Enneagon

With all this talk of Gurdjieff floating around I was thinking a bit about the Sufi links with G’s ‘system’ and in particular the Enneagon (or enneagram as recently decaffeinated by the new-age steamroller) and its origins.

Many people have sought the origins of the mysterious symbol and not many have had much success. I can’t say I can solve the issue but there are a few interesting links to throw into the pot for anyone who wished to give it a go. Firstly, I suppose I would cite Idries Shah’s comments in his book the Commanding Self in the chapter ‘Symbols’.

This is obviously an issue to which Shah attaches a great deal of importance and he states as much in this brief section. Addressing the issue of whether the enneagon is ‘unknown in occult circles in the west’ he claims to have seen a drawing of it in a MS in the Library of Grenoble. I do not know which MS he refers to here but the following image is from the frontspiece of Athanasius Kircher’s 1665 Magnum Opus Arithmologia and although the figure is not the exact enneagon as we know it from Gurdjieff, it is labelled as ‘enneagram’ by Kircher. At the foot of the frontispiece are two Arab figures and a number of magic squares although I haven’t shown these.

Kircher enneagram

This apparent difference between the symbols is interesting. Shah continues in the ‘Commanding Self’ explaining that the symbol itself is often depicted in a coded fashion (it is noteworthy that G himself stated it was incomplete as he gave it) - as an example of this Shah cites the door symbol in the tour Hassan in Rabat, Morocco (see picture and enlargement below).

Rabat Tour Hassan

Rabat Tour Hassan Door

These hidden, coded or ‘obscured’ depictions of the symbol are not unusual - here is one used by Gurdjieff himself on the front of the prospectus of the Paris Institute.

Gurdjieff Prospectus

Imo this is an interesting field of study and there really isn’t that much (sane) research on it available on the web. I shall post a few links in my usual fashion for those interested in investigating (incidentally, it’s come to my attention btw that some people believe that if I post a link it means I agree with what it says - if I get my head round that concept I may post on it soon), anyway.....

Here is a thread on a forum that discusses Oscar Izacho’s use of the enneagram and mentions Shah and Leila Bakhtiar’s ideas of origins. Another, possibly less interesting, thread is at metaco8nitron and also there is an interesting piece on the Kaballah of eight.

This last one may be more interesting than it appears at first glance as it takes in the Ikhwas as-Safa (of whom more in an upcoming post) and focuses on the Kaballah of eight which it regards as the Sufi Kaballah (see Shah’s comments in this regard in the Sufis). This may be significant in the light of Shah’s comments in the CS cited above that the enneagon is often coded as an eight-sided figure.



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