning more about yourself?
“Type” is a meta-attribute which describes your internal energetic circuitry.
What the heck does that mean?
Essentially, the energy type is the result of looking at all the other details in your chart in conglomerate, and noting the mechanics of your energetic flow. It’s a macroscopic quality, determined by the particular geometry of your astrological activations.
Because it is a macroscopic quality, people with very different activations can share the same energy type. Thus, there are only a few “personality-level” generalizations which can be made about each type, and even those are quite rough and broad.
All that it really describes is how you as an energetic being get yourself from point A to point B in our world, with the least resistance and most effectiveness: The way your energy naturally flows, and the way your energetic vehicle operates at the most essential level.
By analogy, the Human Design equivalent of the “sun sign” is most likely the activation the person holds in their Personality Sun. Note that instead of 12 possibilities, there are 64. Further note that each of those 64 has 6 variations, and you have a total of 384 possible “sun signs,” and no matter what activation you have in that particular placement, you can still be ANY of the 5 energy types.
It depends on the relationship of that activation to all the other activations in your chart.
It should, hopefully, be obvious at this point that “energy type” is not meant to be leveraged or understood in the same way as a “sun sign” or “personality type”
As far as the asymmetric percentages; 1% Reflectors, 9% Manifestors, 22% Projectors, 31% Generators, and 37% Manifesting Generators; there is a beauty to that order when you look at how each energy type actually operates and how they harmonize. We will talk about that next.
A takeaway at this point, though, is that there are other aspects of the system which you can use to explore “personality-level” features of an individual design, but the energy type is not it. Attempting to think of it that way is a fundamental misunderstanding of the system.
This was a short one, but very important! In part II, we will begin deepening our understanding of energy types and auras by focusing on the broadest differentiating factor among types: Sacral or non-sacral.
You can read it here:
