← Encyclopedia of Embodied Energy · lesson 38/164
Motor centres
Four of the nine centres on the Embodied Energy Chart are motors: they are where energy comes from. The other five shape, steer, voice or perceive, but do not power anything. Which motors are defined, and whether any of them is connected to the Throat, is most of what decides a person's type.
The four motors
- The Will centre (the tradition's "Heart" or "Ego") — willpower, promises and worth. Strong, deliberate and finite: it works, and then it must rest.
- The Vitality centre ("Sacral") — renewable working energy that responds rather than starts. The largest and most sustainable of the four.
- The Feeling centre ("Solar Plexus") — emotional energy moving in waves. It is a motor and also an awareness centre, which is why it sits at the top of the compass ladder.
- The Drive centre ("Root") — pressure to get things moving, in pulses. It is a motor and also a pressure centre.
Each has a recognisable rhythm. Will strives and rests; Vitality renews when used on the right things; Feeling rises and falls; Drive switches on and off. Reading a chart's motors is largely a matter of asking which rhythms are fixed in the person and which are borrowed.
Defined and open motors
A defined motor is read as a consistent source of that kind of energy. An open motor has no such source and takes the energy in from others — often amplifying it, so that a person with open motors can feel more energised, more emotional or more pressed in company than the people actually generating it. That is a large part of conditioning in this tradition: mistaking borrowed fuel for one's own, and running on it past the point where it ran out.
The question that decides type
The chart asks one structural question: is any motor joined to the Throat through an unbroken run of defined centres? "Joined" here means in the same connected island of definition, not merely both defined somewhere in the chart. The answer, together with whether the Vitality centre itself is defined, gives the type:
| Vitality centre | Motor reaches the Throat | Type |
|---|---|---|
| defined | yes | Manifesting Generator |
| defined | no | Generator |
| open | yes | Manifestor |
| open | no | Projector |
When nothing at all is defined, the person is a Reflector. Note that a motor reaching the Throat need not be direct: the Drive never touches the Throat, but it can reach it through the Instinct, the Vitality centre or the Feeling centre.
Motors and the inner compass
Three of the four motors also appear on the ladder of the inner compass (the tradition's "Authority"), in this order: the Feeling compass whenever the Feeling centre is defined; then the Vitality compass; and, after the Instinct, the Will compass, which applies only when the Will reaches the Throat. The Drive is never a compass: its pressure says when, not what.
In your chart
The motors are the Will (the small triangle beside the Self), the Vitality square, the Feeling triangle on the right and the Drive square at the base. A filled shape is defined. To check the type yourself, follow the filled shapes and the drawn channels from any filled motor towards the Throat: if you can get there without crossing an unfilled centre, a motor reaches the Throat. On the swirl drawing, a defined centre grows with each channel that feeds it, so the busiest motors are the largest.