The Human Design system seems to make a similar promise to astrology – that through your date and time of birth, it can reveal you to yourself. But it does so through an amalgamation of systems: astrology, kabbalah and, centrally, the I Ching.
It looks like it’d take years to make head or tail of the system as a whole. (If you know it, or if you’ve had a reading done, do post a comment.) But there are interesting gleanings to be had from its founder’s insights into hexagram line positions. I especially like the idea of the hexagram as a house with two trigram-storeys, and the second and fifth lines as windows where others might look in and project their expectations. Lots of vivid ideas here to play with.
The nature of a line or a set of lines is brought out by
‘yinning’ all other lines. Thus the nature of the 2 and 5 dynamic is brought out in hexagram 29 – showing a focus on issues of containment/control. If we just focus on the individual lines we have hexagrams 8 (top) and hexagram 7 (bottom).
7 covers containment in particular, 8 covers control in particular. BOTH are ‘passive’ in form where in 8 the control is through the king and the court and so is passive and ATTRACTIVE. The trigrams read “with/from devotion comes control”
For 7 the focus is more vague, more group oriented emphasising the ‘army’ nature of uniformity and so “with containment comes absolute trust in another/others”. Reflecting the hierarchic nature and the ‘buddy’ system of army-like collectives.
For more on this perspective see http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/WaveInterpret.html