Ancestral lines in the destiny matrix: the father's line, the mother's line and the family force

What the family square is

The chart is built from two squares. The diagonal one, the personal square, describes the tasks a person arrives with. The straight one is called the family square. The method holds that everyone comes into the world through two families, the father's and the mother's, and in each life receives tasks along both lines. One of the books says the family square carries the family's karma back seven generations.

Family tasks are what the ancestors did not manage to carry out and what passed down to their descendants. When a person takes these tasks on, the authors say, they gain the support of their ancestors. When the tasks stay unsolved, the negative side of the same energies can repeat from one generation to the next.

The square divides horizontally. The upper corners (upper left and upper right) show the strength of the family and the spiritual tasks of the father's and mother's lines: the ancestors' patterns of thinking, their morals, their inner attitudes. The lower corners show the family's karma and its material tasks: what the ancestors did, the emotions they lived through, material and genetic heredity. One source calls the lower corners the family's main unlearned lessons, so their negative qualities deserve the closest reading.

The corners of the family square also sit on the age circle: upper left stands for age 10, upper right for 30, lower right for 50 and lower left for 70. The family energies tend to come forward most clearly in those periods.

The father's line and the mother's line

The ancestral lines are the two diagonals of the straight square, crossing at the centre of the chart. The father's line runs from the upper left corner (A + B) to the lower right (C + D). The mother's line runs from the upper right corner (B + C) to the lower left (D + A). The number of each line is the sum of its two corners.

The father's line holds the experience of the paternal ancestors and what the method calls the inner man. Its upper point is about thinking: how a person sets goals and moves towards them. Its lower point shows the mistakes a person makes, how they earn and how they behave in business. The male line of the family is responsible for how you act in society, in work and in earning an income.

The mother's line holds the experience of the maternal ancestors and the inner woman. Its upper point shows how the family expressed feelings and how its women showed themselves in the realm of thought. Its lower point shows how a person behaves in relationships. The female line is responsible for relationships and for the ability to accept gifts and money.

Gender does not matter here: everyone carries the blood of both father and mother, so everyone has an inner man and an inner woman. The number of the father's line (also called the father's line purpose) speaks of masculine qualities, relationships with men in society and the task a person carries for the father's family. The mother's line number does the same for feminine qualities, relationships with women and the mother's family.

The family force: the point in the middle of the family square

The family force is the sum of the four corners of the family square: upper left + upper right + lower right + lower left, with any number above 22 reduced by adding its digits. This point joins the strength of the father's and the mother's families. The method calls it a large reserve of energy and a reward from the family that helps a person become whole.

The family force also carries a task. When its energy works in the positive, the person becomes a peacemaker between the father's family and the mother's family, and the same role carries over to their place in society. The negative side shows what the family lacked as a whole; the positive side shows which qualities to use when solving family tasks.

There is a simple check. The social purpose equals the father's line plus the mother's line, that is, the same four corners. So once reduced, the family force always matches the social purpose. One author writes that the family force switches on fully once the family tasks are solved. The sum of the chart's centre and the family force is called the whole force, or the code of inner strength.

The inner points of the ancestral lines

On each half-diagonal between a corner and the centre there are two more points. The one nearer the centre is the corner plus the centre of the chart. The one nearer the corner is the corner plus the point you have just found. Each of the four corners therefore gets a set of three energies: the corner itself and the two points beside it. Across all four half-diagonals that makes twelve numbers.

The extra energies of the upper sets help open up the strength of the family, those of the lower sets help work through the family's karma. If an upper energy sits in the negative, the family's spiritual task is not being carried out, and its negative traits can harm the family. If the same energy is lived in the positive, it has opened as a talent, and you read its positive meaning. One book adds that the ancestors lived these energies through the negative scenario for several generations, so the tendency is inherited, but with work on yourself the family programs turn into talents passed down the father's or the mother's line.

A variant. One of the books calculates the inner points differently: corner plus family force, then corner plus that result. The numbers on the lines then differ. Our calculator follows most authors: corner plus centre, so check which formula any other calculation uses before comparing.

The parent-child channel

Parent and child karma is read from three points on the left edge of the chart, around the birthday: A, the point nearer the centre (A + centre) and the point nearer the corner (A + that point). This is part of the earth line, and it counts as hidden karma.

The authors give the three energies these roles. Point A shows why the soul came to these particular parents and describes the relationship with them. The point nearer the corner is the task of the relationship: what not to do with children and parents and which qualities to develop; one book links it to the relationship with your children and to the main task. The point nearer the centre shows the mistakes that can happen between you and your parents and children; the same book links it to grandchildren.

The tasks of this channel are read from the negative traits of its energies. The method's logic is this: childhood lessons that were not learned and resentments that were not released come back with your own children, only now you are the parent who presses. These three numbers help you look at your childhood afresh and accept parents you cannot change, while changing how you see them. The authors suggest turning to this channel and to the family energies when there are problems with parents, with children or with having children.

Programs: how to find them on the ancestral lines

A program is a combination of three energies standing one after another on a line of the chart, where the middle number is the sum of the outer two (after reduction). The order does not matter; what matters is that the numbers stand in a row. Programs can turn up on any line of the chart, including the age circle. Our knowledge base describes 62 programs, each on its own page.

The family square has one built-in feature: the set corner, point nearer the corner, point nearer the centre always forms a program, because by formula the point nearer the corner is the sum of its two neighbours. So each of the four corners of the family square always has its own family program, and whether it has a description depends only on the combination of numbers.

The core of a program is its first, root energy: it is the way in. Programs closer to the centre of the chart have a stronger effect. Placement changes the meaning: a wealth program on the ancestral lines, for example, points to money that may come through the family, while a program of fear of the road often stands on the ancestral lines and is tied to accidents on the road among the ancestors. Not every program you find plays out in full: only one part of the description may show, and to a different degree. The authors call programs hints for the work, not a verdict.

Worked example: the ancestral lines of 23.06.1992

Personal square: A = 5 (day), B = 6 (month), C = 1 + 9 + 9 + 2 = 21, D = 5 + 6 + 21 = 32 → 5, centre = 5 + 6 + 21 + 5 = 37 → 10.

Family square: upper left = 5 + 6 = 11 (Strength), upper right = 6 + 21 = 27 → 9 (The Hermit), lower right = 21 + 5 = 26 → 8 (Justice), lower left = 5 + 5 = 10 (Wheel of Fortune). Family force = 11 + 9 + 8 + 10 = 38 → 11, Strength again. Whole force = centre 10 + 11 = 21.

Father's line: 11 + 8 = 19 (The Sun). Inner points: at the upper left corner 11 + 10 = 21 and 11 + 21 = 32 → 5; at the lower right corner 8 + 10 = 18 and 8 + 18 = 26 → 8. On the chart the line reads 11 – 5 – 21 – 10 (centre) – 18 – 8 – 8.

Mother's line: 9 + 10 = 19 (The Sun). Inner points: at the upper right corner 9 + 10 = 19 and 9 + 19 = 28 → 10; at the lower left corner 10 + 10 = 20 and 10 + 20 = 30 → 3. The line: 9 – 10 – 19 – 10 (centre) – 20 – 3 – 10.

Check: social purpose = 19 + 19 = 38 → 11, the same number as the family force. The calculation is right.

Reading. Strength in the family force repeats the upper left corner: the family's main resource and this person's task both come down to handling their own strength gently. Both lines give The Sun, so in this chart the tasks of the father's line and the mother's line are expressed by one energy. The lower corners, Justice on the father's side and Wheel of Fortune on the mother's, are the material karma, read first of all from the negative.

Programs. Each corner gives its own set. Upper left: 11, 5, 21, program 11-21-5, Honesty with yourself and on paper. Lower right: 8, 8, 18, program 8-18-8, Fear of Disappointment and of Being Deceived Again; it sits in the material part of the father's line, where money and mistakes are read. Upper right: 9, 10, 19, program 9-19-10, A Channel for Pure Energy. Lower left: 10, 3, 20, program 10-20-3, Deception by Women, Trouble with Motherhood, in the material part of the mother's line. One more set on the father's line, 10 – 18 – 8, also follows the rule, but the base of 62 programs has no description for it.

Parent-child channel: A = 5 (The Hierophant), nearer the centre 5 + 10 = 15 (The Devil), nearer the corner 5 + 15 = 20 (Judgement). The Hierophant shows why the soul came to these parents, Judgement the task of the relationship, The Devil the mistakes that can happen with parents and children. The same three numbers, 15, 20 and 5, also make up the karmic tail of this chart.

Age: the corners of the family square coincide with the points for ages 10, 30, 50 and 70, and in this chart they hold 11, 9, 8 and 10.

How to calculate the ancestral lines by hand

Every number above 22 is reduced by adding its digits (37 becomes 3 + 7 = 10); 22 is never subtracted. Work in this order.

1. Find the corners of the personal square: A is the day of birth, B the month, C the sum of the digits of the year, D = A + B + C.
2. Find the centre: A + B + C + D.
3. Find the corners of the family square: upper left = A + B, upper right = B + C, lower right = C + D, lower left = D + A.
4. Add up the four corners of the family square: that is the family force.
5. For each corner, find the point nearer the centre (corner + centre) and the point nearer the corner (corner + the point nearer the centre).
6. Work out the lines: father's line = upper left + lower right, mother's line = upper right + lower left; their sum is the social purpose, and it must equal the family force.
7. Work out the parent-child channel: point nearer the centre = A + centre, point nearer the corner = A + the point nearer the centre.
8. Walk along both ancestral lines and the channel at point A and mark every set of three neighbouring numbers where the middle one is the sum of the outer two.

Seven generations: why the family is worked through

One of the method's books gives a separate topic to the seven generations of the family. In the seventh generation a person has 128 ancestors, and across all seven generations about 254–256 souls; this fan of ancestors is called the Bird of the Family. Even someone who knows their ancestors back seven generations usually knows only one branch, not the whole tree. In the method you do not need the names: the ancestors show up through the energies that come to the descendant from each generation, and these keys even show the missions the ancestors were meant to carry out in the third, fourth and later generations, up to the seventh.

The reasoning goes like this. With their birth every child joins two families inside themselves, the father's and the mother's, even if those families were at war. When the two families inside a person do not accept each other, the book compares it to liquids that will not mix: the blend curdles, reacts violently or explodes. Not everything in life comes from personal karma. Some conflicts, illnesses and failures in relationships, the book says, come from family karma, and some situations cannot be solved by any practice except work with the family. What matters is not what exactly happened in the family but which of the ancestors' programs came down to you. The soul, the book holds, chose these families and these parents itself.

What an unworked family looks like. The family's negative side drains strength: it goes into inner war, illness, depression, grudges against oneself and the world, and all of it is projected onto outer situations. The person seems to walk into a headwind: resources run short, the right doors do not open, there is no felt support from parents, ancestors or society. They can work hard on themselves and still not realise their larger plans, because they build personal strength with no connection to the family. Children stand last in the family chain and gather up what the family has accumulated, so they can be hot-tempered, touchy and easily hurt, and they shut themselves off from their parents; no gifts or money, the book says, replace strong roots for them.

The book explains it with the image of a tree: the ancestors are the roots, the descendants the leaves and fruit, and the person is the trunk in between. A tree with strong roots sprouts again even when cut down, one with weak roots dies. So the work, in the method, sends energy both into the past, to the ancestors, and into the future, to the descendants, and every healed generation makes the path easier for the next. The book lists what it gives.

• The load of the matrix's four family corners gets lighter.
• Family programs move from minus to plus, and what held the person back, took their resources and kept doors shut falls away.
• The family corners are also the outer corners of the matrix, the corners of contact with society, so the way to social fulfilment, recognition and prosperity opens. For someone who feels a mission to serve people, an unworked family is an even bigger obstacle.
• Relationships with parents and relatives improve, and sometimes long-lost relatives turn up.
• The way opens for the children: children are born where there were none for a long time, and their personal lives and careers come together.

The family sign of the ancestors, the ages family karma switches on and the 2–11–20 wave

Beyond the corners and the inner points, one of the books reads each ancestral line as the family sign of the ancestors. You take the two outer energies of the line and their sum. For the father's line the outer energies are the upper left and lower right corners of the family square, for the mother's line the upper right and lower left, and their sum is the line's number. That gives a set of three, for example 6, 20 and 8 (6 + 20 = 26, 2 + 6 = 8). The book calls it the family key: there is a key for the father's family and a key for the mother's. The sign itself is written as an addition: 3 + 3 = 6, 3 + 12 = 15, 4 + 13 = 17.

Signs start at 3: the line's number is the sum of two energies, so 1 and 2 never appear as a sign. The sum runs through the whole family channel and can take in all seven generations, while an energy at the upper or lower point of the line acts more strongly on its own generations. The book says it is precisely the outer energies that the ancestors handed down for healing, and they hide their potential: while they are in minus they take the person's resources, and once moved into plus they give the family force as an extra resource. The book compares the three energies to a funnel turning clockwise or anticlockwise that draws in events, either lessons or blessings. Which line an energy sits on also matters. For example, a 4 on the father's line ties the descendant closely to the men of the father's family, while on the mother's line it points to the influence of the men of the mother's family and the mother's own hard masculine energy.

The same book names the ages at which family karma switches on for everyone: at 10 the karma of the father's family, at 30 the karma of the mother's family switches on strongly, at 50 the father's family again, at 70 the mother's. This matches where the corners of the family square sit on the age circle: both corners of the father's line fall at 10 and 50, both corners of the mother's line at 30 and 70. If the family channels have not been worked through by that age, the unworked karma switches on and does not switch off again: each later age adds a new load. At 10 a person carries one family corner, by 70 all four. Some feel their families behind them like wings, while others are pulled back by the past.

The book names 2, 11 and 20 as the main family energies, the family wave. The 2 keeps the harmony in relationships that the ancestors built up. The 11 stands in the middle of the wave: it holds the strength for the descendants' growth and social fulfilment and joins the material and spiritual levels of the family system. The 20 stands for knowing the laws of the Universe and passing the gift of intuition and foresight to living parents and descendants. That is why the 2nd, 11th and 20th of every month are treated as days for honouring the ancient ancestors of both families and for reconciling the family systems. Conflicts in the family and in society come up more often on these days, and the book suggests reading them as a diagnosis: built-up irritation, an inner fight with the world, with people and with oneself, and heavy dreams on these days point to families that have not made peace.

Step-fathers and adoption. The book says the matrix records the biological father, even if a step-father raised the person or they never knew their father: the program of the father's family was passed to them, and only the connection to that family was lost. What is healed is not a particular person but the family program, and one looks for the generation where the break happened. An adopted person who does not know their parents' birth dates needs only their own: the ancestors' programs are written into their personal destiny. Twins born on the same date share one family program between them, while brothers and sisters with different dates take on different programs: one, say, the family's aggression, another its lack of love, a third its illnesses.

The families can be seen in the body as well, the book says. Stand with your arms spread: the diagonal of right arm, right shoulder and left leg belongs to the father's family, and the diagonal of left arm, left shoulder and right leg to the mother's; a scar or injury on one side points to that family.

How to work through the family: what the method suggests

The book names the first step plainly: look at your roots, build contact with your parents, accept them and forgive them; then the children grow up under the family's protection. The Russian word for a generation, koleno, which also means knee, is tied to this: a descendant was meant to bend the knee before the ancestors, that is, drop their pride, accept their parents as they are and listen to their guidance. Proud descendants who walked away from the family, the book says, built up division, loneliness and estrangement in it. If one descendant broke the chain, the flow of energy gets stuck like a string of lights with a burnt-out bulb, and it has to be restored from the seventh generation down to oneself. If the pride gathered in the family is not worked off through forgiveness and acceptance, life itself, the book writes, brings the person to their knees; it also links this pride to pain in the knees and joints.

After that the work is with the family keys, the three energies of the father's line and the three of the mother's line. The book describes these practices.

• Awareness: read the plus and minus of your key's energies and consciously change your reactions to the world, to people and to yourself from minus to plus.
• Family mantra-affirmations about the ancestors' blessing, which the book gives for each energy.
• Colouring mandalas for the energies of destiny.
• Meditations on the key's energies: 22 sessions for each ancestral line, all three energies in a day, dedicated to healing the father's family or the mother's; they can be played as you fall asleep and when you wake.
• Care for the body during family cleansing: lighter eating, more fresh air, clean water (spring water or water charged on quartz), karmic gymnastics, yoga or other body practices.
• A written decision to leave a negative family program, repeated over 22 sessions while keeping a diary of dreams and observations.
• On the 2nd, 11th and 20th: a prayer for the families' reconciliation and a candle of peace, the mudra of energy 2 (palms pressed together at heart level) with even breathing and a request that the fire take away the irreconcilability, and outdoors a short mantra accepting oneself, the other and the world with gratitude to the families.
• A meditation for healing family karma in which the person pictures meeting the ancestors of both families, and thanking the ancestors by candlelight at a home-made altar for the reconciliation of the families.
• Praying for the family is, according to the book, the most common path; pilgrimages to holy places also help. The descendants' prayer also eases the departure of the family's souls who were not buried or given a funeral service, went missing or were cast out of the family.
• Small children can be helped by drawing up and working through their matrices.
• Whatever the key's energies, thank the families for the very fact of being alive and for everything you already have.

Common mistakes and what to do with family programs

The usual calculation mistakes: mixing up the diagonals (the father's line always starts at the upper left corner), subtracting 22 instead of adding the digits, and comparing your chart with one built on the corner plus family force variant without knowing it. Reading goes wrong in other ways: people read only the positive meanings, although family tasks are read from the negative, or treat every program they find as a fixed script.

The method starts from the idea that there is no fixed fate: the energies you are born with are there to be worked on, moved from negative to positive, and the future in that area then changes. For the ancestral lines the authors suggest a few steps.

• Start with the negative traits of the energies in the lower corners: these are the family's unlearned lessons, the ones that repeat most often.
• Set them against your family history. If a program stands on the lower parts of the ancestral lines, one book advises studying the history of the family directly.
• Use the family force to see which qualities the family lacked and which you can use yourself.
• Go through childhood resentments with the parent-child channel. According to one book, how you relate to your father shows up in your relationships with sons, bosses, relatives and even state systems; how you relate to your mother shows up in a woman's self-esteem and in a man's relationships with the women he loves and with his daughters.
• Do not blame your ancestors: the descendant's task is not to repeat their script but to turn it into a talent.

The 22 arcana on the ancestral lines: short meanings

Below is each of the 22 arcana in the position of the ancestral lines. Find the numbers of your family square corners and your family force, then open the arcana page to read the positive side, the negative side and the family task in full.