Channel of Emoting

The Channel of Emoting (39-55) is one of the thirty-six channels of the Human Design bodygraph, a system originated in 1987 by Ra Uru Hu and described here as a modern esoteric framework rather than an ancient tradition. A channel is a defined pathway joining the Root centre and the Solar Plexus centre, and it is completed by two gates: Gate 39 ("Provoking Spirit") and Gate 55 ("Abundance Of Spirit"), whose numbers come from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching. The channel idea and its Tree-of-Life-style pathways, the gates' I Ching numbering, and the centres' chakra roots were combined for the first time in the 1980s; the channel is part of that composite, presented as the system's own model, not as verified fact.

In the system's own account, the Root centre carries a pressure that drives the other centres into action, read as a low grade adrenal stress, and the Solar Plexus centre carries emotional awareness, read not as a fixed state but as a wave moving between poles over time; the channel is read as a direct circuit between those two functions whenever both gates are defined in the same chart.

The same two numbers appear elsewhere in this atlas as Gene Keys 39 and 55, Richard Rudd's later, contemplative reading of the identical hexagram pair. Gene Key 39 runs from the Shadow of Provocation through the Gift of Dynamism to the Siddhi of Liberation; Gene Key 55 runs from Victimisation through Freedom to Freedom. Rudd's system drops the bodygraph and its channels entirely, so this particular pairing is a Human Design structure only, with no equivalent in his contemplative method.

The Channel of Emoting joins the Root centre to the Solar Plexus centre through Gates 39 and 55, and both of those numbers are borrowed. They are positions in the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, the Chinese divinatory classic whose sixty-four hexagrams Human Design maps one to one onto the sixty-four gates of its bodygraph. Read as I Ching rather than as Human Design, the two numbers name two independent oracle texts.

Hexagram 39, Obstruction (Jian). Water high on the mountain, the pass blocked. Its counsel runs against instinct: when the way is obstructed, do not press on; turn back, gather friends, and seek the great man.

Hexagram 55, Abundance (Feng). Thunder and lightning at their culmination. It is fullness at the zenith, the sun at noon, and the eclipse already implicit in it; greatness that cannot be held but can be spent without sadness.

The I Ching itself never sets these two hexagrams in a pair. Each stands alone in the sequence, consulted about a changing situation and answered in counsel that passes. The pairing is a construction of Ra Uru Hu's system, published from 1987, which fixes each hexagram to a position in a birth chart and reads the joined pair as a lasting trait of the person. The correspondence of number is real, and both hexagrams can be followed into their own entries in this atlas; the pairing, and the character read out of it, belong to the modern system alone.