Human Design Gates
The Storyteller
Throat Center Gates
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Origin 1987
Gate 56 sits in the Throat and is read as the storyteller: the one who stimulates others with ideas drawn from their own experience, whether or not those ideas are true. Its number is that of the fifty-sixth hexagram, The Wanderer, whose subject is a traveller with no fixed home, who must be careful and reserved because he has no standing where he is. Human Design keeps the wandering and turns it into narrative, pairing the gate with Gate 11 in the channel of Curiosity. The system holds that the story matters more than its accuracy, an emphasis that belongs to the modern reading rather than to the classical text.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1987 3Tradition: Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987) Origin PeriodThe Storyteller is gate 56 of the sixty-four gates of the Human Design system, corresponding to Hexagram 56, The Wanderer of the I Ching; the system itself was synthesized in 1987 out of the I Ching, the chakra teaching, Kabbalah and astrology. 3 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseThe I Ching of China, the chakra teaching of India, Kabbalah and astrology are drawn on here inside a scheme assembled in 1987 and offered as an instrument of psychological counselling. The four traditions it draws on are old; the arrangement that joins them is not, and none of them produced it. 3 Correspondences
CenterSourced to the subject's own account Channel PartnerSourced to the subject's own accountGate 11 (Channel of Curiosity) 2 I Ching CorrespondenceSourced to the subject's own accountHexagram 56, The Wanderer 2 Learn More
The Gate and Its I Ching Hexagram
Gate 56 of the Human Design system carries the name "The Storyteller," and this entry describes it as the system itself presents it. 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.
The gates take their numbers from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, so Gate 56 corresponds to hexagram 56, The Wanderer. The link is one of numbering and binary structure only: the hexagram belongs to a genuinely ancient Chinese text, while the gate's psychological keynote, here summarised as "The Storyteller", was formulated in the late twentieth century and is not drawn from the classical commentaries. The two meanings are best kept side by side rather than merged.
The Gate in the Bodygraph
Within the bodygraph, the composite body-map at the centre of Human Design, Gate 56 is placed in the Throat centre, one of the nine centres the system maps onto (and expands from) the seven-centre chakra model. Gates do not act alone in the model: each pairs with another gate to complete a channel joining two centres. It belongs to the Channel of Curiosity (11-56), which it forms with Gate 11 ("Ideas And Meaning"). These placements and pairings are features of Ra Uru Hu's 1987 design and describe the system's internal mechanics; they are presented here as the system's own claims, not as verified facts about human beings.
The Throat centre carries a specific function in the system's own account: communication and manifestation, the single centre through which every other centre's energy is turned into speech or action. Gate 56 is one of 11 gates the bodygraph assigns to this centre, and its reading is built from that placement rather than from anything in the classical hexagram commentary.
The same number appears elsewhere in this atlas as Gene Key 56, Richard Rudd's later, contemplative rereading of the identical hexagram. Where Ra Uru Hu gives the gate the fixed keynote "The Storyteller", Rudd spreads the same number across a spectrum: the Shadow of Distraction, the Gift of Enrichment and the Siddhi of Intoxication. The two accounts share a hexagram and a number and diverge in almost everything else, since one issues a fixed mechanical reading and the other asks for years of contemplation.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Corresponds To
Human Design Gate 56, The Storyteller, and Gene Key 56, From Distraction to Intoxication, are the same wheel position, both keyed to Hexagram 56, The Wanderer.
Human Design Gate 56, The Storyteller, corresponds to Hexagram 56, The Wanderer, per its own iching-correspondence fact.
Design Earth in These Crosses
Design Sun in These Crosses
Located in Center
Personality Earth in These Crosses
Personality Sun in These Crosses
Sources
1. The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Richard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), Princeton University Press, 1980The corresponding King Wen hexagram 56View the Source 2. The Human Design System
Ra Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower), Human Design America, 1992Gate 56, The StorytellerView the Source 3. Über den Tellerrand, ein Blick ins Human Design System (HDS)
Petra Stute, Virineya Würgler and Johnny Würgler, Springer, Journal für Gynäkologische Endokrinologie/Schweiz 24 (2021), pp. 50-51, 2021p. 50: the four systems synthesised, and the use made of the synthesisView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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