The Left Angle Cross of Individualism is named for Gate 38 and Gate 39. Human Design reads Gate 38, from Hexagram 38, Opposition, sitting in the Root, as the fighter, the drive to oppose and the need to discover something worth opposing so the fight has a point; and Gate 39, from Hexagram 39, Obstruction, sitting in the Root, as provocation, the pressure that stirs feeling in other people to discover whether there is any spirit in them. It belongs to the Left Angle family, read as transpersonal, a direction practitioners describe as answering less to personal choice than to what circumstance hands the individual.
Its design half is Gate 57 and Gate 51. Gate 57 sits in the Spleen and is read as intuition in the present moment, associated with hearing rather than sight; it pairs among the four Integration gates. Gate 51 sits in the Heart or Will centre and is read as shock, competitive courage that initiates and can startle others awake; it pairs with Gate 25 in the channel of Initiation.
So a chart carrying this cross fights and provokes on a shared Root surface, while beneath it an instant intuition answers to a startling courage. The same four gates also underlie the Cross of Opposition and the Cross of Provocation, and this cross's own reversal is the Left Angle Cross of Individualism. Both hexagrams are old texts; pairing them this way as a life direction dates from the system's founding in 1987.