The Enneagram GPS: Gnostic Path to Self
What is your number? The Enneagram asks. What is the Enneagram, you may ask back. An increasingly popular personality-analysis tool, the Enneagram is a diagram depicting numbers one through nine, with lines connecting each number to two others. The Enneagram was promoted by mystic George Gurdjieff (1866?-1949) and by his followers, P. D. Ouspensky (1878-1947) and Oscar Ichazo (b. 1931). Gurdjieff’s followers claimed that Gurdjieff told a story about learning the Enneagram from the Sufis (a mystical spin-off sect of Islam), though the Sufi source has been debunked.
Psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo (b. 1932), a pioneer of New Age-related psychological theories, breathed new life into the Enneagram by refining it as a tool of psychological assessment in which a person discovers his number in the chart, and then studies the best and worst traits of that number via the diagram. Each number represents a particular personality type and connects to two other numbers: one supposedly highlights the worst traits, and the other represents the best.
Meet the Teachers (New Age -Mysticism Again)
Gurdjieff was an Armenian teacher of esoteric spiritual philosophies based on knowledge he allegedly garnered during travels and contacts with secret groups, which are recounted in his book, Meetings with Remarkable Men (in the beginning years of her New Age journey, the writer of this article saw a movie based on this book and was strongly influenced by it). However, these accounts were never verified. Gurdjieff held that man is not aware of true reality and needs an awakening of consciousness. He is widely credited with making the Enneagram publicly known.
Ouspensky, Gurdjieff’s pupil, presented Gurdjieff’s ideas as the Fourth Way. Ouspensky’s teachings on the Enneagram appear in his books, In Search of the Miraculous and The Fourth Way (http://www.endlesssearch.co.uk/philo_enneagram1.htm). Like Gurdjieff, Ouspensky wrote about the Enneagram in terms of the “law of seven” and the “law of three,” based on Gurdjieff’s view of the esoteric laws by which the cosmos operated.
Oscar Ichazo, heavily involved in psychedelic drugs and shamanism,* asserted that he had “received instructions from a higher entity called Metatron” and that his group “was guided by an interior master.”
Naranjo, the psychiatrist who studied with Ichazo in Chile, passed on the Enneagram teachings to Jesuit Bob Ochs, who then brought it into Roman Catholic circles at the New Age Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where Naranjo taught (“A Closer Look at the Enneagram,” Dorothy Garrity Ranaghan [South Bend, Indiana: Greenlawn Press, 1989], 9).
In a video interview, Claudio Naranjo admits that he and Oscar Ichazo lied about the Enneagram having ancient origins, even though they knew it didn’t. They knew Gurdjieff’s claims about this were false. Ichazo never came up with the 9 personality types (nor had Ouspensky taught that); Naranjo is known to have developed them. At around 3:45 in the interview, Naranjo states that the 9 types came from automatic writing. He says some of it came from his own observations, but that it “mostly came from automatic writing” (Video is at https://bit.ly/2HdsOBX). This cements the evidence of the Enneagram’s occult origins and nature.
Gurdjieff’s legacy lives on today in many facets of the New Age Movement. The New Age has inserted itself so subtly into mainstream culture, including the health field (as well as hospitals), education, psychology, business, and sports, that people no longer perceive it as alien. Indeed, some of these areas have been willing, if not eager, vehicles through which New Age concepts have entered society.
The Enneagram’s True Essence (The Gospel of Self)
In the 1990s, the Enneagram star rose in the secular world, and several companies began using it as a personality-analysis tool. At the time, this writer found this odd since the Enneagram, technically speaking, is an occult tool. There is no objective basis for the nine numbers, their categories (such as Reformer, Helper, Achiever, Individualist, etc), or the alleged relationships between the numbers. Most importantly, the Enneagram aims to foster spiritual awakening.
The Enneagram purports to lead a person to not only self-understanding, but to an integration of all aspects of the self and, ultimately, to an awakening to the true Self. “Self” is capitalized because the original (and most contemporary) Enneagram teachers consider the Self divine. The nine numbers most likely originate in Ichazo’s belief in the “nine divine forms” of Self, a Self that ego distortions supposedly subverted. The “triads” also show how “your” number relates both positively and negatively through two other numbers. This philosophy is directly derived from the esoteric values of Sacred Geometry and from Gnostic views of the self as sacred and pure in essence.
Many believe these patterns hold divine secrets, vibrational power, or portals to higher consciousness. This ancient belief system is known as sacred geometry, and while it appears beautiful and mathematical, beneath the surface lies occult deception that opposes God’s Word.
What Is Sacred Geometry?
Sacred geometry is the idea that geometric shapes and patterns are sacred symbols that hold mystical power. Practitioners claim that by gazing upon or meditating with these designs, one can gain enlightenment, spiritual energy, or healing. They teach that these patterns are “codes of creation,” gateways to divine intelligence.
But God never said His power flows through shapes or patterns—He said His power flows through His Spirit and His Word (Zechariah 4:6, Hebrews 4:12). Any belief that attributes supernatural power to symbols, objects, or patterns outside of God Himself is idolatry. –Sacred Geometry is Panthiesm
The Enneagram Institute website openly refers to concepts from Gurdjieff and company, such as “the Work” and “inner work,” to describe mystical work on the inner self. This “Work,” as Ichazo expresses it, involves transcending one’s ego to find one’s “Essence.” This is fundamental in Gnostic-based, Eastern, and New Age views.
In this paradigm, one’s true self is divine and perfect, but through confusion from wrong beliefs and misperceptions, one has identified with the ego, which is the false self. Thus, there is the “true Self” versus the “false self,” a concept familiar to anyone who has studied Eastern religions or New Age teachings. The Enneagram Institute claims that the Enneagram will uncover the wrong view of self and lead one to realize the true Self and thus “live in Essence;” that is, to live fully in the reality of the true divine Self (the original link is no longer available due to the Enneagram Institute changing their website).
The Enneagram Institute itself admits that “the philosophy behind the Enneagram contains components from mystical Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, and ancient Greek philosophy (particularly Socrates, Plato, and the Neo-Platonists)” (https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/the-traditional-enneagram/)
The reference to Christianity undoubtedly refers to what is sometimes called “mystical” or “esoteric Christianity.” Gurdjieff and other forerunners of the New Age often claimed this type of Christianity, but it is a Gnostic (neo-Platonic) distortion of Christianity, not authentic historic Christianity. Gurdjieff, his predecessors in Theosophy,** and those who followed the various offshoots of Theosophy and related groups usually referred to themselves as Christians and believed they had discovered the “true” Christianity. Many today who follow New Age and other arcane philosophies will claim to be mystical or esoteric Christians.
The fact that the Enneagram’s origin is spiritual, that its purpose is spiritual, and that it was passed down through teachers of cryptic spiritualities should clearly indicate that its validity as any tool for understanding self or truth is questionable at best.
The Enneagram’s Penetration into the Church
In recent years, the Enneagram has crept into the Christian church. This is even more startling than seeing it used in the secular world. Not only do some Christians use and promote it, but they also defend it as a tool based on biblical principles.
One Christian, Alice Fryling, who promotes and teaches the Enneagram, admits that the Enneagram’s roots and most of its material are not Christian, yet she advises people to do a lot of reading “about the Enneagram paradigm” to discover their type. She calls the Enneagram a “very deep and complex system.” This is hardly a recommendation since this describes all occult and New Age systems. Indeed, the complexity of such spiritualities often makes them seductive. (Fryling has apparently removed her site from which I copied these quotes, and the article seems to be no longer online. However, to see some of her views on the Enneagram (Newer Site Here)
Fryling also claims that the Enneagram can “lead us to a self-awareness that brings us to our knees before the God of grace.” However, from a Christian standpoint, only God’s word gives true self-awareness—the awareness of man’s essential sin nature and need for redemption —and it convicts and shapes a Christian believer (credit for this point goes to Viola Larson of Naming the Grace Blogspot). It is God’s word and the Holy Spirit that convict, teach, and correct man through God’s truth (Psalm 119; John 16:8; James 2:9; 2 Timothy 3:16).
Fryling also refers approvingly to Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar who runs the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At his conferences, Rohr promotes not only the Enneagram, but panentheism (God is in everything, i.e., the earth as God’s “body”), Buddhism, and New Age author Marianne Williamson. Fryling’s apparent admiration of Rohr is seriously unsettling.
Another well-known Christian advocate of the Enneagram, Suzanne Stabile, aka The Enneagram Godmother, promotes Richard Rohr and has taught the Enneagram at his Conferences. She describes the Enneagram as “primarily a spiritual tool”
The Heretical Monk (Desert Fathers & Eastern Mysticism)
Fryling asserts that Christian origins of the Enneagram go back to a 4th-century “desert monk,” Evagrius Ponticus, who wrote on “life patterns” discovered by the “ancient spiritual teachers” (non-Christians) who originated the Enneagram and passed it on via “oral tradition.” However, she gives no historical references or explanation for the origin or validity of these “life patterns.” One must wonder if these so-called “life patterns” are the occult paradigms derived from Sufis or other similar groups referred to by Gurdjieff. The “ancient spiritual teachers” are pagan, not Christian.
Furthermore, Ponticus was influenced and inspired by the esoteric philosophy of Neo-Platonism, a deadly mixture of Gnosticism and Christianity. Ponticus was also a student of the heretical teachings of Origen of Alexandria. Ponticus himself was later condemned for his teachings in 400 and 533.
Ponticus held that Jesus was not the incarnate Son of God, but rather a sinless “intellect” who assumed a body to show humanity the way back to its “original union” with God. This is a Gnostic teaching. Through Ponticus, these false teachings spread to monastic leaders and theologians (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Evagrius-Ponticus;
http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/byzantine_theology_j_meyendorf.htm;
http://www.john-uebersax.com/plato/routes.htm).
It is mystifying as to why Fryling would use Ponticus as a Christian rationale for the Enneagram. It seems that referencing this monk in a positive way would be an embarrassment to any Christian, and, if anything, it gives evidence for the non-Christian nature of the Enneagram.
Sacred Geometry and Physics
The Enneagram Institute gives the nine types a Gnostic origin in the “nine divine forms,” and presumes that man’s natural essence is perfect and in union with Divinity.
Advocates of the Enneagram point to the geometric proportions in the diagram, which illustrate the relationship of the numbers to each other, as support for their view that the diagram has special meaning and purpose. This is sacred geometry, an occult belief that shapes, patterns, or certain proportions have special inner meaning. Sacred geometry is central to Feng Shui and is also found in a number of other occult arts.
Sacred Geometry most closely relates to occult divination, which in this case is interpreting hidden meaning in shapes or patterns.*** Divination is the belief that an image, number, or pattern conceals a hidden meaning or message and, if properly interpreted, provides information or guidance outside any objective support for this interpretation. The fact that recurring geometric shapes and patterns appear in the natural world reveals an Intelligence as the source of creation—the Creator God, who, by His power, created the world from nothing. Geometric patterns are evidence for God, not harbingers of hidden messages that must be divined.
No objective basis supports dividing personality types into nine types. Astrology has twelve personality distinctions. Why nine? Why not twelve, seven, or five? Re-tooling occult arts with psychology for contemporary times is an ongoing process to gain credibility (and possibly to market new products and practices). Adding a so-called psychological assessment does not validate either the tool—whether it be astrology or the Enneagram—or the psychological analysis itself. Psychology is rife with competing theories; one can hardly claim any objective basis for a particular psychological approach or analysis of personality.
The interview with Fryling cited above lists books on the Enneagram, including The Enneagram in Love and Work by Helen Palmer (pictured above as a psychic! Please note the product tags), an influential proponent of the Enneagram’s modern use. Palmer is also a psychic. On her website, she calls herself “an internationally recognized teacher of intuition and psychology”. The website states that Palmer is “a teacher of intuition, psychology and a point of contact between them, the Enneagram, a matrix of personality structures that recognizes nine observable points of view”.
Whenever someone is described as an “intuitive” or a “teacher of intuition,” you can be sure the person is a psychic (even though the person may reject this term) and is also likely a follower of New Age and/or occult philosophies.
Palmer’s online course, “Using the Enneagram In Psychological Assessment and Practice,” has been approved by the American Psychological Association, and taking the course earns graduate and doctoral students 15 hours of Continuing Education credit.
Credit is offered even though the course page openly states that one objective is for the student to “understand the spiritual significance of the Enneagram.” Though not surprising, it is a sad commentary on our society that the theories and advice of a psychic are taken seriously by psychologists. It only further confirms the infiltration of New Age philosophy into the mainstream.
Self-Absorption
As a former professional astrologer, one objection this writer has to finding “one’s type” is that our nature makes us too quick to revel in a label we can use as an identity, then continue to view ourselves through that filter. A Christian should strive to view himself through God’s word; man-based categories detract from and may blur or negate that perspective.
Focusing on the self easily leads to self-absorption. It is fine to know one’s strengths and weaknesses, but the Enneagram is not needed for this, especially because 1) there is no objective basis for the Enneagram, and 2) the Enneagram claims to offer solutions via an “awakening” to the “True Self.” Using the Enneagram to identify one’s type too easily becomes a pathway to its prescribed solution.
Indeed, the Enneagram Institute points to the Gnostic and New Age belief of “our true identity as Spirit or Essence” and acknowledges the influence of the Kabbalah (https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/the-traditional-enneagram/).
According to Palmer (the psychic), “The ultimate vocation of the Enneagram is to awaken the ‘Inner Observer’ in service to psychological wholeness, authentic spirituality and ultimately compassion for ourselves and each other” (http://www.enneagram.com/index.html).
In contrast, Christians are being made whole and complete in Christ (Philippians 1:6; Colossians 2:10; 2 Timothy 3:17) through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit
Occult Initiation
A simple investigation into the Enneagram reveals that its theories of personality are based on esoteric teachings and an occult worldview. The Enneagram’s clear origin and purpose are to initiate a Gnostic spiritual awakening to one’s alleged true divine Self, which is itself an occult initiation. This is the claim and goal of virtually all occult and New Age teachings. The purpose of such initiation is a shift in consciousness —a change in the way one views reality: God, the world, others, and self.
Occult initiation appears in many non-Christian systems, whether desired or not. In Yoga and certain forms of meditation, it is the awakening of the Kundalini, the alleged serpent-like power at the base of the spine; in Reiki, the teacher “awakens” or “activates” the purported healing energy within the student; in Eastern meditation, it involves being given a mantra (a word or phrase to be repeated in meditation); Eastern gurus give their followers shaktipat, which supposedly confers grace and arouses the Kundalini; and the altered states of Eastern and New Age based meditations will certainly lead to occult awakening.
Occult initiations also occur spontaneously—and unbidden—if the person is involved in Eastern, New Age, or occult practices. An occult initiation may culminate in meeting one’s “spirit guide,” a disembodied being who is supposedly one’s spiritual teacher. ****
The Gnostic initiation or awakening is the occult counterfeit of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and His regeneration of the believer upon faith in Christ. This regeneration, called by Jesus being “born from above” (John 3:3; see also 2 Corinthians 5:17), is supernatural, life-giving, and from God. Gnostic or occult awakening is the kiss of death. Though it appears to open a door onto a shining vista, its light is artificial, and it brings the person only into bondage. The true light is Jesus Christ: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness” (John 12:46, KJV).
“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority.” Colossians 2:8-10 (NASB)
Notes
*Shamanism is primarily healing via contact with and aid from spirit beings; incantations and rituals are used to concoct remedies. For sources on Ichazo and Metatron, see John C. Lilly and Joseph E. Hart, “The Arica Training,” in Transpersonal Psychologies, ed. Charles T. Hart (Harper & Row, 1975, p. 342), from footnote 16 in Dorothy Garrity Ranaghan,
“A Closer Look at the Enneagram,” (South Bend, IN: Greenlawn Press, 1975), p. 9.
** The Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875 by Madame Helena Blavatsky, combines Hindu-based beliefs with the idea that humanity is guided by disembodied, enlightened “Masters” and other esoteric teachings whose messages can be interpreted by only a few. Theosophy greatly influenced early thinkers of the New Age movement. For the fascinating story of Theosophy, see Peter Washington’s Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon (Schocken, 1996, paperback edition)
***Divination is also attributing hidden meaning to images, such as Tarot cards; to numbers, as in numerology, also called arithmancy; or to patterns in the natural world, as in astrology or palmistry; as well as seeking information via occult supernatural means or sources.
****The writer of this article had spirit guides, with the first introduced via a guided meditation.
Sources and links to more information
The Enneagram Video (Marcia Montenegro and Brandon Kimber)
Facebook Video Post
Excellent Christian analysis of the Enneagram
http://journal.equip.org/articles/tell-me-who-i-am-o-enneagram-
Christian response from Viola Larson to the use of the Enneagram in the church (see also Larson’s responses to comments below the article)
http://naminghisgrace.blogspot.com/2010/07/authority-of-scripture-enneagram-and.html
Christian resource with more information on Ichazo and Naranjo
https://theologythinktank.com/articles/the-enneagram-a-history-part-1
Assessment and critique from a Roman Catholic viewpoint
http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/dissent/enneagram.htm
Excellent booklet with overview of the Enneagram and why it is incompatible with Christianity:
“A Closer Look at the Enneagram,” Dorothy Garrity Ranaghan (South Bend, Indiana: Greenlawn Press, 1989).
Excellent and entertaining resource on the history, beliefs, and personalities of the influential Theosophical Society, including Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and others: Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, Peter Washington (Schocken, 1996).
Other links
OTHER ARTICLES/ TOPICS By Marcia
–God In the Mirror: Evil, Sin, and Salvation
–Occult Terms and Concepts
–Kabbalah
–The Enneagram Has No Christian Origins
–Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ
–The Enneagram: Christian Authors
–The Fictions and Facts of the Enneagram
Recommended Reading: The Bible and Silent God Silent Man
by Chris Waner, Brandon Medina
With so many eager to jump on the Spiritual Formation bandwagon, few have stopped to ask the serious questions: where did this movement come from? What are its philosophical and theological origins? Is Spiritual Formation really just discipleship, or is there something subtler and more subversive at play? Silent God, Silent Man tackles all of these issues head-on and explores the intimate relationship between Spiritual Formation and mysticism, Gnosticism, universalism, postmodernism, and radical ecumenism.
Thoroughly documented and clearly presented, it lays out in detail the warning signs both in your spiritual walk and in your local church and provides you with the tools you need to discern the truth in troubling times.
