Welcome to Integrating Polarities, a new series here on Cycles of Time.
Each week, I’ll be writing about the current positions of the Sun and the Earth in the Human Design Mandala & Zodiac as they activate opposing energies across the Wheel of the Year.
In a time of great divisiveness on planet earth, my goal with this project is to explore the integration of seemingly opposite themes in order to get in the practice of integrating polarities, moving beyond the binary and bridging the divide. These transmissions are timely, sent out at the beginning of each sun/earth transit into a new gate, and they can be read like an integrative horoscope for the themes of the days ahead.
In Human Design and astrology, the Sun (☉) symbolizes conscious purpose, outward expression, and core energy. The opposite point on the wheel, known as the Earth (⨁) in Human Design, symbolizes grounding, practical foundation, and the collective environment.
While Earth-gate themes often seem like the exact opposite of their Sun gate, they’re really more like the other side of the same coin. The more integrated the Sun and Earth energies are in our minds and bodies, the more we will feel both grounded AND expansive as we move through the wheel of time.
The Human Design Mandala is based on the Fuxi sequence of the I’Ching, the ancient Chinese Book of Changes. The sun and it’s polar opposite point, the Earth, both take about 5.5 days to travel through each Gate, traveling in tandem.
I’ll be looking at these oppositional energies through the language of the ancient I’Ching, as well as it’s modern interpretations in Human Design and the Gene Keys. I’ll also be bringing in some seasonal and elemental correspondences from other cyclic systems from around the globe that I work with in this Cycles of Time project, such as the Indigenous medicine wheel. the Daoist 5-element cycle, and the Pagan Wheel of the year. As these are all systems that arose in the Northern Hemisphere, I’ll be writing from that perspective for these transmissions.
Thanks for being here.
xx
Alison
(PS: In the future, I’ll be posting these transmissions on Day 1 of each transit. However, I’m a bit behind getting started on this new project, so the 46-25 transit is ending tomorrow 9/26 (FYI). I’ll be sending out the following one (Sun in Gate 18 and Earth in Gate 17) on Saturday. I promise to space these out better going forward!)
The Cycles of Time Mandala shows the wheel of the year from a polycultural perspective, with the Medicine Wheel in the center and the Human Design Mandala/Fuxi sequence of the I’Ching on the outer ring. The ☉ is the sun’s current place in the wheel, and the ⨁ earth.
Integrating Polarities: Sunday, Sept. 21 to Friday, Sept. 26
☉ The SUN is in the Gate of Determination of the Self (46), opposite from
⨁ The EARTH in the Gate of Spirit of the Self (25).
🌞 Sun in Gate 46: “Determination of the Self”
Also known as: “Love of the Body”
I’Ching: “Pushing Upward”
Gene Key 46: Seriousness → Delight → Ecstasy
Zodiac: Fall Equinox, Virgo into Libra
🌍 Earth in Gate 25: “Spirit of the Self”
I’Ching 25: “Innocence”
Gene Key 25: Constriction → Acceptance → Universal Love
Zodiac: Spring Equinox, Pisces into Aries
Cards from my new deck, MANDALA 64. If you’d like to order one, click here!
Self-Determination vs. the Spirit of Innocence
Right after the sun entered Gate 46 this week, on September 22, we celebrated the Fall equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, the Spring equinox in the Southern Hemisphere. Astronomically, the equinox is beautifully unifying- it is a time of equal night and day regardless of where you live on the planet.
This equinox week we are faced with the polarity between Self-Determination and the Spirit of Innocence.
With the Sun in Gate 46 on the cusp of Virgo & Libra, gusts of fall wind are ushering in a new season, and we must brace ourselves with some serious determination to make it through the darker and colder half of the year. But, at the same time, the golden light illuminating the apples and sunflowers of the fall harvest is truly… sublime. Delightful. Dare I say… ecstatic. These are the gifts of Gate 46, the “Love of the Body”. In the I’Ching, “Pushing Upward”, or Earth Over Wind, refers to the determination it would take for etheric air to push up through the solid ground.
At the fall equinox, we all know that Winter is Coming, and that can feel like a solid wall or an obstacle ahead. The sun in this gate inspires us to suck the marrow out of life in this tangible plane, to soak up the sun and the delightfully rich colors, to charge our battery with this ecstasy up for the season ahead. Determination doesn’t have to be so serious- by filling our bodies with fruits of the harvest, with light and pleasure during this season we can be prepared for the dark months ahead. But we still have to do that- love our embodied experience - with determination. Because we don’t have the luxury of being ignorant to what is ahead of us.
Across the sky, the Earth in Gate 25 is asking us to harken back -or forward- 6 months to the time of the Spring Equinox. While Gate 46 calls for Determination of self, Gate 25 calls for Spirit of self. Gate 25’s emergent spring, on the cusp between Pisces and Aries seasons, is a time of raw innocence and wonder. A seed has spent the past 6 months in the darkness, and only recently has started sprouting roots down below. Symbolically, the spring equinox arrives with the emergence of the dicot sprout, which resembles the ram horns of Aries.
During Gate 25’s solar transit, the seed is taking it’s first peek above ground. It is fresh and pure-without any conscious recollection of the cycles that came before it, but still carrying the code of the perfection that lies in the unification of all of these past cycles. The shadow of this gate is constriction- the way that a newborn baby must feel when the umbilical cord is cut and it must take it’s first constrictively harsh breath of air. (Cries ensue). But the gift of this gate, acceptance, evokes the image of a newborn lamb with dewy eyes, bringing with it the power of innocence, the acceptance of life exactly as it is, and within that, a deep inborn spirit of universal love.
We can see how Determination and Spirit can feel like opposites. During this transit, there can be an conscious emphasis on our desire to put effort in to prepare our lives for the future - and also squeeze the most out of harvest season’s delights. In our worldly bodies, it may feel harder to tap into the innocent spirit of universal love when we know the days are getting shorter than when we know the days are getting longer. Innocence, during this time of year, can feel, well… naive.
But integrating the qualities of 25’s innocent spirit into 46’s embodied determination is super valuable this week. While the sun’s gate in Human design represents our conscious will and perception, the Earth represents a more receptive point of grounding, rooting, and creating a foundation from which the sun can radiate outward. That being said, this week if we are too focused on the sun’s gate of determination and pushing upward (whether by being serious, lost in delight, or even ecstatic), we will miss out on the open mindedness and connection to source that gate 25 provides, and likely feel very ungrounded/like we’re doing too much.
This time of year, the seasons are shifting and our bodies are noticing the shifts even if our minds are not. It can be a challenging time of year, subtly filled with both grief for the passing summer and a simultaneous hyper-vigilance, a need to control and weigh out everything as fall and winter approach. Because of this, balancing our active determination with a more receptive innocence, one that pays reverence to spirit, acceptance of all possibilities, and universal love is super important — connecting to spirit/the universe is a powerful way to ground and nurture our overly-serious or determined earthly bodies right now.
Body <> Spirit has always such a primary polarity in the human experience, and it makes a lot of sense to me that these two gates would represent the important axis of the Fall and Spring Equinox, the beginning and mid-point of a Zodiacal cycle. For those familiar with Human Design, in the bodygraph, both of these gates are in the G center- the center of expression, heart and identity- and they are part of the Cross of the Vessel of Love. The unification of this equinox polarity is centered on LOVE for the entirety of the cycle- the darkening and the lightening- through and through. There is no other way but love.
THIS WEEK’S ASSIGNMENT (Sept 21-26):
Make it a point to Love your Incarnate Body- both how it can take actions and be determined toward reaching a goal, and also how it can relish in the delightful ecstasy of the senses. (Gate 46)
-AND ALSO-
Make it a point to Love your connection to Spirit- to the larger web of beings, ancestors, patterns and energies that your carbon-based life-form is but a teeny-tiny part of. Show love for the unknowable and un-nameable, and take the blinders off long enough to immerse yourself in the expansive innocence of infinite potential. (Gate 25)
“The human body is the best picture of the human soul.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
On a personal note:
My Mercury and moon are both in Gate 46, so both my communication and emotional way of being are highly influenced by the Love of the Body. I resonate deeply with the the notions of of seriousness, delight and ecstasy, and truly feel my best when I am deeply in my body- dancing, snowboarding, swimming. Feeling the beautiful delight of having and being in a body. With that said, I can also be quite serious in my determination to be in the driver’s seat of my own life, putting my head down and forgetting to consider the vast intersections and intricacies that are at play in my life, the universal possibilities that come from surrendering to the sense of universal love that is spirit.
The last solar eclipse in Virgo happened on the first day of the sun’s transit through Gare 46, when the moon met the sun there last Sunday. It was a south node eclipse, a point of shedding so that new beginnings can emerge. It was opposite Saturn and Neptune in Gate 25. With the eclipse right on my Mercury, I felt called to lean into Spirit and change the format of this podcast, rather suddenly- shedding the gate 46 energy of determination to finish what I started, even if I wasn’t feeling as lit up doing it anymore. Dreamy Neptune and structured Saturn conjunct the Earth in Gate 25 intensified the energy there, and led me to lean into the innocent spirit of freshness and potential with a new project,
On Tuesday, the day after the equinox, I got tattooed by my friend Sage (when the sun was exactly conjunct my moon, which represents the body’s wisdom.). Getting my body inked during the gate of embodiment was not planned, but it definitely aligned! Especially because I designed the image through an openminded spirit of innocence, not thinking too hard about it and allowing myself to receive guidance from spirit and intuition.
I wrote this about it this week:
“I drew out a super rough sketch of this on my birthday during the Virgo eclipse portal, and Sage transformed it into this gorgeous immortal work of art 🤩 🫶🙏
I’m calling her the Priestess of Cycles, an embodied symbol of the Hermetic principle of correspondence from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegestus:
“That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one.”
Threshold beings the scorpion and the crab (my daughter and partners signs) support her to the watery depths below, and her crown connects her to the stars above. Her hands are scales that weigh sheafs of wheat and a pomegranate (or a feather and a heart, if you squint ☺️).
She’s a synthesis of many goddesses who have represented Virgo (my sun) and Libra (my moon) across time and space…. She is the Mesopotamian goddess of grain and compassion, Shala. She is the Greek Demeter and Persephone, whose myth brings awareness of the changing seasons, initiation and descent. She is Roman harvest goddess Ceres and justice goddess Dike. The Egyptian mother & protector goddess Isis and the goddess of cosmic order Ma’at, whose scales weighed human hearts against the lightness of her feather at the gates to the underworld.
It felt really meaningful to get this done on the equinox, the cusp of Virgo & Libra, the time when day and night hover in a moment of harmonic balance. It memorialized an integration of dark and light, within and without, above and below, and will serve as a reminder that playing with polarities is a big part of what us humans are here to do in this journey of life.
I’ve been writing a lot about this in my @astro.somatics project lately — Virgo isn’t just about perfectionism, but about thoughtful discernment and sovereign service. Libra isn’t just about idealistic harmony, but about active calibration toward right relationship with the world around us. 💗”
Thanks so much for being here for the first stream-of-consciousness download of Integrating Polarities! It was a great exercise to sit with these oppositional energies and see what came through.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences with these gates too- is Gate 46 or 25 defined in your chart? Let me know how it shows up for you!
If you’d like to learn more about the energies of Libra season and resource yourself with an embodied breathwork experience, I’m hosting a Libra Season Workshop & Breathwork Journey next Wednesday, October1 at 5pm MST on Zoom.
In these monthly sessions, we chat for about an hour about the archetype of the season, and then I guide you through a 45-minute conscious-connected revolutionary breathwork session. Next week we’re tapping into Libra’s sense of harmony and balance.
This was lovely. Thank you! Excited to be here. I have 25 (design sun) and 46 (design earth). I have 25-51 as part of how my authority moves in me. Projected channels through G to 13-33 to throat. I’m one of those weird manifestors with no manifested channels and ego authority. Felt very called to your work during this Saturn in Neptune moment. I’m a Saturn ruled person, with Uranus close to my ascendent in the 1st house (Cap). That I feel I’m constantly in the polarity of structure and dissolution. Grateful to have found you.
I married on the equinox you reference here (9.20.25) and reflecting on how “soaking up delight” was infused into that moment and the week of spontaneous travel and play after was so fun. I also deeply resonated with the hyper vigilance around the approach of winter and the shortened days.
This was lovely. Thank you! Excited to be here. I have 25 (design sun) and 46 (design earth). I have 25-51 as part of how my authority moves in me. Projected channels through G to 13-33 to throat. I’m one of those weird manifestors with no manifested channels and ego authority. Felt very called to your work during this Saturn in Neptune moment. I’m a Saturn ruled person, with Uranus close to my ascendent in the 1st house (Cap). That I feel I’m constantly in the polarity of structure and dissolution. Grateful to have found you.
I married on the equinox you reference here (9.20.25) and reflecting on how “soaking up delight” was infused into that moment and the week of spontaneous travel and play after was so fun. I also deeply resonated with the hyper vigilance around the approach of winter and the shortened days.
Thank you 🙏💜 and your tattoo is beautiful 💫