Left Angle Cross of Upheaval (18/17)

The Left Angle Cross of Upheaval is named for Gate 18 and Gate 17. Human Design reads Gate 18, from Hexagram 18, Work on the Decayed, sitting in the Spleen, as corrective instinct, an alertness to what is flawed and could be set right; and Gate 17, from Hexagram 17, Following, sitting in the Ajna, as the forming of opinions, logical viewpoints that want to be organised and offered to others. 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 39 and Gate 38. Gate 39 sits in the Root and is read as provocation, the pressure that stirs feeling in other people; it pairs with Gate 55 in the channel of Emoting. Gate 38 sits in the Root and is read as the fighter, the drive to oppose and the need for something worth opposing; it pairs with Gate 28 in the channel of Struggle.

So a chart carrying this cross corrects flaws and offers opinions on its surface, while beneath it a provoking pressure answers to a fighter's need for a cause. The same four gates also underlie the Cross of Opinions and the Cross of Correction, and this cross's own reversal is the Left Angle Cross of Upheaval. Both hexagrams are old texts; pairing them this way as a life direction dates from the system's founding in 1987.

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Left Angle Cross of Upheaval is named here for Gate 18 and Gate 17, corrective instinct exposed ahead of formed opinion. Its first article reads Gate 18 as an alertness to what is flawed and could be set right, and Gate 17 as the forming of opinions, logical viewpoints that want to be organised and offered to others. What it does not trace is where the four gates sit on the wheel itself, the Human Design mandala's division of its sixty four gates into four Quarters, and by that measure this cross draws one gate from each of the four.

Gate 18, the personality gate here, falls in the Quarter of Duality, purpose fulfilled through bonding. Gate 17, its personality partner, falls in the Quarter of Initiation, purpose fulfilled through mind. Behind them, Gate 39 falls in the Quarter of Civilization, purpose fulfilled through form, and Gate 38 falls in the Quarter of Mutation, purpose fulfilled through transformation.

So the corrective instinct and the formed opinion the first article reads on this cross's surface answer to the arcs of bonding and mind, while the provoking pressure and the fighter's need for a cause beneath them answer to the arcs of form and transformation, the same four arcs the cross's own reversal will draw on however its two pairs are assigned to personality and design. Four gates, four different Quarters, no pair sharing an arc: this cross draws its whole reading from every corner of the wheel's own purpose rather than concentrated in one.