Spleen

The Spleen centre is one of the nine centres of the Human Design bodygraph. Human Design is a modern esoteric system, originated in 1987 by Ra Uru Hu (born Alan Robert Krakower, 1948-2011), who presented its content as received teaching rather than as an inherited tradition. It is roughly four decades old and is best read as a contemporary synthesis, not as ancient wisdom or established fact. Ra Uru Hu combined four older systems that had never before been joined: the I Ching supplies the sixty-four gates, the Hindu chakra model the nine centres, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life the connecting channels, and Western astrology the method of calculation.

Where the Hindu chakra model it draws on has seven centres, Human Design maps nine, a difference the system explains by a claimed mutation in human form, a claim about the species that has no support outside the system and should be reported as its own, not as fact. In the model the Spleen centre is classed as a "Awareness" centre and is an awareness centre of instinct, intuition and the survival sense, associated with health, timing and an in-the-moment knowing. A centre may be "defined" (consistently active) or "undefined" (open and conditioned by others) in a given chart. These are features of a contemporary esoteric framework dating from 1987, described here as the system presents them.

Sources The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower) with Über den Tellerrand, ein Blick ins Human Design System (HDS)Petra Stute, Virineya Würgler and Johnny Würgler

The Human Design bodygraph has nine centres where the chakra scheme most often cited in modern Western usage has seven. The Spleen is one of the two additions.

No classical original

The Head, Ajna, Throat, Heart, Sacral, Solar Plexus and Root all occupy positions that a classical centre occupies, whatever the differences in what each scheme says about them. The Spleen does not. Neither does the G or Identity centre. Both were introduced with the system in 1987.

Where the name comes from

The organ has a long history in humoral medicine and in several traditional medical systems, so a reader meeting the word may reasonably expect a link to one of them. Human Design's use of the name is its own, and this atlas does not assert a derivation it cannot establish.

Why the additions matter

Two centres with no source counterpart mean the bodygraph cannot be checked against the scheme it adapts. Whatever the system says about this centre rests on its own authority, published by Ra Uru Hu in 1987, and on nothing older.

The other side

The sevenfold chakra scheme is itself a modern popular settlement of a tradition that described varying numbers of centres. The comparison here is between a 1987 construction and that settlement, not between a new system and an unchanging original.

Sources Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland with The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)