Human Design · Ajna center

Gate 17: Opinions

Opinion built from a pattern.

When it overshoots

Opinion mistaken for fact.

At its best

Ideas held loosely enough to test.

Carried and open

In a chart that carries it

Held in the chart, views form quickly and with confidence; offering them as views rather than facts keeps the conversation alive.

In a chart where it is open

Without this gate natally, other people’s certainty can sound convincing; asking how they know is a fair question.

When it is in the sky

Opinions are loud and patterns look obvious. The useful ones are held loosely enough to be tested.

The six lines

1. Line 1, The InvestigatorAn opinion needs a pattern beneath it, so collect the facts before deciding what they mean.
2. Line 2, The HermitViews form easily and quietly here, and they are most valued when somebody has asked for them.
3. Line 3, The MartyrOpinions are refined by being wrong in public, and each correction makes the next view sounder.
4. Line 4, The OpportunistA view travels best among friends who can argue with it kindly and still be friends afterwards.
5. Line 5, The HereticOthers may treat a view as authority; offering it together with its reasons keeps it from hardening into dogma.
6. Line 6, The Role ModelThe views still worth holding at the end are the ones that moved whenever the facts moved.

Channels through this gate

• Acceptance · 17-62An organizational being. Opinion supported by detail. Order out of a lot of small facts. With Gate 62, Detail.

The same figure in the Book of Changes

Gate 17 is hexagram 17, Following, read by an older tradition.