There are so many sides to human design.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the human design system is its emphasis on how the passive environment exerts a profound impact on our lives. It’s the idea that certain invisible but ever-present forces follow certain patterns, and that awareness of these patterns allows us to live intentionally and prosper.
Today we want to talk about celestial transits and what they mean from a human design perspective. Then we’ll show you how you can harness them to your benefit.
Let’s start with something we touched on above, the “passive environment.” What do we mean by that?
When someone mentions the word environment, we generally think of the ecological environment, or to a lesser extent the environment in which we live, work, play or learn. These are all active environments: the plants and animals outside our homes, the people and institutions that surround us, the manner in which we’re governed, and the opportunities that exist in our world. In other words, the environment of living things.
Our passive environment, on the other hand, can be thought of as the realm of the un-living: the rock beneath our feet, the air we breathe, the sunlight we soak up, and the gravity that keeps us tethered to our planet. These are forces we can influence but ultimately can’t control. We can keep pollutants out of the air, but we can’t STOP the air. We can wear sunscreen, but we can’t stop the sun.
There’s one aspect of our passive environment that just so happens to be central to the entire human design system: neutrinos.
These tiny particles are a million times smaller in mass than even the smallest component of a single atom. They’re produced by stars like our Sun, by large planets such as Jupiter, by the dramatic cosmic explosions of supernovas, and even to a much smaller extent by manmade nuclear reactions. Neutrinos exist in our universe by the countless trillions, surrounding everyone and everything at every moment of existence, moving THROUGH everyone and everything, leaving us none the wiser as they zoom through the cosmos in all directions.
Human design posits that the dizzying array of differentiation from one human being to the next is actually caused by the subtle but far-reaching influence of these special subatomic particles. See, in the human design system, neutrinos perform a crucial function: They activate gates. And they’re able to do so because they carry information. Neutrinos are actually the smallest little mail carriers in the cosmos.
Gates make us who we are.
Here at HD&Me, we’re endlessly fascinated by the mechanics of how gates function, but our discussion of celestial transits here focuses on two types of gates: “hanging” gates and “sleeping” gates.
A hanging gate is an active gate attached to a defined energy center, but which lacks connection to another center via an active channel.
A sleeping gate, on the other hand, is an active gate attached to an undefined center. (For a quick primer on channels and centers, check out our post “Your Life in HD: Channels and Centers.”)
Hanging gates and sleeping gates exert a powerful force on our lives because, like hydrogen and oxygen atoms desperate to form a water molecule, these “lonely” gates are seeking to be united with their complementary gate in order to form a complete channel between two centers.
The founder of human design, Ra Uru Hu, kept coming back to the effect of neutrinos on gates. Part of his breakthrough was that he put forward a way of predicting the influence of what he called the “Neutrino Ocean.” He posited that this constantly shifting passive force can activate gates in anyone’s unique human design, regardless of whether they were born with those particular gates in their own body’s blueprint.
These temporary gate activations can happen one of two ways: 1) by the presence of another person who has the gate already active in their design; or 2) by the positioning of 13 different objects and geometric points in our Solar System, which we call “celestials.”* Human design states that every day of our lives, we’re subjected to a revolving dance of cosmic influence exerted by these celestials on the neutrino stream. THIS is the system of celestial transits.
So let’s talk about it!
There are 13 celestials in the human design system that are capable of activating the 64 gates.
These are the:
- Sun
- Earth
- Moon
- North and South Nodes of the Moon
- Mercury
- Venus
- Mars
- Jupiter
- Saturn
- Uranus
- Neptune
- Pluto
Each of these 13 celestials filter the vast neutrino stream as it works and weaves its way through the Solar System, “flavoring” the neutrinos as they pass through. Basically, the idea is that a neutrino that passes through Saturn is different from one that doesn’t, and it’s also different from one that passes through Jupiter. These differences account for the different temporary gate activations by way of celestial transits — in other words, by the movements of these objects and geometric positions in our Solar System.
Celestial transits happen all the time, every day. And since there are 13 celestials capable of activating gates, there are 13 chances that on any given day you’ll temporarily feel the effects of being an “enhanced” person, so to speak. This is why Ra Uru Hu, described the celestials as our “local programming agents.”
Let’s take an example of how a celestial transit might affect someone on a given day.
Jarvis is an office worker. In his human design, Jarvis has an undefined willpower center with one “sleeping” gate active in it. Above all, this sleeping gate seeks a connection to his expression center, through a complementary gate, in order to provide energetic definition to both Jarvis’ willpower center and his expression center. On Monday, the celestial transit of Mercury activates that complementary expression center gate, forming a complete channel between the two centers. So for all of Monday, Jarvis suddenly feels an enhanced sense of willpower and ability to express himself. When his coworkers at the office ask if he can finish a time-sensitive project by Wednesday morning, his boldness manifests through his expression center, and he says “Of course. I can make the deadline no problem.”
When Tuesday comes, Mercury shifts into a new position in its celestial transit. Jarvis returns to his normal self, with his undefined expression center and undefined willpower center. He’s suddenly filled with a sense of dread and remorse – why the hell did he say that he could finish that project? There’s no way he can make that deadline! Jarvis stresses and stretches himself thin throughout the day on Tuesday, working well into the night so that he can make the deadline that he normally would never have promised he could meet.
In a way, celestial transits are a “neutrino weather system,” which we can predict but can’t control.
Even if you don’t forecast the potential impacts by consulting charts and apps, celestial transits are important to understand thematically in human design because they help to illustrate what’s baked into your own unique design and – more importantly – what’s NOT, what is only yours “on loan from the universe.” Getting one of your normally undefined centers defined by a celestial transit is like wearing an accessory: a hat or a jacket. Your clothes aren’t you, even though they can draw people to you, get you noticed, give you confidence, etc. And like celestial transits, they’re always changing. They’ll eventually fade, wear out, and fall out of fashion.
Fun fact time!!! As the name implies, celestial transits are TRANSITORY. However, they’re not necessarily fleeting. Since the outer celestials (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) take so long to orbit the Sun, their transits can activate a gate for months, even years at a time! So if a person suddenly has access to a newly defined center by the transit of Pluto, for example, they could end up with that definition for a significant portion of their life, which they might even come to consider the real versions of themselves. But once Pluto finally reaches the point where it no longer activates that pivotal gate in their design, the person could wake up the next morning feeling completely different – profoundly changed – even feeling like a fraud. At the end of the day, that years-long definition was not truly THEIRS, even though it unequivocally altered how they approached their life during that time.
In the human design system, celestial transits simply exist.
You can forecast them, better understand them, learn all there is to know about them, and even temporarily reap some benefits from them, but you can’t STOP them from occurring or from influencing you. This is why following your own strategy and decision-making authority is so important.
It allows you to reap the benefits of temporary energetic definition through celestial transits, without falling victim to the idea that you suddenly have access to that temporary energy for the long-term, or that you’ve turned over a new leaf and have become an entirely new person out of nowhere. As with any aspect of human design, keep experimenting and HAVE FUN!
*Many other human design practitioners, including Ra Uru Hu himself, refer to the phenomena described herein as “Planetary Transits.” However, we think this term is confusing. Although eight of the 13 celestials are defined as planets, the other three heavenly bodies (the Sun, the Moon, and Pluto) are NOT, and two of the celestials (the North and South Nodes of the Moon) are not heavenly bodies at all but geometric positions of the moon relative to the Earth. Therefore, to avoid confusion, we refer to the group of 13 collectively as “celestials” and their cyclical process of gate activation as “celestial transits.”