Most notorious literary love affair? Gotta hand it to these two:
Anais Nin, the French-born Cuban diarist.Henry Miller, the New York City born author.
I was introduced to Anais Nin when 50 Shades of Grey boomed. A friend read the first three pages, slammed the book on the floor and rolled his eyes.
“If anyone thinks this stuff is kinky, they haven’t read Anais Nin’s work.”
When I read her diaries, there was one person constantly scrawled between the sentences: Henry Miller.
This post is a connection chart inspired by their relationship. First, their indiviudal charts. Then, the blend.
I won’t go over the basics, such as type, authority, or profile. This post picks apart specific channels and speaks to how expansive a single channel can be.
Her opened eyes and open invitations
Anais Nin’s work is still considered taboo.
Back then? Radical.
She wrote about her many affairs. Incest with her father (it’s debated whether this happened or if it’s fiction).She explored bisexuality.
First, we need to talk about Henry Miller’s wife, June Miller. She spotlights much of Anais’s (and Henry’s) work.
June single-handedly destructed Anais Nin’s understanding of masculine-feminine dynamics – by existing.
Look at the bodygraph above and see the channel of awakening (20-10). The channel connects the G center (identity, direction, love) with the throat center (manifestation).
Despite being a Manifesting Generator, this channel is called self-projected. The projection piece means that she needs invitations for recognition when it comes to this channel.
An example of how this works is through her relationship to June Miller. She was addiction to June. But without the invitation to explore this attraction, it would’ve never happened.
There was nothing Anais could’ve done to have her.
The “yes,” Anais felt when she responded (Manifesting Generator) to June was an initiation.
There is no mulling. There is no pacing for the right answer. It’s the burning in Anais’s chest (where the G center lives) sparking love.
Between Henry and June
We’re still talking about the channel of awakening. This channel is also an invitation for self-expression.
And to embody one’s wretchedness.
Henry Miller played a part in Anais’s channel of awakening. Though she started out writing erotica, he encouraged her to publish her diaries. He said they were her best work.
Spoken into the world in his Manifestor type and power.
And so it was.
He saw her. Her recognized her talent, the way she meticulously chose her words. He invited her, over and over, to keep doing it.
To write him letters. To write her diaries.To project her soul through prose.
The awakening Anais Nin received from Henry and June was a portal she could never turn back from. Her writing is met with visceral repulsion, even today. It poked at expectations of women.
The channel of awakening is also a mystical channel. In Human Design, there are four mystical channels.
Awakening is the one about freedom, living with no strings attached. 
Anais Nin is best known for these diaries. Here, her mystical self-projection is expressed through her perceived realities. It needs to be awakened.
Here, she is liberated.
And there is nothing wrong with being asleep. It’s sleeping, until something nudges (or screams) invitations to wake up.
No one walked in one day to wake her up.
She wrote. And wrote. And wrote.
Then Henry invited her into his life and shook her awake to stop hiding from who she was.
The crab shell
Anais’s channel of awarenessincludes gate 10 and line 3 (in the moon).
Gate 10’s backbone, for Anais is line 3, the martyr, nested in the moon.
The moon is representative of hidden sensitivities.
It is Cancer, the crab with pincers and defensive shell. It is Cancer, the crab that ripped through the shell revealing a delicacy.
Her walls are up, yet she is sensitive.
Anais’s expression of gate 10 includes her unguarded generosity. She used her husband Hugo Guiler’s money to fund Henry Miller’s work for years. She also financially supported June.
Her incarnation cross is the sleeping phoenix.
The Right Angle Cross of the Phoenix falls maddeningly in love only to watch it up in flames, as it goes with line 3.
There is never guarantee.
The next lover doesn’t need to be perfect. The next daydream may never see manifestation.
Anais Nin about her husband:
“We talked for six hours. He reached the conclusion I have come to also: that I needed an older mind, a father, a man stronger than me, a lover who will lead me in love, because all the rest is too much a self-created thing. The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.”
Henry Miller understanding his craft
Above, see the channel of wavelength (48-16). It’s between his splenic center and his throat center.
This channel is about collective acceptance. There is no logic without evidence.
And it’s no longer logic if you have to pace and wreck your mind thinkign about it.
The understanding circuit isn’t about conformity. It’s the answer that could disrupt the question.
Here, Henry Miller attains personal masteries that are expressed to the outer world.
It’s to understand that if you touch a hot metal pot, you’ll burn yourself.These are conclusions that people come to because it’s collective understanding.
Remember, nothing remains conclusive. For example, school taught me that Neanderthals were buffoons. This was an unquestioned belief. Now, evidence suggests that they created cave paintings, used tools, and made jewelry. This was 20,000 years before the humans we know today arrived in Europe.
Master of his art
Masters of their craft experience challenges, long after the logical answer has surfaced.
Henry Miller has the channel of the wavelength connected to his splenic authority. Here are the artists, refining talent over logical understanding.
Mastery becomes art. Art becomes mastery.
Henry wrote everything from letters to erotica to semi-autobiographical work. There was always something to learn.
For him, patterns form sentences. Sentences compose paragraphs. Paragraphs turn into stories.
One of his lifetime masteries was:
To write. And write. And write.
He became such a master of his craft that to this day, we fawn over his letters to Anais Nin. We romanticize his banned novels.
We talked about him understanding how to develop his writing. But when one knows the rules and patterns, they can bend it.
Those with this channel usually need benefactors and recognition. Henry’s variation can be self-sufficient, unlike others with the same channel.
Yet, Henry Miller quit his job in Western Union. He wanted to write full-time. He began an affair with his would-be wife, June Miller. June conned financial support from one of her sugar daddies, Roland Freedman.
When met Anais Nin. She, like June, went on to finance his work. Anais and her husband, Hugh Guiler, paid for Henry’s living expenses through the 1930’s.
When Henry was set to print Tropic of Cancer, Anais paid for it. She received the money from her psychotherapist, Otto Rank.
(Otto Rank influenced many prominent figures. They include Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Salvador Dalí).
The cynic
He chose dependency over self-sufficiency.
Henry eventually found wide success in his work. Anais once asked for monetary support but Henry refused her, creating a rift in their friendship.
He even stole some of her work and published it as his own.
He is a cynical manifestor.
Lovers and brides, but not for each other
When Anais Nin and Henry Miller come together, we see the theme of 8/1 (have some fun).
The 8-1 connection theme is about closeness with an open door for growth without each other.
The door for Anais and Henry is through the emotional center. They tangled into and devoured each other. They also spent much of their time theorizing over writing.
They were soul mates of written word even when the relationship dissolved.
Their connection chart contains plenty of dominance channels. For the most part, Anais’s over Henry’s.
The Crab and the Cynic
Henry conditioned Anais through his channel of wavelength. With him, she learned to refine her craft.
Anais conditioned Henry through the channel of awakening. Henry is logical, ever seeing sudden patterns but Anais brought him raw drafts.
Attraction comes as Henry recognizes Anais’s channel of awakening. Remember that this channel carries projection. Her art would never receive double takes if the recognition didn’t exist.
The way he spoke to her, the awe he held, brought forth her honest work.
Anais’s financial support of Henry Miller is a textbook example of the channel of the wavelength. Henry didn’t need benefactors due to his connection with the root center, but he seized it anyway.
This channel seduced June and Anais’s benevolent souls. The investments weren’t only in his work.
They gave him the luxury to refine his craft to mastery.
It’s only fun because it’s forbidden
Let’s explore on of their channels of compromise. Compromise channels appear when one has the whole channel while the other only has a gate. The one with the channel will always “win” the tug of war.
The channel of struggle is in this pair.
Struggle is stubborn. Struggle is intoxicating. Struggle is self indignant.
Struggling isn’t struggling to struggle. There is something worth struggling for. In the case of Anais and Henry, it’s clear:
They struggled with their early work.They struggled to remain faithful to their primary partners.They struggled to keep each other.
Henry’s gate 28 struggled to keep a tight grip on Anais.
He is a risk-taker. He finds purpose through these risks, often through life-or-death situations. One could argue that being a starving artist is a privilege yet a life-or-death situation, too.
Anais’s variation of isn’t as ready to jump off the cliff like Henry’s. Her preparation is precise. Her splenic center prefers foundational survival of herself and her work.
The uncomfortable craft, without trying
There’s only one electromagnetic channel. Electromagnetic channels are where gates come together to create a channel.
Anais and Henry condition the channel of surrender.
This pair’s variation birthed out of censorship, aloofness, and manipulation. There is a sense of trickery at work, the giggle of mercurial energy.
Though Anais Nin was already having affairs, Henry was the one that persisted. Henry was working through his second marriage yet captivated by Anais.
They lied to other lovers. They gave to each other for selfish reasons.
Henry’s selfishness includes how he sold and sold some of Anais’s work.
Together, they made art in the form of diluted honesty.
It’s through inspiration from muses like June Miller.
It’s easy to judge the electromagnetism brought forth between these two. Few could stomach such a relationship.
This channel conditioned each other in audacity.
Henry’s supposed perversion got his books banned. He states his genuine intention was to highlight female sexual empowerment.
He wrote about women who bucked society. He wrote about whores.
Anais’s work is its own legacy. Though she shunned her work as feminist, women of all ages found inspiration in her writing. To this day, her work mirrors the souls of contrarians (not limited to those born “women”).
She was also a muse to Madonna.
Even after her passing, her work remains controversial and repulsive.
She is the subject of inspiration.. and obsession.
Henry’s cool, too.
Living on
Anais Nin and Henry Miller were endless in their search of love. Their story continues with those inspired by their unconventional journeys.
Anais Nin’s line 3 seduced and disrupted her relationships. Henry Miller’s line 4 scared him, unable to leave lovers without having a replacement ready.
They struggled together. They were relentless with their taboo eroticas. They brought it out of each other.
This is the uniqueness of two people coming together and conditioning each other.
Without this notorious relationship, their work could’ve been overlooked and lost to time.
Get a Human Design Connection Reading
For February 2023 only, I have two spots for connection readings between partners. Like the above post, this a blended reading. There are three sections: one for you, one for them, and one for both. Click here to learn more.
