6 Spirituality Studies 10-2 Fall 2024 2 Gurdjieff and the Introduction of the Enneagram to the Modern West The Enneagram became largely known in Western circles through contacts made with the Naqshbandī Sufi order, founded by Bahā ad-Dīn Naqshband Bukharī (1318–1389). George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1877–1949) learned about the Enneagram through his association with the Naqshbandī Shaykh ‘Abd Allāh al-Fā’iz ad-Dāghestanī (1891–1973) [2]. As noted by James Moore (1929–2017), a highly regarded biographer of Gurdjieff: “[T]he enneagram is sui generis and G. I. Gurdjieff, if not its author, is at least its first modern proponent” (1986/1987, 1). He initially presented the nine-pointed figure to his Russian pupils in Moscow and Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) in 1916. The first book to discuss the Enneagram did not appear until 1949, when Russian mathematician and esotericist Pyotr Demianovich Ouspensky (1878–1947), a distinguished disciple of Gurdjieff, released his work In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. Ouspensky, who first met Gurdjieff in Moscow in 1915, recounts Gurdjieff’s words on the significance of the nine-pointed figure (quoted in Ouspensky 1949, 294): Speaking in general it must be understood that the enneagram is a universal symbol. All knowledge can be included in the enneagram and with the help of the enneagram it can be interpreted. And in this connection only what a man is able to put into the enneagram does he actually know, that is, understand. What he cannot put into the enneagram makes books and libraries entirely unnecessary. Everything can be included and read in the enneagram. The following underscores the centrality of the Enneagram to Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way (Webb 1987, 505): The most important use which Gurdjieff made of number symbolism is the figure of the enneagram, which he said contained and symbolized his whole System. His enneagram consists of a circle with the circumference divided into nine points which are joined to give a triangle and an irregular six-sided figure. Gurdjieff said that the triangle represented the presence of higher forces and that the six-sided figure stood for man. He also claimed that the enneagram was exclusive to his teaching. ‘This symbol cannot be met with anywhere in the study of occultism, either in books or in oral transmission,’ Ouspensky reports him as saying. ‘It was given such significance by those who knew, that they considered it necessary to keep the knowledge of it secret.’ Because of the emphasis which Gurdjieff placed on this diagram, his followers have sought high and low for the symbol in occult literature. Bennett claims that it cannot be found anywhere; and if disciples of Gurdjieff have in fact discovered the figure, they have kept it very quiet. 3 Oscar Ichazo, Claudio Naranjo, and the Enneagram of Personality Types Although Gurdjieff made the Enneagram known in the contemporary West, it was Oscar Ichazo, the Bolivian-born founder of the Arica Institute (arica is a Quechua word meaning “open door”) – established in New York in 1971 – who is recognized as having developed the system of the psychological typology of the Enneagram [3]. Because of his codification of personality types, some refer to Ichazo as the “Father of the Enneagram”. Prior to establishing the Arica Institute, Ichazo founded the Instituto de Gnoseologia in 1968, where he gave instruction in the enneagon (Ichazo’s term for the Enneagram), and taught protoanalysis (his word for the knowledge obtained from analysis of human personality through the Enneagram) in 1969 at the Instituto de Psicología Aplicada in Santiago, under the sponsorship of the Chilean Psychological Association (Ichazo 1991). Ichazo discusses the process of how he became a spiritual teacher, and what lay behind his instruction of others, as follows: “I went into a divine coma for seven days. When I came out of it I knew that I should teach; it was impossible that all my good luck should be only for myself. But it took me two years to act on this decision. Then I went to Santiago and started lecturing in the Institute for Applied Psychology” (quoted in Keen 1973, 64, 67). Due to the many unknown details of Ichazo’s life, one could draw interesting parallels between Ichazo and the Peruvian-born Carlos Castañeda (1925–1998), who was himself a New Age icon, even dubbed the “Godfather of the New Age” (Wallace 2003, 16) [4]. Ichazo’s notoriety spread throughout the counter-culture movement following his involvement in the 1973 cult-classic film The Holy Mountain, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky (b. 1929), a Chilean-French filmmaker. All the actors, including Jodorowsky
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