i wrote this on april 10th, 2022. i was assigned to answer this question in essay form as a part of my living your design guide certification training with my teacher alokanand diaz.
may it have a clarifying impact on your process with your human design curiosity.
what is type?
I promise I’ll get to “what is Type,” but thank you for allowing me to begin with:
Human Design offers a complex, logical, clear, objective, and sophisticated system for witnessing the arrival, movement, and expression of energy, awareness, and pressure through the form of a human being in a concrete and universal way. Human Design also offers a quite simple, somatic, experiential, and deeply personal tool for navigating the subjectivity of what we call reality from the vantage point of one human form. Type is a way to reconcile these polarizing aspects of human design; its formidable depth and complexity with its accessible simplicity; its logical structure with its abstract and subjective application.
I understand why Ra Uru Hu, with his line 5 conscious sun, was called to clarify the simplicity of this system that he was given by bringing through the concept of Type as a lens for taking it in. Type takes the incredibly intricate and infinitely varied thing that is the bodygraph and the Human Design system as a whole, and universalizes its application so that it can be received, understood, and utilized in a practical way by as many people as possible.
Type as a concept supports an immediate access point for the deconditioning process that Human Design is all about. With awareness of Type alone, one can begin the process of coming home to self. The deeper layers of human design can be a part of this recalibration on the energetic level without needing to be intellectually understood, as long as there is a basic awareness of Type.
An awareness of one's Type can have this much impact because the construct of Type takes into consideration, holds, and you might even say advocates for all of the other most dense and substantial aspects of human design, especially signature and not self themes, strategy, definition, openness, and the reality of a differentiated existence in general.
Type gives us our signature and our not self theme - which if we care to assimilate into our perception, provides us with an instantaneous and also ongoing energetic attunement to the state of being we are designed for. Type gives us strategy - perhaps the simplest and most practical tool human design has to offer - as a means for navigating our lives.
Type even takes into consideration the underlying concept of definition and openness. While it is very powerful to understand definition as the parts of oneself that it is in alignment to be anchored to and openness as pure potentiality to be witnessed and experienced without attachment, working with this understanding requires an awareness of and relationship with each of the nine centers. Type though, serves as a guide that when acknowledged and surrendered to can align one with their definition without any mental intake or process. In this way, Type (and strategy and authority) is a way of working with Human Design that supports our evolution towards an emphasis on the more experiential awareness of the Solar Plexus rather than the mental awareness of the Ajna.
Let me pause what seems to have become a love letter to the concept of Type and attempt now to more directly address the question I initially set out to answer - what is Type? Of course I’m going to start with answering another question again, first.
One way to describe Human Design is that it is a system of divisions that compartmentalizes consciousness into many categories spanning many fractals and layers of subte to not subtle frequencies. Type then, would be the least subtle of these categorizations. The most dense energetic subdivision. The lowest octave droning below the varied instrumentation of the rest of the Human Design chart.
The four types, Generator, Projector, Manifestor, and Reflector each have a distinctly different aura. Within each type, the nuances of the design - such as center and channel definition, gate activation, conscious versus unconscious elements, variable, and more - all come together to perform one particular function as carried out by the aura. For the Generator, those deeper layers describe the way the form creates, builds, sustains, and masters through the continuous and regenerative expenditure of energy. For the Projector, those deeper layers describe the way the form witnesses, learns, and shares its awareness. For the Manifestor, those layers describe the way the form initiates and demands mutative and individuated experiences and directions. For the Reflector, those layers describe the way the form receives and displays its objective and macro perspective.
By simply comparing the four aura types to one another we are shown in incredibly clear, absolute, and concrete terms who each of us is and also is not at the most basic level of our form. We see how each of us does and also does not organically move through the world. In this way, understanding Type can calibrate one to a level of awareness that enables them to easily register whether or not they are operating in alignment on any and all macro and micro levels of their experience.
Type as a concept supports the person desiring to experience the simplicity and efficacy of the Human Design experiment while still honoring the depth and clarity of the mechanics of the system as a whole. Type is an immediate attunement. Type is what makes it all come together. Type is the first stop on the journey towards embracing differentiation. Type is a key that unlocks new potentialities towards true interdependence.
as my writing in the above essay (likely) makes clear, I have fallen in love with the system of Human Design, as well as with my own process of clarifying, universalizing, and sharing its potential with others.
if you feel called to learn more about the Human Design system through the transmission of my particular frequency, here are the present and upcoming routes to such an experience:
enroll in the fundamentals of human design for the astrologically-minded - self paced very thorough introductory HD course (geared towards those with some astrological knowledge, but it isn't required.)
get a smaller but still significant (3+ hr) taste of my introductory HD teaching with my popular workshop WTF is my aura type?
sign up for my email list. - there will be more formal and more extensive "Living Your Design" offerings both in person and online following the completion of LYD Guide certification this season
stay tuned via my email list & social media for a new initiation offering human design insights and education coming soon or eventually :)
i do offer one on one human design support, but do not have bookings open to the public, presently. the same email list linked above gets you access to private bookings, sometimes, but patrons receive the most consistent access to one on ones.