About the Eneagram Figure you posted on 15 May (surrounded by the symbols of the planets and Hebrew letters). Do you know if it predates Gurdjieff? As far as I know the Eneagram was a creation of Gurdjieff and cannot be traced do a date older than his time. Beltashazar Lavodnas
Hi there, great question! The Enneagram symbol definitely goes back further than Gurdjeiff, he was just the first person to popularize it in the West. However, its origins before him are much disputed. Here’s what wikipedia has to say about it:
“…it has been proposed that it may derive from, or be cognate to, the Jewish Tree of Life (Kabbalah) as used in Renaissance Hermeticism (which used an enneagram of three interlocking triangles, also called a nonagram)[3] or a nine-pointed figure used by the Christian medieval philosopher Ramon Llull.[3]
Idries Shah, a populariser of Sufism, has claimed that the enneagram has a Sufi provenance and that it has also been long known in coded form disguised as an octagram.[4]Another claim to a Sufi provenance is offered by the Sufi Enneagram website.[5] The archives of the Naqshbandi Sufi order of Daghestan have been claimed to provide an account of a meeting between Gurdjieff and Shaykh Sharafuddin Daghestani in which the secret of the nine points was transmitted to Gurdjieff.[6]
Robin Amis claims an Orthodox Christian origin, claiming that both Gurdijeff and Ouspensky developed their teaching with insights gained from visits to Mount Athos.[7]
Another proposal suggests the diagram is a map of the chakras from yogic schools.[8]” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Way_enneagram)
According to Katrina Stevens: "David Burke’s exhaustive research into the origins of the Enneagram, first presented at the 2000 International Enneagram Conference, has conclusively traced the Enneagram framework to the Christian contemplatives living in the Nile Delta between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE and specifically to the written accounts of the nine passions by Evagrius of Pontus (346-399 CE).“ She writes more about this in her paper The Enneagram: Fundamental Hieroglyph of a Universal Language. (which I can try to send you if you like; it was orignally published in an Enneagram journal, and appears to be behind some paywalls.)
A really interesting question and definitely worth some more digging- it seems we’re always finding something new!