In this episode we begin our deep dive into the Profile lines by exploring the 1st Line, which is the foundation builder, the investigator, and the archetype concerned with security, stability, and understanding how things actually work.

The 1st line represents the foundation of lower trigram of the 64 hexagrams and carries a deep, existential need to feel grounded, prepared, and resourced. Kelsey explores how this drive for certainty and solid footing shapes the lived experience of 1st lines and how this pattern shows up both as wisdom and as not-self distortion.

What's Discussed in this Episode:

1. The 1st line as the foundation of the hexagram
2. The core existential theme of insecurity and the need for solid ground
3. Why 1st lines are driven to research, study, and investigate
4. How fear and insecurity distort into over-preparing, hoarding knowledge, or never feeling ready
5. The 1st line’s relationship to competence, depth, and authority
6. How the 1st line builds structures others rely on
7. The gift of the 1st line: creating reliable, stable, and trustworthy foundations
8. What happens when the 1st line is living correctly vs. from not-self

If you would like full access to the course, including the videos and slides, make sure to join the Patreon, where you will find the full LYD course and exclusive Human Design and Astrology content.

Follow Kelsey on Instagram

The orientation for the first line and the first principle in general is that you're always again kind of looking for the holes in the foundation to make it more secure. Because of the fixation on what more do I need to know? What more do I need to learn?

There can be a lack of acknowledgement within the being themselves of how much they do actually know.

But to all the non first lines who are able to ask this person questions as though they are Google or an encyclopedia, we see that line ones know a lot, but it can be a challenge sometimes for the first line to recognize all they know because of that tendency towards looking for the holes.

Welcome to the Living Your Design Podcast. I'm your experimentor Kelsey Rose Tortorice.

This podcast is an audio only release of the full length in depth Human Design Foundations course I've been teaching over the last several years.

It is a no bullshit, comprehensive, embodied introduction to the human design system that will challenge your ego mind and support you in your process of reuniting with the unique wisdom of your body.

In episode one, I speak a bit about the process that led me to releasing this course for free in podcast form and I offer a few notes that might be useful to contextualize and clarify what you'll hear in this episode and beyond.

I recommend giving that short intro episode a listen if you haven't yet the Lyd podcast is part of a larger living body of work, a growing archive of my teachings about consciousness through the languages of astrology and human design, hosted in an online community space where I stay in orbit with my students, mentees, alumni, peers and collaborators.

For more information about how to connect with me and tune in to my archives and ongoing live teachings, including how to access the original LYD course, complete with videos and slides, stay stay tuned to the podcast or check out patreon.com/KelseyRoseTort.

Thank you for tuning into my transmission of Living youg Design. It's a deeply personal and somewhat vulnerable share that I feel honored, humbled and excited to release into the world.

I hope that it helps you remember and come home to yourself.

Line one let's start with establishing where we are within the evolutionary sequence and the different patterns that we've looked at in the six profile lines or the six principles.

So we're dealing with the very foundation of it all, and more specifically the foundation of the first trigram, which means that within the lower trigram we are dealing with a personal process that is focused on the self and the experience of the self, rather than engaging with the external world Taking in and learning. This part of the process is referred to as introspection. In the house metaphor, we're looking at the foundation of the first floor.

So oftentimes you'll hear it referred to literally just as, like, the foundation of the house, like the physical foundation that keeps the house standing. But it's interesting to look at this official picture from IHDS depicting the six lines in the house metaphor.

This circle here is orienting us towards not only a person on the ground floor, but a person looking down at the foundation and investigating the foundation. So there is really this theme of sort of investigating and evaluating the extent to which the foundation is secure.

And that orientation towards investigating and evaluating how secure the foundation is. We can see the quality of that, the characteristics of that, by considering that 1 is a part of the splenic binary.

So the two lines that are in the splenic binary, again, are 1 and 2. And we have the foundation of that here with 1.

So as with all things spleen or spleen associated, we're dealing with an orientation towards security and safety. So the first line we refer to as the investigator, again, lower trigram, AKA personal. So we're taking in information and learning.

This line of the lower trigram in particular is all about building the foundation for the process of learning and understanding things, which 1, 2, and 3, as a composite, complete thought process of really figuring something out. In line one, we are laying down the groundwork. This line carries themes of safety and security. This is a quote from Ra.

It's very important to recognize that all first lines are basically insecure.

So if you have a first line in your profile or you have a first line in any of the hexagrams that you have activated, it's an aspect of your nature that can always be insecure unless it finds a solid foundation.

So first lines of any gate, and especially people who have a first line in their profile, have sort of an organic tendency for insecurity because they're. They're the ones examining the foundation and looking for the holes in the foundation so that they can make the foundation more secure.

This is the natural orientation of the first line.

And this often presents itself in a being as someone who is very invested in researching, investigating, learning, gathering all of the details, all of the information, all of the data. These people can be so involved with personal study that they may not even really be registering the outside world.

I often think of this idea as like tunnel vision or going into a rabbit hole. Right. So I'm thinking of the house image again. Here this investigator guy is tunnel vision, looking right at the foundation.

He's not even paying attention to all this other stuff happening around him.

And then rabbit holes, you know, like getting really into a specific topic and rabbit holing, like just digging in and getting all the information that one can. And again not really registering what else is happening.

Education tends to be a high priority for first lines and specifically like a give me all the facts kind of education. Again, because the orientation is towards building a solid foundation.

These tend to be people who love to learn, who amass a lot of information and wisdom. Walking encyclopedia types are like human Googles.

But often they may not even realize how much they do know because they're always wanting to know more. It has to do with this aspect of your nature that can always be insecure unless it finds a solid foundation.

The orientation for the first line and the first principle in general is that you're always again kind of looking for the holes in the foundation to make it more secure. So there is this potential to. Because of the fixation on what more do I need to know, what more do I need to learn.

There can be a lack of acknowledgement within the being themselves of how much they do actually know.

But to all the non first lines who are able to ask this person questions as though they are Google or an encyclopedia, likely specific to the things they're interested in and invested in the things that are a part of their life, we see that line ones know a lot. But it can be a challenge sometimes for the first line to recognize all they know because of that tendency towards looking for the holes.

Karen Curry Parker, who sort of developed her her own new language for human design in general. I think she calls it quantum human design or something like that.

I don't really study her work and what little I have doesn't typically resonate with me. But sometimes I like using the language that she uses as just sort of an additive way to think about it.

And she calls the first line the resource, which kind of goes with what I was saying here.

Now we're not studying color in lyd, but again, because I know some people come to my courses with already already kind of having a foundation and sort of in the spirit of the first line tendency and providing more information for a solid foundation. I'm sharing here the first color association.

So if you happen to know your own of the four transformations, determination, environment, motivation and view, then you can feel into the the color that's associated with each line. So for example, maybe you're not a first Line. But you have one of these first color placements.

If you have first color design, sun, earth, axis, then you have appetite determination, which is about eating one ingredient at a time or eating very simply. Giving your body the opportunity to just digest things in a singularly focused way.

Just looking for kind of this first line foundational orientation in the colors to start to build your association, build a foundation, a sense of familiarity between how one shows up at the line level currently profile as well as at the color level determination, environment, fear and motivation. So first color design nodes would be caves environment. So again, thinking about the primitive to most evolved one is primitive.

So primitive people lived in caves. And if you have a first line design nodes, your body resonates with the environment of.

Excuse me, caves, which be with being safe and secure, very protected in your own cave. Tunnel vision, rabbit holing caves. Right. Fear motivation.

The mind is motivated to conceptualize according to knowing more, which is motivated by fear. This could happen. So I need to know more. Just sort of that like kind of preparatory energy. I need to make sure I know everything.

Fill the gaps in the knowledge survival view. Similar, right? Looking for what's needed for survival. See? Being able to see what's needed for survival. First lines in class. Write that down.

Write that down. They're the people that kind of feel like they need to take notes on everything. There's a lot of why, why, why, why, why?

A lot of questions about wait, how does it all connect? Right. Building that foundation.

And I was mentioning, you know, a first line might not recognize how much they know because of that tendency to I need to know more. I foundation stronger. And to see where the foundation isn't strong. The first line's thinking, oh my God. I didn't study on the surface.

But there's actually so much that they know comparatively likely to the to people who don't have first lines in their profile. First line in context.

So the four profile combos where a line one can show up are the 13 and the 14 in which the top number the personality is the investigator and the four one and the five one in which it's the design or the body that's the investigator. So let's play with that a little bit for one threes and one fours. The one is what's conscious in your design.

So you think of yourself as having these first line characteristics. You probably started to feel into some of these qualities of the first line. And it's very easy for you to go, aha. Yeah, that's totally me.

I know that about myself versus for four ones and five ones. You probably resonate with this first line quality stuff as well. But it's not necessarily the, the way that you identify.

It's not necessarily what you consciously orient to about yourself. And this is because for you, these characteristics are the qualities of your form unconscious to the personality.

So for the 13 and the 1 4, the body's kind of up to something else. And we'll, we'll look at each profile briefly but closely once we've established the basic meaning of each of the four lines.

But just kind of orienting right now to the difference between the one in the personality versus the design. Generally speaking, for the 13 and the 1 4, the body's orienting to something else, to a different process.

Meanwhile, the whole time, the mind, the passenger, the personality is really narrating it from the perspective of this first line need as the investigator. For the 4:1 and the 5:1, it's the body that's doing that investigating that's orienting to the foundation.

But from a personality, passenger, mind perspective, the orientation, the identification is more with the fourth line and the fifth line process. And as mentioned, we will take a moment as we move through the rest of the profiles.

We'll take a moment like when we get to the third line, we'll look a little more closely at the 1 3, and we'll do that for each one.

Thanks for listening to the Living Your Design podcast. Stay tuned for the rest of the curriculum. New batches of episodes are released every Tuesday.

For immediate complete access to the full course, and to explore other perks like learning and community, extracurricular, astrology and human design workshops, and meeting with me face to face, go to patreon.com/KelseyRoseTort. You can also listen to me on my other podcasts, the Maia Games and Conversations with the Zodiac and find me on Instagram @kelseyrosetort.