10 Spirituality Studies 10-2 Fall 2024 Yet Ichazo later appears to have denounced Gurdjieff’s influence on the formation of the Arica system, as Naranjo explains: “Originally, Oscar Ichazo claimed that the enneagram was passed on to him orally by the Sarmouni, a Sufi brotherhood. In a recent interview, he said that he had never met a single Sufi who knew about the enneagram” (quoted in Parkin and Fittkau 1996, 22). We need to take heed of Moore’s intimation regarding Gurdjieff’s encounter with the Sarmouni: “Gurdjieff’s provocative claim to have found and entered ‘the chief Sarmoung Monastery’ is in effect a litmus test, differentiating literal minds from those preferring allegory” (1991, 31). Naranjo (1990, viii) initially gave credit to his teacher for the psychological typology of the Enneagram, admitting that it was “Oscar Ichazo, through whom I first became acquainted with the ‘enneagrams of personality’ during a series of lectures dictated [note: by Ichazo] at the Instituto de Psicologia Aplicada (Santiago) in 1969, under the sponsorship of the Chilean Psychological Association”. In 2010, however, he recanted this in two separate interviews, claiming that he did not in fact learn ennea-types from Ichazo (see Gold 2010; McNay 2010). Naranjo stated that he intentionally gave authorship to Ichazo, who was more famous than he, in order to draw people to the Enneagram and thus establish a correlation between the ancient Sufi origins of the Enneagram – purportedly brought to the modern West through Gurdjieff – and Ichazo leading up to him. Palmer (1991, 46) gives credit to Ichazo by way of the Fourth Way teachings: “The correct placement of the emotional passions was produced by Oscar Ichazo, and with that deceptively simple arrangement of what Gurdjieff called Chief Feature, the Enneagram code became available to us”. Naranjo stated that, under his tutelage, Ichazo spoke minimally about the Enneagram and said nothing about the specific ennea-types he later developed: “He [note: Ichazo] didn’t talk about the enneagrams of personality more than two hours during our year with him” (1996, 16). Incidentally, Naranjo credits E. J. Gold, who was also influenced by Gurdjieff, for coining the term “ennea-type”. Naranjo then tells us that he obtained his theories about the psychological types of the Enneagram through “automatic writing” or “psychography”, before verifying them through observation (quoted in Gold 2010). We must not neglect the fact that Naranjo himself never completed his tutelage with Ichazo before taking on students himself: “Claudio [note: Naranjo] broke with Oscar [note: Ichazo] very early on, before completing Oscar’s training. Claudio took the enneagram with him, thus starting a tradition within the enneagram community” (Eli Jaxon-Bear quoted in Special Forum 1997, 15). Naranjo affirms the significance of his instruction under Ichazo in understanding personality types and the structure of the personality: “To this awakening of a ‘clinical eye’ I owe everything that I was able to learn about personality types and personality in general from then on, and for the intellectual experience of an increasing coalescence of what information on the subject I acquired” (2003, xxx). Palmer emphasizes what she considers Ichazo’s chief contribution to the Enneagram of personality types: “Most important, Ichazo had placed the types correctly on the nine-pointed star” (1991, 47). Naranjo dually credits the impact of Gurdjieff’s introduction of the Enneagram: “I could say that the enneagram of the Sarmouni acted as a magnet in my mind to bring together the pieces of psychological lore that, until then, were separate, an organizing catalytic factor causing the relative chaos of the information to come into a more precise pattern” (2003, xxx). Naranjo was initially going to call his first book on the Enneagram Character Structure and Psychodynamics in the Light of the Enneagram of the Sarmouni, in order to illustrate his indebtedness to the Sarmouni in its title; but he later renamed it (Naranjo 1990). An additionally important influence upon Naranjo’s outlook is the influence of the pseudo-Sufi teacher Idries Shah (1924–1996): “I should interpolate here for the sake of context that, as many who were deeply affected by the Gurdjieff heritage, I had been disappointed in the extent to which Gurdjieff’s school entailed a living lineage. I had turned in my search towards Ṣūfism and had become part of a group under the guidance of Idries Shah” (2003, xxviii). Although (to our knowledge) Shah only references the Enneagram in one book under the heading “Symbols, especially the Enneagon” (Shah 1997, 286–87), he was a key source for the popularization of Súfism in the West that has filtered into modern psychology [7]. However, it has been well demonstrated that Shah’s brand of Súfism is highly distorted and does not reflect the authenticity of traditional Islamic spirituality [8]. Riso insists that the Enneagram of personality types is a contemporary innovation, and the credit needs to go to Ichazo and Naranjo, not to any ancient origins. He has called those within the “enneagram community” to stop romancing the Enneagram; however, this appears to be a change from his initial position as reflected in an earlier publication: “I not only have much to learn but also much for which to give thanks, especially to those ancient masters who have handed down to us the profound wisdom of the Enneagram” (Riso 1992, 117). Kathleen Riordan Speeth, who was raised in the milieu of Fourth Way teachings (seeing as her parents were disciples
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