Reference · The Chart
The Circuitry of Human Design
Beneath the nine centers and the thirty-six channels, the Human Design System sorts a BodyGraph into circuitry: three large families it says the channels belong to, each with its own character and its own way of moving energy. This page sets out the three circuit groups — Individual, Tribal, and Collective — the sub-circuits inside them, and how the system says circuitry shapes the flow of a chart. It reports the model; it does not judge whether the model is true.
What circuitry is
In the system's terms, every one of the thirty-six channels belongs to exactly one circuit, and every circuit belongs to one of three groups. A circuit is a family of channels the system reads as carrying the same kind of current — a shared purpose or "keynote" that colours whatever gates fall inside it. Where definition asks how many separate groups a chart's defined centers form, circuitry asks a different question: what kind of energy the wiring carries, and who the system says that energy is ultimately for — the self, the tribe, or the collective.
The system frames circuitry as the layer that gives the channels their theme. Two people can have the same defined center lit from different channels and, in the model, run very different currents through it, because the channels sit in different circuits. Circuitry is read from the same BodyGraph wiring that produces definition and type; it adds a way of grouping the channels rather than a new calculation.
“Every channel belongs to one circuit, and every circuit to one of three groups — Individual, Tribal, or Collective. Circuitry is the system's grammar for what a wire carries and who it is for.”
The three circuit groups
The system divides all of its circuitry into three groups, each given a one-line keynote and a pair of named sub-circuits. The Individual group is often described as split further into its Knowing and Centering (Integration) streams; the Tribal group into Defense and Ego; the Collective group into Understanding (Logic) and Sensing (Abstract).
| Group | Keynote | Sub-circuits | How the system frames it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual | Empowerment through the unique | Knowing · Centering (Integration) | The system frames the Individual group as the circuitry of the singular voice — mutation, melancholy, and insight the person is said to carry alone and, in its telling, to share only when it moves them to. Its pulse is described as on-or-off rather than steady. |
| Tribal | Support through the bond | Defense · Ego (Heart) | Cast as the circuitry of the family and the group — bargains, resources, touch, and care. The system describes it as concerned with material support and the terms of belonging, the wiring it associates with community and the deal that holds one together. |
| Collective | Sharing through the pattern | Understanding (Logic) · Sensing (Abstract) | Framed as the circuitry that works for everyone and no one in particular — the logical patterns the system ties to testing and the future, and the abstract patterns it ties to memory and the past. Its currency is described as experience made shareable. |
The keynotes and sub-circuit names are the system's own labels, described here as part of its model rather than as claims this archive evaluates. A small set of channels in the Individual group — the Integration channels — is sometimes treated as a circuit of its own that pre-dates the three-way split; teachers vary in how they file it.
How circuitry shapes the flow of the BodyGraph
Circuitry is the system's account of how energy is said to move across a chart, not just where it is switched on. A circuit runs between centers along its channels, and the system gives each group a characteristic direction of travel: the Collective streams it reads as running "up" toward the head and "down" toward action, carrying pattern out to anyone; the Tribal streams it reads as looping within the body's support and survival wiring; the Individual streams it reads as pulsing, working in bursts rather than a steady flow. The claim is that the same lit center behaves differently depending on which circuit feeds it — a distinction the system uses when it describes how a person is said to give, receive, or withhold what a channel carries.
Circuitry follows directly from which channels are complete; see the channels reference for the wiring itself and the gates reference for the points each channel joins.
Where circuitry sits in a reading
Circuitry is one thread among several. It depends on which channels are complete, which depends on which centers are defined, and it is read alongside type rather than in place of it. It is worth noting that the beginner's layer — type, strategy, and authority — was not part of Human Design when Ra Uru Hu began teaching in the United States in 1993; that framework was introduced in 1997, and the circuitry vocabulary belongs to the same period of assembly. The documented history of how the system was built and taught is the subject of the archive's two books. For the fuller map of every layer, see the Guide.
Sources: the three circuit groups, their sub-circuits, and the keynotes assigned to each are set out in the system's own literature, published by Jovian Archive and the IHDS; the I Ching supplies the underlying hexagram set the channels are built on. The wiring these families sort is documented in the channels, the gates, and the centers references, and the layers they sit within in the Guide. The founding and teaching history is documented from the primary record in ZENO and The Voice on Ibiza.