In episode 86 of Real Human Design Stories
I sat down with astrologer, Human Design analyst, author, and practical mystic Daljeet Peterson to explore how astrology, Human Design, and the Gene Keys can work together to reflect one life through many lenses: personal purpose, generational cycles, and the times we were born for.
For more than 25 years, Daljeet has been reading the sky and telling stories with charts. Long before he ever saw a bodygraph, he was already tracking patterns, archetypes, and the longer arcs of history. In this conversation, we look at how those long-view insights meet the deeply personal mechanics of Human Design, and how that combination can shift the way we relate to ourselves, our families, and entire generations.
You can watch the full podcast episode in the embedded player above, or if you’d rather, here’s the YouTube version:
From a name on a coaster to a podcast chat
I’d seen Daljeet around the Human Design universe—posts, comments—and often thought, “I like how this person thinks,” but we’d never actually spoken.
That changed (sort of) at the High Desert Human Design Conference in Santa Fe in September 2025.
If you were there, you know that Jonah tucked a little surprise into our goodie bags: a few coasters, each with a name hand-scribbled on it—people we were invited to seek out and have a real, off-the-cuff conversation with sometime during the conference
This year, one was Daljeet.
On day one, I ended up sitting directly in front of him in a workshop. I turned around, showed him the coaster, and said something like, “Apparently, we’re supposed to chat.” We both laughed, agreed we’d have plenty of time to connect, and then dove back into the whirlwind that is a packed conference schedule.
And then we never connected. 🥲
But although we couldn’t manage a casual chat in Santa Fe, we could absolutely make space for a longer, more intentional conversation on the podcast. This episode is that conversation.
Reading his bio and feeling both fascinated and intimidated
I’ll be honest: simply introducing Daljeet had me a little on my toes.
His bio is full of phrases that were both intriguing and yet slightly intimidating—terms I hadn’t exactly heard before, even though I could feel the general flavor of them. I still found myself Googling a couple of them just to be sure I was catching the nuance.
That’s the kind of intelligence and depth he carries. It’s not performative; it’s decades of deep contemplation. You can feel the years of practice and pattern-tracking in the way he speaks. Even though we were only skimming the surface of many topics, this conversation was anything but superficial. It felt like sitting with someone who has been in long-term relationship with the sky, and his own charts, and is still genuinely curious to learn more.
One moment that stands out was when he talked about his Saturn and Mercury in Taurus sitting at 15 degrees, and how seeing that same placement these placements, and by extension, himself. When he followed it all the way down to the line 3 keynotes, he landed on a phrase that absolutely fits the human I met in Santa Fe and on this podcast:
“The teacher that never stops being a student.”
You can hear how seriously he takes this work, and how much joy he finds in continuing to learn and to bring it to others in true 3/5 style.
The Human Design Mandala
Another part of our conversation that stayed with me was talking about the aesthetic beauty of the Human Design Rave Mandala.
Never heard of the Mandala? Don’t worry, many people interested in Human Design have never actually seen their chart in that circular format. We’re used to the nine-centered bodygraph floating in space on its own, but when you place it inside the Mandala, where it originates, you can literally see where each of your gates sits inside the zodiac and better understand how the information actually relates..
Because we spent time talking about that, I wanted to share a visual to go with it.
Here’s an image of the Rave Mandala, version of Daljeet’s chart, you can see the bodygraph in the center. The gates are placed within their astrological sign in the order that the sun and planets cycle through them. It’s a simple way to see how your Human Design gates line up with your astrology.
Godheads: another layer for us archetype lovers
Then we went into territory a majority of people in Human Design have likely never heard of: the godheads.
We didn’t do a full explanation on them (that’s not what this podcast is for), but we did talk about how they add yet another archetypal layer around the outer edge of the Mandala—almost like giving the whole wheel a set of mythic “moods” or lenses the neutrino stream is filtered through.
This image (created by Daljeet) shows how the godheads overlay the Mandala, so you can see the extra ring of archetypes we’re referring to.
You absolutely don’t have to understand any of this to get something from the episode. Think of these images as a gentle peek behind the curtain of why someone like Daljeet—“the teacher who is the lifelong student”—can happily spend months or years contemplating just one more layer and still not be bored. in fact he has a wonderful teaching on the subject you can find here.
Collective Souls, Pluto, and feeling the times we were born for
We also spent time talking about his book, Collective Souls: Generations, Astrology, and the Future of America. What really landed for me was how he sees the soul-level contracts underneath all the stereotypes.
Hearing him talk about the U.S. Pluto return, about crisis cycles, and about each generation carrying its own medicine, and the pressure we put on young people to “have it all figured out” before their Saturn return.
I shared how clear it has become to me the way my 25 year-old manifestor daughter’s chart and design are wired to challenge, disrupt, and refuse to be told who she is or what she should do.
None of this is random. She was born for these times, too.
This conversation has so much to offer you—not as a lecture on Pluto or a how-to on generational astrology, but as a lived example of how these tools can invite more compassion. For ourselves. For our kids. For our parents. For the culture we’re all trying to navigate together.
Where to go next
If this conversation stirred something in you and you want to go deeper with Daljeet’s work:
Book: Collective Souls: Generations, Astrology, and the Future of America Get the book on Amazon
Writing & offerings: Find Daljeet on Substack @mutablefire21
And if you haven’t listened yet, scroll back up to the embedded player—or
And if this episode stirred something in your own design, your lineage, or the times you were born into, and you want support making sense of that, you’ll find ways to work with me here.
One last look: his chart (and where to get yours)
Here’s Daljeet’s Human Design chart (without the mandala), a visual of the channels, gates, and definition we talk about in the episode.
Take a moment with it. Notice what jumps out at you. Feel into how different it is to look at a chart when you’ve just heard the human behind it speak for an hour.
And if you don’t have your own yet, you can get your chart here.
