Martyr / Role Model

The 3/6 profile (Martyr / Role Model) is one of the twelve profiles of Human Design, a modern esoteric system originated in 1987 by Ra Uru Hu and presented here as a contemporary framework rather than ancient wisdom. A profile is formed from two of the six lines, a scheme the system borrows from the six lines of an I Ching hexagram and reads psychologically: the profile pairs a conscious line with an unconscious one to give an archetypal role. The 3/6 profile joins the roles named Martyr / Role Model. The line names and their meanings are Human Design's own twentieth-century reading, not a claim inherited from the Chinese classic whose six-line figures suggested the structure; they are described here as the system presents them, not as verified fact.

Human Design describes the third line, Martyr or Adaptor, as learning through direct trial and error; the sixth line, Role Model, is described as living a distinctive three part life, resembling the third line's own trial and error approach for roughly the first thirty years, withdrawing after that into a more detached, observational phase often called being on the roof, and only after about fifty settling into the objective, lived wisdom the line is named for. The 3/6 profile is therefore described, in the system's own framework, as doubly shaped by trial and error, since the third line's own nature and the sixth line's early phase are held to reinforce rather than balance one another until the later shift comes.

This profile joins the third and sixth line positions, which classical Yijing commentary holds to correspond, and it is therefore one of the three Human Design profiles whose structure genuinely descends from the Chinese source.

Correspondence

The six lines of a hexagram are read as two stacked trigrams, and commentary holds that a line of the lower trigram corresponds with the line occupying the same relative position in the upper: one with four, two with five, three with six. The relation is standard doctrine and much older than any modern system.

The positions themselves

The third line is the top of the lower trigram, a transitional and, in the commentaries, characteristically difficult position. The sixth line is the top of the whole figure, beyond the ruling position, and is commonly read as excess, withdrawal, or a situation that has run past its proper end.

Both readings describe a position within a situation. Neither describes a person.

The modern layer

Human Design attaches a role name to each of the six lines and reads a pair of them as a personality. Those names and that reading are Ra Uru Hu's, published in 1987. This atlas records the structural inheritance, which is real, and records the interpretation as a modern addition rather than as Chinese material.