← Encyclopedia of Embodied Energy · lesson 7/164
Defined centre
A defined centre is one of the nine centres of an Embodied Energy Chart that has at least one complete channel running into it. On the drawing it is filled in. The tradition reads it as a part of you that works in a consistent way: the same mechanism, running on its own terms, day after day and year after year, more or less whoever you happen to be with.
Its opposite is the open centre, which takes its colour from the people and places around you.
The one rule
A centre becomes defined in exactly one way. A channel joins two centres through two gates, one at each end. When both gates are lit by a planet — from the aware side, the built-in side, or one from each — the channel completes, and both of the centres it joins become defined at once.
That is the whole mechanism. Lit gates on their own define nothing, however many there are: a centre can carry five lit gates and still be open if none of them completes a channel. And a single complete channel is enough: a centre fed by one channel counts as fully defined as one fed by four. Since every channel joins two centres, a chart never has exactly one defined centre. It has none, or two, or more.
What defined centres decide
Which centres are defined, and how they connect, is the input to nearly everything else on the chart:
- The type. A defined Vitality centre ("Sacral") makes a Generator or Manifesting Generator. Without it, a defined motor connected to the Throat makes a Manifestor; any other definition makes a Projector; no definition at all makes a Reflector.
- The inner compass. It is read from the defined centres in a fixed order, starting with the Feeling centre ("Solar Plexus").
- The definition. Defined centres joined to each other by channels form islands; the number of separate islands is the chart's definition.
The four kinds of centre
What "consistent" means depends on what the centre is for:
- a defined motor — the Will, Vitality, Feeling or Drive centre — is read as a reliable source of a particular kind of energy (see motor centres);
- a defined awareness centre — the Mind ("Ajna"), the Instinct ("Spleen"), or the Feeling centre in its other role — is read as a fixed way of knowing or sensing (see awareness centres);
- a defined pressure centre — the Head or the Drive — is read as a steady supply of a particular push (see pressure centres);
- a defined Throat or Self ("G centre") is read as a reliable voice, or a fixed sense of identity and direction.
How it is read
A defined centre is something you can lean on, because it does not depend on company. It is also something you tend to take for granted, and to assume other people share. Someone with a defined Feeling centre may not realise that not everyone lives with their own emotional weather; someone with a defined Drive may be puzzled that others do not feel the same steady push to get things done.
So defined does not mean better. It means fixed — reliable ground and a habit at the same time. A defined centre is also what you bring into a room: the tradition holds that your definition is what other people's open centres take in from you, a process called conditioning.
Definition can be borrowed for a while. When a transiting planet lights the missing gate of one of your channels, the channel completes for as long as the transit lasts, and a centre can feel defined that normally is not. Being close to someone who holds the other gate can do the same. We describe both in readings of the sky and of two people together; neither changes the chart itself.
In your chart
A defined centre is drawn filled. In the figure drawing, its glow grows with the number of complete channels feeding it, so the size shows where the chart's weight sits. The channels that define it are drawn as lines from its gates to the centre at the other end, each half coloured by the moment that lit that gate.