I’m verrrry excited to bring this interview to you! Richard Mason is the creator of cosmic human design, and the best resource for diving deeper into what true sidereal/cosmic human design is all about.
This interview answers some questions you may have asked yourself if you’ve been exploring true sidereal human design, like, “Ummm, why is called cosmic human design? Where did this even come from? What’s with the change in how we calculate our HD charts?”
Don’t worry, I’ve had the same questions. And thus, I present to you, my interview with Richard Mason!
Note for reading the below interview: The questions in bold are from me, and everything else, unless specifically noted, is directly from Richard. I’ve added links where it makes sense to do so.
Happy reading!
How (and when) did you get introduced to human design?
I got introduced to it through browsing the “recommended books” section of Amazon.com. I don’t remember what book I originally looked at, or what linked me to find The Definitive Book of Human Design. I ordered it right away. In fact, I ordered the Gene Keys, The Book of Destinies, and maybe one or two other related books I was so enthralled by it.
What was your experience like (with tropical HD)?
Overall my experience wasn’t bad, in fact I was obsessed with Human Design from the moment I encountered it. I read through The Definitive Book of Human Design several times. I just couldn’t believe the scope of it and how many different things it was integrating. I thought my tropical chart was, on the surface, accurate. Although I never once felt the deep resonance I do with my cosmic HD chart.
The tropical chart described well my job(data scientist, main sun gate was 62 in tropical), but felt “off” for example I had a defined head, and a defined heart, was a triple-split, and a manifestor. Already that is four low-probability things and I had them all. So my chart felt very “lopsided,” and almost too powerful.
I thought my tropical chart was “cool,” but I was looking for something a lot more from a system like this. And why did the Human Design youtube channel only have 10k subs? Why were there very few options to purchase actual HD books online? Why did the International Human Design school seem to be set on charging outrageous prices for every piece of material, and expect people to settle for random 3-minute audio clips of some Ra lecture? So, overall, I was both enthralled like I had never been before by HD, but at the same time I sensed there was a far deeper mystery here than I could put into words, so I just studied the system extensively, sought out every resource I could find, and read a ton.
But I can say that I always “thought it would be coolest to be an MG,” while learning HD and going over all the material. So I always had that feeling. And I don’t know how I could have completed this project as a manifestor, or thinking I was a manifestor. It required so much just “working,” you know coding for hours and hours, making sustainable, enthusiastic progress everyday, feeling frustrated etc., all from the sacral.
What prompted you to explore a different way of calculating HD charts?
I was having a discussion with my HD coach, Jarin Kenyin back in September or so and he was telling me all his positive experiences with sidereal astrology, and especially vedic astrology and all these things. To be honest I had never heard of sidereal astrology actually being a thing, and the thought just popped in my head, out of curiosity, “wouldn’t the planets change in your human design chart using sidereal astrology?” He said a definitive no, and said that’s what he had always been told by long-time people involved with HD, at conferences and stuff like that. All the people who said no had 10+ years of experience in HD (lol).
So then I was doing some research on sidereal, and just happened to stumble on masteringthezodiac.com, where I discovered True Sidereal astrology, which later I would put together was best thought of as an entirely different type of astrology all on its own.
I got my free natal chart on that site, and it’s like everything that hadn’t made sense in my tropical astrology charts all of a sudden did with the new positions of the planets in the signs. I thought it was an absolute no-brainer. Why hadn’t they been calculating astrology like this all along? That’s another story for another day though.
Then I got the idea, just to see, what my human design chart would look like using this astrology. From reading and re-reading The Definitive Book of Human Design many times over, I knew that all astrology was used for in HD was to calculate gate positions (many people are under the assumption that astrology is far more important to HD but this isn’t the case).
So, I undertook the task to try and do this myself, after seeing nothing about it on the internet. I had been having the feeling all along studying human design, that I would eventually do something like this, such was my fascination with and love of the system.
Describe the journey/process of getting to a place of being ready to go all in on creating this new calculation (synchronicities, trusting yourself, etc.):
Well to be honest this question alone would take up an entire page or long YouTube video (which you should go subscribe to my channel, at, you guessed it, Cosmic Human Design on YouTube). So I’ll lay out one or two of the more important ones.
- My girlfriend at the time. Me and her had both thought she was a reflector intuitively, but after getting her tropical HD chart she was a projector. I became somewhat obsessed at making that fit in with my experience of her. I used every occasion within reason to point out to her how “oh, that was such a projector thing you did,” or reason to myself “yes, she’s definitely a projector because she did this, this, this and that.”
Well, when I finally got the calculations right enough to be confident in them, I did her chart, the second one I did after my own and, lo and behold, she was a reflector!!
Not only that, but I realized she had the exact same birthday as Ra Uru Hu, the founder of Human Design. It’s funny because in Cosmic HD they both turn out to have the Right Angle Cross of Rulership incarnation cross. Which, of course I never met Ra, but for her, I can tell you was 1000% MORE accurate.
Also, I turned out to have the Left Angle variant of that same incarnation cross, called the Left Angle Cross of Confrontation.
So, rulership vs. confrontation OF rulership, well at least my relationship all of a sudden made 10000x more sense to me lol. And if you see the kind of, I don’t want to say backlash, but interest I guess, that cosmic HD has caused in the HD community, I mean don’t these crosses just feel absolutely like what is actually the case?
In tropical they would both have a Left Angle Cross of the Clarion, while I would have the Right Angle Cross of Maya. I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t hit me with the same surety and force that the Cosmic HD crosses do.
- I turned out to have the 45 as my main sun gate. Of any gate that was going to make me believe I was really onto something with this, this was it lol. It’s sometimes called “the King.” I mean that’s literally what Richard means, “strong ruler.” I had always thought of myself as being a ruler/king in one capacity or another, and so it just struck me so hard. It really felt like I had just pulled the Sword from the Stone, lol, it was that powerful of a feeling. It started making me believe in life again, to be honest.
That’s just one example of the “FEELING” force I was talking some about earlier, the Feeling energy that this new system has, that really speaks to your emotions and that you can’t cover up or try to rationalize with the mind.
What’s your experience like now with your “new” cosmic HD chart?
But yeah ever since I started “acting” more like a generator, and really believing that I’m an MG, really feeling the truth of it, it feels kind of like some kind of mental/physical block has been removed, and this was my true nature all along.
How do you use astrology and human design in your own life?
To better know myself, and those around me. I also use the I’Ching (the basis for human design) extensively to better understand the situations I am in.
Can you describe what cosmic human design is for the non-astrologers? How did you change the calculations from the “original” human design method?
The only thing I’ve changed is the astrology used to calculated gate positions in the chart. See, HD uses the astrological position of a planet to determine where it was when you were born. For example Mercury at 3° Aries. The Hexagrams of the I’Ching are also laid out on a wheel alongside the astrological wheel. So the astrology determines which hexagram, or gate, a planet activates in your BodyGraph [note from Melissa: BodyGraph is another name for your human design chart]. By changing the astrology system being used to do this, the wheels are rotated and the signs are changed in size and number. These are the two key differences between true sidereal and tropical astrology.
Therefore, because a planet is no longer in the same sign it once would have been using tropical astrology, a different gate is usually activated. And thus, you will likely have an entirely different chart, and thus a different type, authority, strategy, etc. All the things that HD says you are will likely be different.
Can you explain where the name “cosmic” human design came from? Why not “true sidereal?” What are the key differences?
I went with the name True Sidereal Human Design for awhile, but it felt too unwieldy. Plus, I wanted to differentiate it from all the other types of sidereal astrology, and thus human design, that may exist or would exist.
Basically dealing with this book [I Ching, The Oracle of the Cosmic Way], which I believe was actually the inspiration behind the whole thing without me realizing it until very recently, and why I felt so certain that the name “cosmic” had to be in the title but not quite sure where it had come from.
And the name “Cosmic” human design itself, I didn’t really know where it had come from for seemingly forever.
But then I remembered I had bought that book last year around the same time I started to think about a lot of this stuff. I only browsed through it back then, cause honestly it takes reading many paragraphs 2,3,4 times to really get what it’s saying and how profound it really could possibly be.
But I finally went through and read it cover to cover, eventually several times, and then it really hit me – the crazyyy possibilities for this and what it could mean lol.
But then I finally realized that yeah, absolutely, there is no way the name Cosmic didn’t come from this book.
Why would someone want to use true sidereal/cosmic human design over tropical or vedic sidereal?
It “feels right.” Now, people sometimes don’t like for “feelings”, especially other peoples’ feelings, to be able to determine the veracity of something. But in this case, the sheer amount and degree of people who have said something like “it just clicks,” “it feels like a thunderbolt of awareness,” “it’s like I’m remembering who I am,” “I can just feel itis ME,” is overwhelming. Almost everyone who has been open-minded enough to give the new chart a fair chance with an open mind has wound up feeling this way. And it’s not like there are a lot of people who tried it and are kind of wishy-washy about it. No, almost everyone who’s tried it has been convinced utterly.
It goes by where the planets ACTUALLY WERE at your time of birth. I mean, this is the ENTIRE basis for how human design (and, I suppose, astrology) actually works. That neutrinos pass through planets on their way to you, and those neutrinos activate one of the hexagrams, or gates, of the I’Ching in your BodyGraph. So, if you believe in neutrinos, in this methodology for how it works, you SHOULD believe in Cosmic HD rather than the standard. To me, HD was calling out for True Sidereal astrology to come and fix its foundation.
As for the other sidereal charts, which one will you pick? You have at least 20+ options, all slightly different. To me, there is no compelling reason to believe in any of them. So, to me “sidereal human design” or a “sidereal chart” is not really a thing.
Commentary from Melissa: I personally calculated my sidereal human design chart with every single sidereal ayanamsha (AKA method of astrology) in Genetic Matrix (affiliate link). They were all, more or less, iterations of each other, and either had me as a projector or a manifesting generator, but NONE of them clicked the way my true sidereal/cosmic human design chart clicked for me.
What would you tell people who have been experimenting with their tropical HD chart for some time and feel like it really represents them?
I would say try the cosmic chart and then make up your mind. If you’re really as right as you think you are, then it can’t hurt. But, there are a million ways in which we don’t allow ourselves to feel how we actually feel. Our minds, our egos are very adept at blocking our access to feeling the truth, which we are all capable of. So, I would say you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, unless you’re caught up in HD itself, and wanting it to be true the way it was, and have ulterior motives like perhaps it’s your career, or you’re making money from it somehow, you know, things like that. People don’t like to admit it, but few people are willing to actually give up things like that, even if it is the truth.
Commentary from Melissa: I can personally attest to the ego putting up serious walls. The ONE thing in my cosmic HD chart that I feel extremely resistant to is my “new” determination of consecutive appetite (which I’ve written about here, in my personal chart comparison post). This is a piece of my chart I’m sitting with and experimenting with, while not putting too much pressure on myself to totally overhaul how I’m eating right away.
Do you think cosmic and tropical HD can coexist?
Sure. My way of thinking about tropical HD is that it “describes me in the ‘matrix.’” What exactly is this matrix? Well, we can talk a LOT about that later, but basically, you know our society that we all have to live in. That said, I DO 100% believe that your cosmic HD chart describes your TRUE SELF, i.e. who you really are and how the cosmos intended you to be. Throwing that away doesn’t come without consequences, so, I think you’ll have a much better, happier life if you embody the elements in your cosmic HD chart, because it IS in harmony with the cosmos. That doesn’t mean the tropical chart ISN’T, because I can’t tell you what the cosmos thinks or feels, but you know, I would much rather take my chances with the cosmic HD chart.
Where can people learn more and connect with others exploring true sidereal/cosmic human design?
- Join the Cosmic Human Design Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cosmichumandesign/
- Get your free true sidereal/cosmic human design chart: www.cosmichumandesign.com
- Subscribe to Richard’s cosmic human design YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRq99Ht7g2DzSraUgnWn8lg
Books mentioned in this article + more reading on Human Design:
- Understanding Human Design by Karen Curry
- Gene Keys by Richard Rudd
- The Book of Destinies by Chetan Parkyn and Carola Eastwood
- I Ching, The Oracle of the Cosmic Way by Carol K Anthony
- The Definitive Book of Human Design by Ra Uru Hu and Lynda Bunnell
P.S. Click here to read more of my popular human design posts.
