Role Model / Martyr

The 6/3 profile (Role Model / Martyr) 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 6/3 profile joins the roles named Role Model / Martyr. 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 sixth line, Role Model, as living a three part life, resembling trial and error through roughly the first thirty years, withdrawing into a more detached, observational phase often called being on the roof through about fifty, and only afterward settling into the line's objective, lived wisdom; the third line, Martyr or Adaptor, is described as learning throughout life by direct trial and error, discovering by getting things wrong what actually works. The 6/3 profile is therefore described, in the system's own framework, as doubly shaped by trial and error, since the sixth line's own early phase already resembles the third line's habitual mode, and the eventual shift into role model authority is held to arrive only once both layers of trial and error have run their course.

This profile takes the sixth and third line positions of a hexagram, the same pair as another profile in the set but in the opposite order, and the pair is one of the three the Chinese tradition holds to correspond.

Correspondence

A hexagram is read as two stacked trigrams, and classical Yijing commentary holds a line of the lower trigram to correspond with the line in the same relative position of the upper: one with four, two with five, three with six. Human Design's six profiles whose lines are three positions apart are exactly those three relations, each taken in both orders.

The positions themselves

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

Ordered pairs

The twelve profiles are ordered, the two numbers being taken from different parts of the calculated chart, which is why six and three is a distinct profile from three and six.

The modern layer

The role names on the six lines and the reading of a pair as a personality are Ra Uru Hu's, published in 1987. Classical commentary reads lines as positions in a situation rather than as human types, and this atlas records the two layers separately.