The Astrology of the Body
A to a Q: Hello and thank you for the beautiful work you do. I was listening to your podcast where you spoke about creating an astrological natal chart for the design date on your human design chart (thank you for the rabbit hole). I’m curious what time you used....and what if you were physically in a different location on the design date as opposed to the birth date???? Finally, did you say that the ruler of your design ascendant is your chart ruler? Thank you for sharing your vast knowledge.
In the HIGH SOUND ep. 3 Ways to Anchor Yourself in New Earth I was speaking about one of the ways we were working with our Human Design in The Collective for the Pisces season journey — focusing on both our Soul number in Numerology and our Body or Design Ascendant of our Human Design.
When you pull a bodygraph you have your conscious/personality design on the right and your unconscious or body/design side on the left. Your personality represents the placements of your everyday natal chart. All of the planets of any natal chart you pull on astro.com or wherever you pull your chart are represented on the black or right side column (Personality). Your Body side (red column below) is automatically calculated for roughly 88 days from your moment of birth.
I use Genetic Matrix when pulling charts. As you can see from this sunrise chart I pulled for today that the birth date listed is 9th of March 2026 at 7:46 local time. Below there is a Design Date in UTC of the 12th of December 2025 at 17:40:56. This is the bodygraph you will see in most softwares.
If I pull an Astro/HD chart in Genetic Matrix I get more information. Below is the same chart with more included.
You can see (listed left to right in each row of the columns) gate, line, planet, sign, house and degree of each celestial placement including Chiron, Lilith and the angles (AC, MC, DC, IC) which I personally feel is very important information.
For instance understanding that while I have a 2/4 profile, my AC (both) and MC (personality) are in 6 lines is very helpful for me. You can also see how the houses overlay which is a whole other rabbit hole we talk about in Sacred Success Codes inside The Collective — although for this chart they are the same. Pisces rising in both personality and body which is a bit rare. What a moment to be born today with so much focus on the first and second houses!
You can also use the zodiac degrees from your natal chart to find the gate information of your personality here. You can look up anything not listed in your bodygraph like another dwarf planet or asteroid you are curious about.
But to find the other body placements, you typically do need software. A member recently found this bodygraph which does include at least your Body AC which is what we’ve been focused on.
The way that I tend to work with Body is as a deeper tool for deconditioning, for reprogramming and for clearing static. Our Body side is most connected to our humanness. So when we think about Body AC, AC being our literal body and identity, then Body AC becomes a useful place to look for ways to not only support our physical container, but the dissolving of default settings and old programming that may be getting in our way. All of the information presented offers us clues. With software you can also pull color, tone and base for additional insights into tools and practices that might be most supportive.
For this chart you can think about how you might support deconditioning in water element, in Pisces, in Gate 55. What are the lower octaves and how might you transmute them higher? What are the ways you can support Pisces energy to come into balance? What tools come from the water element? How might emotional hygiene come into play? What about the themes of Gate 55… are you able to trust in Source? Can you hold coherence? What is the emotional frequency you’re broadcasting? What old trapped emotions need to be cleared to release the static? How might something as simple as lymphatic flow (Pisces) help you clear out what is keeping you stuck? Or working with your feet be a microcosm of your macrocosm? These are just a few questions we could ask.
This is what we’re doing this month inside The Collective. We are working in harmony with eclipse season, Mercury Retrograde and Pisces season to help clear the density that may be inhibiting us from connecting more intentionally with our truth and with our Soul.
Next month we will be leaning into Aries season focused on claiming our desires and standing in our unique I Am. Each journey we focus on one or two cosmic placements to go deep with, not just in our mind, but in our body — while also supporting soul-led manifestation and nervous system capacity.
Location
Now to the question about location which is not addressed much… as all software assumes the same location for both calculations. And as we know location (and accurate time) does matter when casting charts ESPECIALLY when it comes to Rising/AC, Moon and House placements which depending on how far away from your birth location can be drastically different. In those different activations it can make some big changes to your human design.
However, I think the way Ra spoke about our Body Design specifically was more of a biological imprint.
That being said, it’s all an experiment. If you wanted to find out how it might be different — you could just pull your birth chart at that location (make sure you translate your birth time to local time) and then just look at the Body AC (which will have automatically calculated 88* prior).
The way I look at Human Design and the Body side especially as somatic patterning, if the mother was in a very different location at the Design moment then it could be argued that somatic environment imprint might follow that location. It is essentially where the body field was in space when the form crystallized.
This is a pretty advanced (and maybe wholly unnecessary) thread. And you can make yourself crazy looking at all the ways this might change your Design by shifting certain activations. I’d advise you against the making yourself nuts part. This can start to look like a strange cousin of Astrocartography inside the Bodygraph itself. And not what was intended otherwise it would have prompted you.
Personally, I would never recommend recalculating the entire bodygraph this way. But looking at something like the body ascendant specifically through that lens could be an interesting layer to observe. Maybe. Feel into what feels true for you.
I would also make note that if you look at the Design data there is no local time. It is calculated in UTC only which further supports the idea that it is more biological and less location specific.
Chart Ruler
This does not change your chart ruler. The ruler of your chart, the planet that guides your life, the orientation you came to have to commune most closely with your Soul will always be the one you see in your natal chart on the horizon of your birth. This is your Soul imprint.
Your Body side offers some sweet insight into support for your physical container and deconditioning your humanness that can limit you or keep you stuck — but always focus on the Personality side for orientation. This is what we’ll be doing for Aries season.
Hope that helps. Thanks for your question! I genuinely love getting them. I can’t always answer every single one, but I do read them and often turn them into blog or podcast topics—because if you’re curious about something, others usually are too.
You can also bring your questions to Collective office hours, where you can truly ask me anything.
All of our journeys and trainings live inside The Collective, so you can always watch the replays—or come join us live to connect, explore the current cosmic weather, and be in the flow with our sweet community.