← Encyclopedia of Embodied Energy · lesson 3/164
The built-in side
The built-in side is the half of the Embodied Energy Chart cast for a moment before birth: the instant the Sun stood exactly 88 degrees of arc behind its birth position, roughly three months earlier. The tradition calls it the "Design". It is read as what was put in place before you arrived: the part of you that simply runs, that you do not choose and often do not notice, and that other people may see in you long before you do.
It is one of two halves. The other, the aware side, is cast for birth itself.
How it is computed
First the earlier moment is found, as described under the design moment. Then that moment is treated exactly like a birth: the same thirteen points — the Sun, the Earth opposite it, the Moon, the North Node and South Node, and Mercury through Pluto — are placed on the gate wheel, and each one activates a gate and a line.
It is not a symbolic or imagined chart. It is an ordinary set of planetary positions, worked out to the same precision as the birth chart. Only the moment is unusual.
What it decides
For defining centres the two sides count equally: a channel completes when both its gates are lit, whichever moment lit them. Several things, though, are read from the built-in side in particular:
- The second number of the profile. In a profile such as 3/5, the 5 is the line of the built-in Sun. It is read as how others tend to meet you, and what they tend to expect.
- Half of the life theme. The built-in Sun and Earth are its third and fourth gates.
- Two of the four variables. The built-in Sun gives digestion — how the person takes things in — and the built-in nodes give the environment they do best in. These are the most body-centred settings in the chart.
How it is read
The tradition describes this side as unconscious: not hidden or dark, just not available to introspection in the same way. A gate lit only from the built-in side is often the one a person shrugs at when it is first described, and then hears about from a friend, a partner or a colleague who finds it obvious.
That makes the built-in side the most interesting part of the chart to hold up against experience. Some of what it describes is a quality you rely on without ever giving it a name. Some of it is a habit others see before you do. The useful question is rarely "is this me?" — the honest answer can be "I wouldn't know" — but "has anyone ever told me this?"
Because we cast two full sets of positions, we can also run our trait calculation twice, once per moment, and compare. Themes present in both are the best evidenced. Themes present only in the built-in moment are the ones most likely to read clearly from outside while you are the last to know. They are best taken slowly, as something to notice rather than a list of things to fix.
In your chart
Gates lit from the built-in side are drawn in blue; gates lit from both sides are violet. In the activation table the built-in column lists all thirteen points with their gate and line, and the date and time of the design moment are given beside it. On the ring of sixty-four gates, the built-in positions are the second set of markers, sitting roughly a quarter of the way back round the wheel from the aware ones.