Right Angle Cross of Explanation

Find your Incarnation Cross on your free chart

Enter your birth date, time and place to see your cross and its four Gate numbers.

Look for the line that reads Right Angle Cross of Explanation. The four numbers in brackets are the Gates of your Personality Sun and Earth, then your Design Sun and Earth, for example (49/4 | 43/23). Match them to the rotations below to see which of the four you carry. The chart symbols guide shows where the Sun and Earth sit in the two planet columns.

The Explanation cross on the BodyGraph

Two of the four Gates, 23 and 43, are the two ends of a single Channel, so they are not spread across the chart. They sit together in the Throat and the Ajna. The other two Gates add a second Ajna Gate for questions and a Solar Plexus Gate for principles and feeling.

Right Angle Cross of Explanation at a glance

Written three ways, as charts and searches write it: Explanation 1: 49/4 | 43/23, 49/4 43/23 or 49 4 43 23; Explanation 2: 23/43 | 49/4, 23/43 49/4 or 23 43 49 4; Explanation 3: 4/49 | 23/43, 4/49 23/43 or 4 49 23 43; Explanation 4: 43/23 | 4/49, 43/23 4/49 or 43 23 4 49.

The four rotations of the Explanation cross

Find the rotation whose first number matches your Personality Sun. The quarter it sits in gives the rotation its number, 1 to 4.

The Explanation 1 (49/4 | 43/23)

With Principles as your Sun, the cross starts from what you hold to be right and wants to say why. Formulization is your conscious Earth, so you give the idea a shape. Insight and Assimilation run on the Design side, which makes up the Channel of Structuring. Because that pair is unconscious here, others may notice your originality before you do.

The Explanation 2 (23/43 | 49/4)

Assimilation is the Sun here, and Insight is the Earth. Both are conscious, so the Channel of Structuring is something you know you have. Your life tends to center on finding the right way to say a new idea. Principles and Formulization run underneath, shaping your values and your craft without much notice.

The Explanation 3 (4/49 | 23/43)

With Formulization as your Sun, the question is how to put an idea into a form others can use. Principles is your conscious Earth, so values keep your forms honest. Assimilation and Insight are on the Design side, meaning the Channel is unconscious in this version: others may notice your originality before you do.

The Explanation 4 (43/23 | 4/49)

Insight leads in this version. The breakthrough is your conscious theme, and Assimilation is the Earth that grounds it in the way you speak. Formulization and Principles run on the Design side. You may be surprised by how often a plain, well-formed explanation comes out of you without effort.

The four Gates in plain language

Start with the Gate that holds your Personality Sun, then its Earth, then the Design pair.

Gate 49: Principles

Gate 49, Principles, is in the Solar Plexus, the Center of emotions and waves. Its hexagram is Revolution, and its lines move from The law of necessity to The last resort and Attraction. It is the Gate that says what should and should not be accepted. As a Sun, your purpose starts from values you will not drop. As an Earth, it adds conviction to whatever else you do. Its Channel, Synthesis, runs to Gate 19, Wanting, in the Root, where principle meets need. It is the only Solar Plexus Gate in this cross, so it is where the feeling in your explaining comes from.

Gate 4: Formulization

Gate 4, Formulization, belongs to the Ajna and carries the hexagram Youthful Folly. It is the mind forming an answer and holding it up to be tested, and its lines, from Pleasure and Acceptance to The Liar and Seduction, show how answers can be wrong as well as right. As a Sun, you live through forming and testing answers. As an Earth, it supplies ready answers to your other Gates. Its Channel, Logic, runs to Gate 63, Doubt, in the Head. It is the Gate that wants the answer to be right, not just ready.

Gate 43: Insight

Gate 43, Insight, is an Ajna Gate with the hexagram Breakthrough. It is the sudden inner knowing that arrives complete, and its lines run from Patience and Dedication to Breakthrough. As a Sun, your purpose is to break through to a new understanding. As an Earth, it adds a touch of originality to the Sun. It is one half of a pair: it completes the Channel of Structuring with Gate 23, Assimilation, in the Throat, and in this cross that pair is always whole. Its lines, such as The one-track mind, show how fully it can fix on a single idea.

Gate 23: Assimilation

Gate 23, Assimilation, is a Throat Gate with the hexagram Splitting Apart. It takes an idea and breaks it into pieces another person can take in, and its lines run from Proselytization to Individuality, Fragmentation and Fusion. As a Sun, your purpose is to put insight into words. As an Earth, it turns your other Gates into speech. It completes the Channel of Structuring with Gate 43, Insight, in the Ajna, the other half of this cross. Like Insight, it belongs to the Individual circuit, so what it says tends to be original rather than borrowed.

Channel 23-43 is yours in every rotation

Gates 23 and 43 are both part of this cross, and every rotation carries all four Gates. So everyone with the Cross of Explanation has Channel 23-43, the Channel of Structuring, defined. It joins the Ajna to the Throat and sits in the Individual circuit, in the Knowing group, which fits the canon's keynote for it: a design of individuality, genius to freak.

A Knowing Channel does not explain itself. It tells you something is true and leaves you to find the words, and Structuring supplies the words. This is why the cross has the name it does. The insight and the speech come as a set, and the work of a life is to make the pair reliable. It is also a Channel people notice, because it can make you sound very different from the people around you.

It matters which planets make the pair

The Channel is always there, but how you meet it changes with your rotation. In rotation 1 it comes entirely from the Design side, so it works out of sight. In rotation 2 both Gates are on the Personality side, with Assimilation as the Sun and Insight as the Earth. Rotation 3 is Design again, and rotation 4 is Personality with Insight as the Sun.

Personality means conscious, Design means unconscious. The same Channel feels different in each case. A conscious Channel is one you can watch, practice and describe. An unconscious one is one other people may describe to you before you recognize it. If you have rotation 1 or 3, ask people close to you how you come across when you explain things. If you have 2 or 4, take your own sense of that voice seriously.

A fixed Channel that does not fix your Type

Some crosses carry a Channel that settles the Type of everyone who has them. This one does not. Structuring joins the Ajna and the Throat, neither of which is a motor, so it defines no motor and decides no Type. Projectors, Generators, Manifesting Generators and Manifestors can all carry this cross. A Reflector cannot, because a Reflector has no defined Channel and this cross always defines one.

That means you cannot tell how to act from the cross alone. Use your own Type and Authority. What the cross does tell you is that, whatever you are, you have an Ajna to Throat line that wants to speak, and the Solar Plexus Gate 49 adds a feeling-based conviction behind it. How and when you speak still follows your Strategy.

Why the Explanation is a Right Angle cross

A Right Angle cross is a personal destiny: the purpose works itself out through your own experience, and other people are not the point. For Explanation that is worth saying, because a cross about explaining sounds like a cross about an audience. It is not. You work out what you know and how to say it, and whether anyone else listens is a separate matter. The Right Angle goes with seven Profiles: 1/3, 1/4, 2/4, 2/5, 3/5, 3/6, 4/6. If your Profile is one of these, your cross is a Right Angle cross.

Your Sun line: how the line colors this cross

Your Personality Sun has a line as well as a Gate: the number after the dot. 13.4 means Gate 13, Line 4. Open your rotation below and find your line. The line title comes from the Rave I Ching; the sentence after it is how that line tends to color the Explanation cross.

Living the Explanation cross

At work

People with this cross often work as the one who turns a tangle into something others can follow: teacher, writer, editor, analyst, interpreter, product designer, the colleague who writes the clear memo. Work goes best when there is time to let an insight arrive and then shape it, and when the setting values original thinking. Work that gives you no room to say what you see wears you down.

In relationships

In close relationships you may know something is wrong, or right, well before you can say why. Telling a partner too soon sounds like a verdict. Waiting until you can explain it kindly works better. Ask the people close to you to give you time to find the words, and offer the same patience when they are working something out.

In decisions

An insight is not a decision. The Channel can hand you a conclusion that feels certain, and the Solar Plexus Gate 49 can add a strong emotional charge to it. Let time pass before you act on anything that arrived in one flash, and check it against how you really feel once the wave has settled.

Use your Type and your inner Authority for each choice, and let Explanation show you how your insights turn into speech. Your Strategy and Authority are how you get there; the cross is where it leads.

When the Explanation cross is misread

Questions to sit with

One question for each Gate. Notice which one you answer quickly and which one you avoid.

1. Gate 49: What principle would you not give up, and where has it recently been tested?
2. Gate 4: What answer have you been carrying that you have not yet checked against anyone?
3. Gate 43: What did you suddenly understand lately that you have not yet found words for?
4. Gate 23: Who needs to hear what you know, and what is the first sentence you would say?