Melancholy. Seeing this through the Human Design lens is one of the greatest gifts for me. Melancholy, you see, is different from depression. We are so quick to label our blues as depression, and maybe medicating it, when it’s not that at all. Knowing this and seeing how melancholy shows up in my design and in my life is important for my mental and emotional states of being. And maybe this information can help you or someone you know.
What is melancholy?
From the online Merrian-Webster dictionary:
- depression of spirits
- a pensive mood
- suggestive or expressive of sadness or depression of mind or spirit
- causing or tending to cause sadness or depression of mind or spirit
I remember dwelling in this deep and beautiful sadness, especially in my teenage years. It comes on, without reason and without rhyme.
Thankfully I grew up with a piano. Playing the minor key pieces helped me both feel intensely and externalize this melancholy that I have yet to understand. Hearing my music weep was strangely cathartic. Because the world is sad, when it is sad, when I am sad. Then there is my journal, where I have penned many musings of pain, confusion, and reflections. And I listened to a lot of Sinead, Sarah McLachlan, Love & Rockets, Yaz… You get the picture. It was me and my melancholy. Sitting alone, fingers on the ivory keys or pen in hand. The melody, the sounds, the vibrations of the piano. Ah, the acoustics.
Without understanding what was going on, I was moving through my melancholy. This beauty, a gentle fragility, a lightness. I was feeling it and even revelling in the intensity, an emotion so heightened I knew I could soon relish in a tremendous release. That’s the thing about melancholy – you don’t know when it’ll come on, and what change takes place when it ends. It wasn’t easy, without an awareness of what’s really going on, finding reasons to explain something that is meant to pass through and channelled into mutative creativity.
I did ponder the source of this melancholy, something most teenagers would experience. The brooding moody teenager. People didn’t really understand and I felt judged. What was wrong with me? I was conditioned / programmed to hide these moods and what I thought was depression.
Melancholy is not depression. There is nothing wrong, nothing to fix. Yet how many of us know this? We want to know why we feel sad so we can fix it, so we can fix it in other people.
And so when I discovered what melancholy really is, I was relieved.
According to the Jovian Archive website,
In Human Design, melancholy is the result of the chemistry that comes with Individual Circuitry. With Individual gates and channels dominating the BodyGraph, there is no greater potential in humanity than to experience personal transformation, as well as deep depression from the states of sadness that are experienced regularly.
There are always two sides of melancholy: the not-self melancholy and the melancholy of what it is to be awake. That is nothing more than a muse calling. It is a creative environment. It’s the warmest thing that you’re ever going to feel.
Ra Uru Hu
Melancholy is chemistry. Richard Beaumont sees melancholy as “an invitation to yourself to be alone” and “aloneness as a medium of creativity.” To be alone to release what is inside. Melancholy is our muse, to leave the collective and the tribe, for that creative spark. This is the role of the individual.
Individuals do not have to share what they know. But they do have to get it out somehow. And if they don’t, that same energy that is incredibly creative, and mystical and full of the very edges of the universe turns agustin them and becomes self-destructive. And those with individuality know that they are self-destructive sometimes, well, more than sometimes. Because it is quite scary to bring out something new.
Richard Beaumont
Now I understand that melancholy comes along with the creative impulse and part of individual circuitry. The Individual is here to be mutative, to bring change to the collective. With 22 Gates of Melancholy in the body graph, even if someone does not have Individual circuits or channels, most of us experience melancholy at some point. And many people get stuck in this frequency, which can move into depression.
The Individual Circuitry
For it [individualistic design], things have to come out of nowhere; ideas or ways how things get done, a poem, or a piece of music. And they usually come of of deep melancholy. The melancholy is a result of waiting, because one is not in control when mutation happens. Melancholy is a very important thing for them.
Steve Rhodes, Bhan Tugh
The 22 Gates of Melancholy
| Gate | Energy Centre | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 57 | Intuitive Insight | Spleen | Melancholy through hearing |
| 34 | Power | Sacral | Frustration, not able to use one’s power in the now |
| 10 | Behaviour of the Self | G | Melancholy that no one else knows how to behave |
| 20 | The Now | Throat | Discomfort with how the world is now |
| 51 | Shock | Ego | Melancholy about lack of excitement |
| 25 | Spirit of the Self | G | Melancholy about being insignificant |
| 38 | The Fighter | Root | Not knowing what to fight for |
| 28 | The Gameplayer | Spleen | Life devoid of purpose |
| 39 | Provocateur | Root | Not knowing whom to provoke |
| 55 | Spirit | Solar Plexus | Emptiness potentially leading to eating disorders |
| 22 | Openness | Solar Plexus | Melancholy that nothing is worth listening to |
| 12 | Caution | G | Melancholy that no one is worth telling to |
| 61 | Mystery | Head | Melancholy from lack of inspiration |
| 24 | Rationalization | Anja | Melancholy over no resolution and so no inner silence |
| 43 | Insight | Anja | Melancholy over inefficiency |
| 23 | Assimilation | Throat | Frustration because cannot explain self clearly |
| 60 | Acceptance | Root | Melancholy about having nowhere to go |
| 3 | Ordering | Sacral | Melancholy about nothing is lasting |
| 14 | Power Skills | Sacral | Melancholy about having to work, or not |
| 2 | Higher Knowing | G | Melancholy because things are not moving fast enough |
| 1 | Self-Expression | G | Melancholy over not being seen as different |
| 8 | Contribution | Throat | Melancholy over not having the attention |
I have nine Gates of Melancholy lit up. Out of 22 Gates, it’s not that many. However, that’s 9 out of my 20 activated Gates, which is nearly half. I also have all 6 Integration Channels, which is deeply inward-looking, as well as the Channel of Inspiration (8-1). That’s 7 out of 15 of the Individual Channels and 7 out of my 9 total channels. Ra Uru Hu has to this to say about the 8-1 Channel : “The 8-1 is rooted in the most creative, the only hexagram called creative, in that sense, which is the first hexagram.“
After I counted my Gates, I shared with my partner and he said, “that’s a lot!” Eek. He has four Gates of Melancholy himself, with one in his Design Sun, in an open Centre. I have one in my Design Sun and another in my Design Earth, both in a defined centre. Perhaps this makes a difference, that mine are in a defined centre.
For me, I channel my melancholy into writing and other creative activities. This is something my partner witnesses and he feels the different frequency when I’m in my head, “minding it out” or in my body writing, etc. He’s been deconditioning for more than seven years and he is much more attuned to the frequencies like the difference between a busy Head Centre, being pulled in many directions and a quiet one because my energy is singularly focused on creation.
My partner is also very creative. He plays the guitar and ukulele and has a beautiful voice. Being acoustic, his voice is deeply impactful and so very moving. He channels his energy into his music, drawing, and surfing. So with the fires on the West Coast and nursing an injury, not getting in the water as much has been deeply frustrating. This whole lockdown and the official global status of pandemic has been especially challenging. Not travelling, not feeling I can be who I am as freely as I thought I could before. Yes, I know, go back to my Authority. Listen to my sacral.
By no means am I purely individualistic as I do have tribal gates and collective gates and channels. However, it is also not surprising that I get melancholic. Plus that Gate 46 with a shadow frequency of seriousness. We both have this Gate activated. In Pluto, so that’s where transformation takes place and where the truth is.
I’ve been listening to Ra’s Gates of Melancholy recording, which has been very helpful. He goes over each Gate on its own, some of the channels, and how certain Gates are impacted by specific connections, such as the 10-34. For someone who has the entire Integration Circuitry activated, the focus is always looking inward and without awareness of these mechanics and of the Not-Self, melancholy can become depression. That’s also a nugget. It’s something for me to watch.
Knowing my melancholy has everything to do with my design, with my individual circuitry and the mutative process, and no other reason is pivotal. And if you feeling melancholy, I invite you to look at your body graph to see if you have any of the 22 Gates of Melancholy activated.
Contemplate on the source of this melancholy, as expressed by the Gate. Release the pressure and the conditioned need to find a reason for feeling the way you do. Some Gates, especially when not connected through a channel, such as Gate 20, can be deeply depressive. If this is true for you, look for an outlet. Put on music and move the energy through. Doodle, journal, write spiffy notes to yourself, pick up the guitar or tinker around with something. Get some alone time, to feel this without being conditioned by other energies or people’s judgment of how you are feeling and how you should be feeling. Melancholy is part of the mutative process and at some point, it culminates in a release of something that is moving through you inside, this budding and blooming of something new, for the collective.