The Gate of Opinions 💫 The Mandala 64 Walk
Sun in Aries, Gate 17 · March 24–30
Hello!
I know you just received a post from me yesterday, and I do apologize for the onslaught. Going forward, these posts will be sent out every 5-6 days, on the first day that the sun enters a new gate.
I plan to do a little art for each gate as well, and just couldn’t quite get to it for yesterday’s post, but here’s my belated interpretation on Gate 25: Innocence! If you end up creating anything inspired by the gates, please do share with us in the comments or the group chat. Can’t wait to see what emerges!
Call for Guest Writers: If you’re interested in writing a guest post for any one of the gates, I’d love to hear your perspective on a slice of the mandala and co-promote you and your work <3
Shoot me a DM and let me know which gate you’re interested in- I’d love to hear from you!
Sun in Gate 17: March 24-30
Gate 17: The Story
We have just come through the birth of Gate 25, the wide-eyed lamb stepping into the world for the first time. And now, barely upright, already the mind begins to stir.
Gate 17 is the gate of Opinions, which sounds small until you feel how powerful it truly is. The mind has just received its first impressions of the world and immediately begins sorting, categorizing, pattern-matching, and wanting to know what it all means and where it is going. This is the energy of the young ram looking out across the hills, bleating his cute little bleat and seeing who responds. Through witnessing the opinions of others and making his own, he’s beginning, for the first time, to form a view of the landscape he was born into.
In the I Ching this hexagram is called Sui, Following. This translates to the notion that the opinions we grip to and defend out of habit are not the ones that serve us. They are the ones that follow naturally from what we have observed in the world, and that remain willing to follow new evidence when it arrives.
The shadow of 17 is Opinion with a capital O- it’s the mind that has calcified around its own conclusions and mistakes certainty for truth. The gift is far-sightedness, the capacity to hold a wide view and see the larger perspective, to form views that genuinely serve rather than simply protect. And the siddhi, omniscience, is what happens when the mind becomes so clear and empty of defensiveness that it can simply mirror reality as it is.
Gate 17 in the Body
Gate 17 lives in the Ajna Center, located in the center of the head, behind the forehead and between the eyes.
The Ajna is the second center from the top of the bodygraph, sitting between the Head center above and the Throat center below. It is the center of conceptualization, mental awareness, beliefs, and the way we make sense of the world through pattern and logic. In the physical body it corresponds to the pituitary gland, often called the master gland because of its role in regulating hormonal function throughout the entire system. The pituitary sits at the base of the brain in roughly the same position as what many traditions call the third eye, the seat of inner vision and higher perception.
Gate 17 specifically is associated with the right eye, the eye of visual pattern recognition and forward projection. Gate 17 projects outward, scanning the horizon for what is coming. This is why the gift of far-sightedness lives here, rooted in how this part of the brain and visual system actually works.
The Ajna has an important relationship with pressure. It sits directly below the Head center, which is always generating questions and the need to know. The Ajna receives that pressure and tries to resolve it into concepts, opinions, and frameworks. When the pressure is too much and the Ajna is overworked, it can show up as chronic mental tension, headaches, eye strain, and needing to figure everything out.
The invitation of Gate 17 is to let the mind do its work of pattern recognition without demanding that it produce certainty. An opinion is a working hypothesis, not a verdict.
Season, Channel & Polarity
Season: We are still in the Thunder season, that span between the spring equinox and Beltane where every gate carries the lower trigram of Thunder in its foundation. Gate 17 falls in early Aries, the second gate of the Ram’s journey. The ram has found its legs and is starting to look around.
The upper trigram of Gate 17 is Lake, the energy of joy, reflection, and open receptivity. Lake sits above Thunder here, which is a beautiful pairing. The sudden initiating energy of Thunder rises up into something that can hold it, something with depth and stillness at its surface even while movement happens below. Lake is the quality of the mind when it is open, even delighted by what it encounters. It tempers Thunder’s urgency with spaciousness. The opinion that forms here, when the gate is working well, carries both the aliveness of a fresh impression and the reflective quality of a mind willing to sit with what it has seen before drawing conclusions.
Channel: Gate 17 completes its channel with Gate 62, the Gate of Details, in the Throat center. Together they form the Channel of Acceptance, the design of an organizational being. Gate 17 sees the big picture and forms the concept and Gate 62 translates that concept into language, names it, makes it communicable. Without Gate 62, Gate 17’s far vision stays inside the head. Without Gate 17, Gate 62’s details have no larger framework to hang on. Together they form one of the great thinking-and-speaking channels of the bodygraph.
Polarity: The complementary gate across the wheel is Gate 18, the Gate of Correction, in the Spleen center. Where Gate 17 forms opinions about what could be better, Gate 18 feels instinctively where something is off and drives toward correcting it. They are two sides of the same impulse, the mind that sees the pattern and the body that feels the wrongness. Together they complete a picture of discernment as both a mental and a somatic knowing.
A Somatic Practice for Gate 17
Sit comfortably and bring your attention to the center of your head, somewhere behind your forehead and between your eyes. You do not need to visualize anything specific, just rest your awareness there. Notice if there is any buzzing, pressure, or busy activity in this area. The Ajna often runs hot, generating thoughts and opinions without pause.
Take a slow breath in and on the exhale let the forehead soften, as if the space behind your eyes could widen and expand outward. Do this a few times and with each exhale invite the grip of the mind to loosen slightly. You are not emptying the mind, just giving it more room. Notice the difference between a tight contracted opinion and a wide open perspective. Gate 17 at its gift is spacious and omnicient. The far-sighted eye is a relaxed eye.
Gate 17 Creativity Prompts
Pull out your favorite notebook, your paints, your colored pencils, whatever calls to you, and give yourself 15 uninterrupted minutes with one of these prompts:
Write about an opinion you have held for a long time that has quietly shifted or softened. Or write about the way a view changes as you move through a landscape, what you can see now that you could not see before.
Draw or paint what far-sightedness or omnicience looks like as an image. A wide horizon, an eye that has gone soft and open, a bird overhead looking down at the full shape of something you can only see in fragments from the ground.
With the Mandala 64 deck, pull the Gate 17 card and sit with both sides. Notice which frequency you are living in this week around a particular topic or situation in your life. Let your hand move from there.
⭐ Let me know how Gate 17 is showing up for you- through your art, poetry, or insights! Post it in the comments or the chat.
And please share this project with a human-design-curious friend !
Have a beautiful week ahead,
Alison