Beyond the planets: How Asteroids Reveal your Hidden Human Design

If you’re only reading the main planets, you’re missing the most revealing layer of someone’s design. Asteroids uncover the personal myths, patterns, and inner drivers that shape a client’s life.

Is there More To Human Design?

In the original Human Design revelation, Ra Uru Hu was given 13 objects to include in the chart. When you look at your Human Design chart that’s what you see – your own unique arrangement of those 13 planets.

But what if there’s more to Human Design? What if we can find other ways to explore who you are beyond that one standard chart? Well, you’re in luck! Because we can.

How to use Asteroids in Human Design

Asteroids are bits of rock floating in space. There are tens of thousands of them, mostly found in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. They are increasingly popular with astrologers these days. How do we incorporate them into what we know about Human Design. And really, why would we bother?

I’ve been using asteroids in my work with Human Design since 2005 because they show the truth beneath the chart — the beliefs we carry, the stories we inherit, and the lived experience that shapes who we become. They give a precision that you simply can’t get from reading the standard chart alone.

How Asteroids Can Change the Way You Read a Chart

Consider this. Most of the gates in your Design that you consider to be empty are actually filled with archetypal energies that you are living out every day. You just don’t see them, because you haven’t explored this layer of your Human Design.

I’ll give you an example.

Greta Thunberg has her Sun in Gate 38. She has nothing in Gate 28. But wait!

She has Nemesis (justice, balancing the scales) and Medusa (women’s rage/dealing with great change) in the adjoining gate – Gate 28. This adds a powerful new dimension to understanding her Design.

Thunberg’s Sun activation tells us she grows as a person (Sun) when she faces opponents with whom there is no apparent possibility of finding agreement (Gate 38). There is a huge yawning gulf between them, and this means that she can easily get overwhelmed by her task (that’s the gate 28, overwhelm).

But what if she DOES have activations in Gate 28 that allow her to work more effectively with that Root Centre energy? What if she could turn up as Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, using her Medusa energy to help us understand that we are heading towards a point of no return due to the arrogant actions of a small proportion of people, and that we should be angry about that?

What if Nemesis and Medusa gave her a powerful reason to turn up and fight for what she believes in (her Sun in Gate 38)?

Can you see how this knowledge can be incredibly empowering? Without knowing about those two asteroids, we might be tempted to say oh that Greta, she’s always looking for a fight but she has no way to know what is worth fighting for!

Dan Levy is the much loved star of the tv series Schitt’s Creek.

My favourite place to go looking for asteroids is in the bridge gates, which Levy doesn’t have because he is a single definition. But I am more than a little curious about his Design Sun in Gate 2. He has vision (gate 2) but how does he develop it without the Gate 14? Turns out he has Arachne there. If you don’t know her story, let me share. Arachne was so talented (like uber-talented) that Pallas (who represents creative brilliance in your Design) couldn’t take the competition and turned Arachne into a spider. So, in the Gate of Skills, Levy is uber-talented, and his Sun in Gate 2 gives him a natural gift for attuning that talent to it’s proper direction.

But wait! Levy’s Design Mercury is in Gate 23, and he has his design Arachne in Gate 43. So it turns up not once, but twice, in gates that relate to using his unique talents (14) and insight (43) to strip away (23) anything that doesn’t support the individual’s ability to find their place within the collective (8/1). That just about sums up the storyline of Schitt’s Creek!

In case you missed Schitt’s Creek (which, I’m sorry to hear that), Levy won Emmy’s for all his multiple roles in the series, in which he co-created, co-wrote and co-starred. Uber-talented!

Human Design Astrology

Because astrology is part of the structure of our Human Design chart, we can integrate a vast array of celestial influences – including asteroids, dwarf planets, galactic points and fixed stars – into our bodygraph. These elements add new layers of depth to our understanding of our personal energetics.

It’s very common for people to mistake these hidden archetypal energies as their ‘not self’, and try to suppress them. Once we see them, we can grasp how these previously hidden archetypal influences have been playing out so powerfully in our lives all along.

Exploring these astrological dimensions within Human Design reveals fresh insights, creating new relationships between our gates, channels and centres. This expanded view allows us to step out beyond a conventional Human Design perspective to embrace a more subtle and powerful version of our emerging self.

Feminine DNA

There’s another reason why the asteroids are important in Human Design. Remember those 13 planets that make up your standard Human Design? They are almost all masculine archetypes. Most of the feminine consciousness in your Design lies in the archetypal layer – in the asteroids.

The I Ching, which is the basis for the Human Design gates, has an identical structure to our DNA, and so learning about the feminine archetypes in your Design activates your Feminine DNA. It’s not just about finding these energies, but discovering how we have taken on the patriarchal overlays.

Pandora can show us how to shift from shame to pride in your gifts. Psyche helps us shift from passive co-dependence to actively seeking what we desire. Vesta helps us see where we have dimmed our own light, and how we can tend to our inner heart flame in a healthy and creative way. Each archetype has so much richness.

At a time when women are taking a global leadership role it’s important to know where you are still unconsciously living out old cultural stereotypes, and how you can unwind them from your life.

How Do I Learn to Use Asteroids in Human Design?

As a coach, you’ll eventually come across something important in a client’s life that simply isn’t explained by the standard Human Design chart.

That’s where the asteroids come in.

You don’t need to learn thousands of them. A small number of archetypal asteroids can add extraordinary depth to your readings and help explain themes the standard chart can’t.

Download the free guide to learn 4 quick ways you can use asteroids in your Human Design coaching.

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