The Enneagram

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The Fourth Way

The Fourth Way

Original Teaching

The Enneagram

Enneagram
Independent of Other Lines
Esoteric Christianity
The Last Esoteric Message

ne of the principal symbols of The Fourth Way is a circle whose

circumference is divided into nine parts that are joined within

the circle to a triangle and an irregular six-sided figure, the

enneagram.
According to Gurdjieff, the enneagram is "the fundamental hieroglyph
of a universal language." Gurdjieff's use of the word hieroglyph, of course,

points to Egypt. In this context, it is interesting to consider the nine deities

established at Heliopolis in the Early Dynastic Period as part of the
cosmogonic or creation myths. These cosmogonic tenets are given in the Pyramid Texts of the Old
Kingdom.
The frontispiece of the Arithmologia by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher(1601
1680), published in 1665, shows a figure not identical but somewhat similar to
the enneagram. Kircher was a man of the Renaissance in pursuit of origins. His
studies in magnetics, acoustics and medicine led him to attempt to decode
Egyptian hieroglyphics. According to one source, Kircher regarded the ancient
Egyptian religion "as the source not only of Greek and Roman religion but of the
beliefs of the later Hebrews, Chaldaeans and even the inhabitants of India,
China, Japan and the Americas, colonized in turn by Ham's progeny. Therefore,
he believed that by studying these later and better recorded beliefs one could
extrapolate the earliest religion of mankind, that of ancient Egypt."
Like The Fourth Way itself, the enneagram has not been known up to the present time. "The
enneagram," said Gurdjieff, "has for a very long time been preserved in secret and if it now is, so to
speak, made available to all, it is only in an incomplete and theoretical form." This, and the fact that it is
a part of a teaching, has not deterred those who have sought to market the enneagram, divested of its
deeper meaning and application, as a psychological tool. See William Patrick Patterson's Taking With the
Left Hand.

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12/22/2009