Left Angle Cross of Distraction (60/56)

The Left Angle Cross of Distraction is named for Gate 60 and Gate 56. Human Design reads Gate 60, from Hexagram 60, Limitation, sitting in the Root, as the acceptance of limitation, which the system holds is the only ground from which real change can grow; and Gate 56, from Hexagram 56, The Wanderer, sitting in the Throat, as the storyteller, who stimulates others with ideas drawn from experience whether or not they are true. It falls in the Left Angle family, which practitioners read as fated in flavour, serving something beyond the individual rather than a self chosen plan.

Its design half is Gate 28 and Gate 27. Gate 28 sits in the Spleen and is read as the struggle for purpose, the search for something worth the risk of a life; it pairs with Gate 38 in the channel of Struggle. Gate 27 sits in the Sacral centre and is read as nourishment and care, the instinct to feed and protect others; it pairs with Gate 50 in the channel of Preservation.

So a chart carrying this cross accepts limits while wandering in story on its surface, while beneath it a struggle for purpose answers to an instinct to nourish. The same four gates also underlie the Cross of Stimulation and the Cross of Limitation, and this cross's own reversal is the Left Angle Cross of Distraction. The hexagrams are ancient; grouping them into one transpersonal cross is the modern system's own construction, dated to 1987.

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

This Left Angle Cross of Distraction completes its two role arrangements with this ordering, Gate 60 and Gate 56 exposed, accepted limitation ahead of the storyteller. Its first article reads Gate 60 as the acceptance of limitation, the only ground real change can grow from, now the more exposed gate, and Gate 56 as the storyteller who stimulates others with ideas drawn from experience, true or not. What it does not trace is where the four gates sit on the wheel itself, the Human Design mandala's division of its sixty four gates into four Quarters, and by that measure this ordering draws one gate from each of the four.

Gate 60, the personality gate here, falls in the Quarter of Mutation, purpose fulfilled through transformation. Gate 56, its personality partner, falls in the Quarter of Civilization, purpose fulfilled through form. Behind them, Gate 27 falls in the Quarter of Initiation, purpose fulfilled through mind, and Gate 28 falls in the Quarter of Duality, purpose fulfilled through bonding.

So the accepted limit and the storytelling the first article reads on this ordering's surface answer to the arcs of transformation and form, while the nourishing care and the worthy risk beneath them answer to the arcs of mind and bonding, the same four arcs the earlier ordering of Distraction also draws on however its two pairs are assigned to personality and design. With both arrangements in place, Distraction's two gate pairs share the same wheel wide spread, one gate from each Quarter regardless of order.