Profile and Line - the Music of Design by Randy Richmond

My recognition of Human Design as a valid construct came at the time of my first reading in January of 1999. It was an intellectual recognition based on my twenty-five years of experience as a psychologist counseling alcoholics and drug addicts. I had learned early on that my ability to help others with these maladies was effective only when I was asked, or invited, for my help. Verification of strategy as to type (mine being a projector) was familiar to me. In May of 1999, I asked Ra if he might instruct me in the basics of Human Design. He agreed and for a period of one week we did what now would be called an 'analyst's training.' On the last day, he said, "Today, I will teach you profile." My first thought was "Let's not get too esoteric. I'm most interested in the basic channels and gates leading to definition." Fortunately I didn't voice this objection. By the time I left that night, I really noticed a hum, a vibration that the day's course in profiling had created within me. I am a mental being - no Tinker Bell, and yet I knew and felt that this was the music that went with the picture.

The interplay of the two profile lines (in my case a '6' and a '3') and the resonance that this had with all the other 3rd lines in my chart (seven) was immediate. The number and placement of 1st lines (seven) was also quite revealing. So much of my work had been concerned with teaching the value of past experience (the 33.1) and that one didn't always have to repeat the unpleasant experiences (the 35.1). And that, bottom line, if one must, it's okay to go down with the ship (the 5.1). The timbre and meter of my work with others (post-Saturnian) is revealed in these lines and gates, and yet this description is my intellectualizing of what for me is an acoustic experience of looking at a chart. At first my own, but now anyone's rhythm can be revealed through seeing the number of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th lines, etc.

For instance, I was looking at a chart with a 6/2 profile, but also containing ten 2nd lines throughout. Immediately you know the tone of this person's life, their inner song. You already know without looking at a gate what the sound of their relationship to life is. The harmony, resonance, or dissonance between the profile lines and the other lines in the chart reveal the relationship (harmonic or otherwise) that that person has within them.

You know too whether this is an introverted right-angle experience or an extroverted transpersonal dynamic that guides and sets their course. In the above mentioned chart, the presence of a transpersonal profile in conjunction with ten 2nd right angle, 'leave me alone' lines, conveys immediately the inner struggle this person must experience and the conflict of needing others as part of their process and yet wishing to be a hermit. We have not, as you can easily tell, looked at what centers are colored in, whether or not that person is a single definition or split, whether they are emotionally defined or not. You know without looking at any of these determinatives the beat that underlies and drives the song.

Profile in Neutrinos allows you to see the exact number of each line and whether they are conscious or not. If you have not already enjoyed the music of design, I invite you to experiment.

Randy Richmond