31 · Attraction
Gate 31 in Human Design, Gene Key 31, and hexagram 31 of the I Ching, Attraction 咸: one number, three traditions, read together on this page and kept apart where they differ.
The number, read across the three
Human Design places gate 31 in the Throat and reads it as leading: the voice of the leader, the one who speaks for the group and is followed, in a democracy of the alpha. Gene Keys reads it as arrogance to leadership, the movement from assuming the role to being given it. The I Ching calls it influence, the wooing, the lake on the mountain.
The honest shadow is arrogance: a leader who leads without being asked, a voice that speaks for people who did not choose it, and an influence that is really pressure. The tradition says gate 31 with gate 7 is the channel of the alpha, and that the alpha waits to be recognised or is not one.
The hexagram
The judgement: It carries through. It is worth staying straight. To take a wife is good fortune.
The image: A marsh up on the mountain. So the person of worth keeps themselves empty and lets people in.
The six lines
Line 1. The pull is felt in the big toe.
Line 2. The pull is felt in the calves. Misfortune. Stay where you are. Good fortune.
Line 3. The pull is felt in the thighs. He holds to whatever follows him. To carry on. Humiliation.
Line 4. To stay straight is good fortune. Regret fades. Thoughts going restlessly to and fro, and only the friends you fix your mind on follow.
Line 5. The pull is felt in the back of the neck. No regret.
Line 6. The pull is felt in the jaw, the cheeks, the tongue.
In a Human Design chart
Gate 31 sits in the Throat centre. Its channel partner is gate 7, in the G centre. When both gates of a channel are activated, one from each end, the channel is defined and both centres with it, which is how the tradition builds a type and an authority. A gate on its own is a hanging gate: a theme without its circuit, and the tradition reads it as a pull towards whoever carries the other half.
Three traditions, one number
The same sixty-four figures, read three ways, and the three do not say the same thing.
Human Design took the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching and mapped them round the zodiac as gates, so that a planet at a degree is a planet in a gate; Gene Keys took the same sixty-four and read each as a spectrum from a shadow to a gift to a siddhi; the I Ching itself reads the figure as a situation, with a judgement, an image and six changing lines. Number 31 is leading in the first, arrogance becoming leadership in the second, and Attraction in the third. They share a number and a diagram, and they were written for three different purposes, which is why we show all three rather than translating one into the others. The I Ching text on this page is our own English, made from the Chinese with the Wilhelm paragraph as a reading reference, and every passage carries its provenance.
Whether the number is in your chart at all is a Human Design question: the calculator says which gates your planets activate, on the personality side and the design side, and which of them complete a channel.
About 60 seconds · needs your birth time and place · both sides of the chart are drawn
Questions people ask
What does gate 31 mean in Human Design?
Leading, in the Throat centre. Human Design places gate 31 in the Throat and reads it as leading: the voice of the leader, the one who speaks for the group and is followed, in a democracy of the alpha. Whether it is active in your chart depends on where your planets were at birth and about eighty-eight days before it.
What is Gene Key 31?
The same number read as a spectrum: the shadow of arrogance, the gift of leadership, the siddhi of humility. Gene Keys reads the shadow as the starting point and the gift as what it becomes when it is met rather than fought.
Is hexagram 31 the same as gate 31?
The same figure and the same number, read for different purposes: the I Ching reads it as a situation you have cast or are in, Human Design as a fixed activation in a birth chart. A cast hexagram is not a natal gate, and the site keeps the two apart.
We read charts for pattern and coherence, not prediction. Nothing here tells you what will happen, and nothing here tells you who you are; it shows a structure and leaves the judgement with you.