This article first appeared in the Fall 1991 issue of the Christian Research Journal. The full text of this article in PDF format can be obtained by clicking here. For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal please click here.
In America and abroad a system of classifying personality types — the enneagram — is becoming very popular. Strictly speaking, the enneagram is a circle with nine points on it (ennea means “nine” in Greek, and gram means “line drawing”). Inside the circle two figures connect the nine points, a triangle and an oddly shaped six-pointed figure. Most people who refer to the enneagram, however, relate it to a personality typology system based on this drawing. In workshops they learn that only nine personality types exist and that every person fits into one of them. Each of these nine types represents a personality compulsion, a wrong or even “demonic” way of behaving. Once a person identifies his or her type (usually classified by a number on the enneagram), then he or she can supposedly learn how to improve, or at least avoid getting worse, spiritually.
The enneagram is particularly popular among Catholic groups, with parishes and retreat houses offering workshops across the country. Rarely are teachers or participants aware of its occultic origins, something that should be a source of real concern for the Christian church. Echoes of a false, Gnostic theology are heard in enneagram teachings, though its occult roots are masked. The lack of scientific research into the enneagram system is an additional cause for concern. This article will examine these three aspects of the enneagram: its occultic roots, its Gnostic theology, and its lack of scientific support.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND — GEORGE GURDJIEFF
The man credited with bringing the enneagram figure to the West is George Ilych Gurdjieff, a Greek-Armenian from what is now Soviet Georgia. He apparently enjoyed being shrouded in mystery, as seen in the different dates he gave for his birth: he told some disciples it was 1869. But his passport had the date December 28, 1877. He told others that an Edison phonograph was playing during his birth, confirming 1877, the year the phonograph was invented. Others said he was 77 years old when he died, placing his birth year in 1872. (Gurdjieff was known to be a liar and to make outrageous claims in order to shock disciples into spiritual change; perhaps the secret about his age belonged to the outrage.)
According to Gurdjieff’s book Meetings with Remarkable Men, a sort of autobiography, his family wanted him to study for the Orthodox priesthood, while his own interests were in studying science and technology. Meanwhile, a local priest suggested both seminary and medical school so he could heal both soul and body.1 Gurdjieff ultimately rejected all of the above because of his fascination with the occult. Astrology, mental telepathy, spiritism and table turning, fortune telling, and demon possession all held his interest as a youth.2 He would not listen to his priest’s warnings about these things, nor did he find the explanations of science very satisfying, either. Therefore, in his late teens, he set out to pursue these occult “sciences,” traveling throughout central Asia, the Mediterranean basin, Egypt, Tibet, and India. The special goal of his search was the esoteric Sarmouni school, allegedly founded in Babylon around 2500 B.C. He had read about it in an ancient Armenian book and felt drawn to find this school.
Gurdjieff supported himself throughout this spiritual venture with legitimate businesses (e.g., selling carpets) and fraudulent enterprises (e.g., coloring sparrows with aniline dye, calling them “American canaries,” and selling them at a great profit). So enterprising was he that he eventually became a millionaire.
Gurdjieff relates that while in Afghanistan, around 1897, a dervish (a type of Muslim mystic or Sufi) introduced him to an old man of the Sarmouni sect he had been searching for. As the story goes, this man arranged for an expedition to take Gurdjieff to the Sarmouni monastery in central Turkestan, where he learned their mystical dancing, psychic powers, and the enneagram. For the Sarmounis the enneagram was important as a means of divination to foretell future events as well as a tool to represent life processes, such as personal transformation.3 They also used it as a symbol of the conscious and unconscious states in human beings.4 These uses would become part of Gurdjieff’s spiritual teaching when he founded his own school for attaining enlightenment.
Upon leaving the Sarmouni monastery, Gurdjieff formed a group, the Seekers of Truth, as his companions in the quest for enlightenment and (full) consciousness.5 They reportedly traveled to Tibet to make contact with the “awakened” inner circle of humanity and to learn the wisdom of the tulkas, the supposedly reincarnated Tibetan lamas (monks).6 Later Gurdjieff snuck into Mecca and Medina, the centers of Islam, but failed to find inner truth there. Then he went to Bokhara, where the Bahaudin Naqshbandi band of Sufis lived.7
These Naqshbandi Sufis, also called the Khwajagan or “Masters of Wisdom,” claimed to be the “World Brotherhood,” composed of all nationalities and religions, teaching that “all were united by God the Truth.” Typical of central Asian belief, the Naqshbandis had a legend of an inner circle of humanity who formed a network of highly evolved people with special knowledge. These people allegedly watch over the human race and direct the course of its history. The Naqshbandis also believed in a perpetual spiritual hierarchy headed by the Kutb i Zaman or “Axis of the Age,” a personal spirit receiving direct revelations of the divine purpose. This spirit purportedly transmits these revelations to humans through other spirits called the Abdal or “Transformed Ones.”8 Gurdjieff and his followers believed that these spirits, “demiurgic essences” from a higher level than man, were responsible for maintaining planetary harmony and evolution. However, their work is not necessarily favorable to the liberation of individuals.9 Despite their potential hostility, Gurdjieff and his followers maintained contact with these spirits.
Anyone familiar with Madame Blavatsky and Theosophy will recognize similar beliefs in highly evolved “masters.”10 Perhaps she learned about the masters from traditions similar to those Gurdjieff learned in Central Asia. Remember, she had traveled through the same areas of Asia only thirty or forty years before Gurdjieff.
The Naqshbandis also taught Gnostic doctrines. For instance, they taught Gurdjieff that faith arose “from understanding” which is “the essence obtained from information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences personally experienced.” Only understanding can lead on to God and only experience and information allow one to acquire a soul.11 This approach to faith places Gurdjieff squarely in the Gnostic camp outside Christianity. For Christians, faith is a gift from God; it is available to the brilliant or the retarded, the aged or the child, independent of whether a human understands or not. Instead of human understanding leading to God, it is God who comes to humans, offering to dwell within our hearts through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
After years of travel, the millionaire Gurdjieff returned to Russia in 1912. In Moscow he established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man to train disciples to teach the world what he had learned in his travels. However, Moscow soon became an inopportune place for a millionaire, so in 1915 he returned to Armenia. The arrival of the Bolsheviks in Armenia meant the exit of a shady capitalist like Gurdjieff, who moved successively to Istanbul, Berlin, Dresden, and finally (in 1922) to Paris, where he reopened his Institute.12
In Paris (and the New York branch of the Institute, which opened in 1924), he taught “esoteric Christianity” along with a program to help students reach the highest levels of consciousness. His Sufi/Gnostic-inspired doctrine included the belief that everyone has three personal centers: the mental, located in the head (path), the emotional, located in the heart (oth), and the physical, located in the belly (kath). One prime cause for people being spiritually “asleep” or “mechanical” was the imbalance of these three centers within each person. His Sufi dances and other exercises were designed to restore balance to these three centers and move the person closer to an alert spiritual state.
Gurdjieff also taught that everyone has an essence and a personality. The essence is “the material of which the universe is made. Essence is divine — the particle of god in our subconscious called Conscience.”13 The personality is a mask of compulsive behavior which covers the essence. Though everyone is born in essence, they choose a personality ego style around the age of three or four. It is nearly impossible to return to the essence, but with slow, deliberate, conscious work one can arrive at it again.14 Note that Gurdjieff’s doctrine of “essence” places him squarely among the pantheists (who believe that everything is God). Enneagram teachers who recommend that students return to this essence rarely understand what Gurdjieff meant, but his words make it clear that he did not have a Christian sense of God. This is one reason he claimed to teach “esoteric Christianity”; orthodox Christianity proclaims we are creatures of God, not divine particles.
The enneagram figured prominently in Gurdjieff’s teaching, as seen by its frequent appearance in his disciples’ books (though not in his own). The Sufis had used the enneagram for numerological divination. (Numerology is an occult “science” which holds that the characteristics of people and virtually everything in the universe are determined by numbers, and that such characteristics can be divined if the people or things’ individual numbers can be identified [e.g., from their names or dates of birth] and the meaning of those numbers can be determined.) The Sufis searched for the mystical meanings of the decimals .3333…, .6666…, and .9999… (based on dividing the number one by three), and of the decimal .142857… (based on dividing the number one by seven and containing no multiples of three).15 The multiples of three correspond to the triangle inside the circle, and the decimal .142857 (derived by dividing seven into one and resulting in a repeating decimal that never contains three or its multiples) corresponds to the points on the circle that connect the six-sided figure.
Through these two figures inside the enneagram circle, each based on the decimals of three into one and seven into one, Gurdjieff was able to manifest the great numerological laws of the three and the seven. He taught that “all things in life work on two laws — 3 and 7.” All psychological laws fall within the law of three — as with the three personality centers, and all material things fall within the law of seven.16
Gurdjieff and his followers made tremendous claims for the enneagram as a result of these numerological beliefs. Piotr (or Peter) D. Ouspensky, a mathematician, writer, and Gurdjieff disciple, quoted Gurdjieff as saying: “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 he does not know.”17 In other words, any information that cannot be assigned its numerical value and then run through the enneagram diagram could not be understood in terms of its true cosmic significance. The process of knowing something through the enneagram meant distinguishing between the functional steps of a process, which must always follow the nine points around the circle, and the “will cycle,” which follows the inner figure along the lines between points 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, 7.18
Gurdjieff taught that the enneagram has the power to reveal the “timeless” aspect of any cosmic process, since the enneagram is a symbol of the cosmos (i.e., the universe itself is ordered according to the same numerical arrangement as the enneagram).19 Therefore Gurdjieff instructed his students in the enneagram of cooking (symbolizing the process of personal transformation), which had nine steps and six inner dynamics. John Bennett, a Gurdjieff student, came to believe that the “enneagram is more than a picture of yourself, it is yourself….the enneagram is a living diagram and…we can experience ourselves as enneagrams.” He came to this understanding when Ouspensky drew the enneagram on a blackboard and Bennett “felt myself going out of myself and entering the diagram.”20 The enneagram of personality developed from similar beliefs held by other Gurdjieff disciples.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND — OSCAR ICHAZO
Many different Gurdjieff groups formed after his death, such as Gurdjieff-Ouspensky Centres, Robert Burton’s Fellowship of Friends, the Theater of All Possibilities, and the Institute for the Development of the Harmonious Human Being. The one most influential in the spread of the enneagram of personality is the Arica training (named for a city in northern Chile), a “human potential” program founded by Oscar Ichazo. Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo, a Chilean psychologist and former Esalen instructor, are both disciples of Gurdjieff, and together (according to Naranjo) originated the enneagram of personality types. Their ideas are closely related to Gurdjieff’s thought, especially regarding the structure and use of the enneagram.
At age six Ichazo became disillusioned with the Catholic church because its teachings contradicted what he learned through occultic out-of-body experiences. He rejected what his Jesuit teachers said about heaven and hell, claiming to have been there and learned more about it than Christ and the church. He came to believe that living in one’s subjectivity was the real hell, but people could become free of it. He then studied Oriental martial arts, Zen, yoga, shamanism, hypnotism, and psychology, and experimented with Andes Indian psychedelic drugs, to learn techniques to free himself from hellish subjectivity.
An elderly man (anonymous) in La Paz, Bolivia introduced the nineteen-year old Ichazo to a group in Buenos Aires studying “esoteric consciousness-altering techniques.” Ichazo impressed the group with his ability, so they offered him the chance to travel to Hong Kong, India, and Tibet to study more martial arts, higher yogas, alchemy, the I Ching, and Confucianism.21
Along the way Ichazo came to believe, as Gurdjieff did, in a hierarchy of spirits and entities. He allegedly receives instructions from a higher entity called “Metatron, the prince of the archangels,” and the members of his group contact lower spirits through meditation and mantras. Ichazo now considers himself a “master” in contact with all the previous masters of the esoteric school, including those who have died. Students of his Arica training are helped and guided by an interior master, the Green Qu’Tub, who makes himself known when a student reaches a sufficiently high stage of development.22 Apparently it is the same as Qutb i Zaman, the spirit in charge of the hierarchy that speaks through other spirits, as taught by Gurdjieff (see above).
Somewhere in his spiritual search, Ichazo learned the enneagram. Perhaps applying Gurdjieff’s principle that nothing is known until placed into the enneagram, Ichazo developed a system of nine personality types, each corresponding to the enneagram’s nine points. The personality theory behind the types is based on Gurdjieff’s idea that everyone has turned away from the essence into which they were born and chosen an ego type. This compulsive ego turns people into machines and puts them spiritually asleep. According to Naranjo’s report, Oscar Ichazo gave these nine compulsive ego types some “dirty” names: resent, flattery, go, melancholy, stingy, coward, plan, venge, and indolent.23 Ichazo further identified Holy Ideas and Virtues which correspond to each of the nine types when a person reaches the essence level of higher consciousness. He wrote short descriptions of each type and employed animal symbols or “totems” to exemplify the qualities of each.24
Helen Palmer’s classic text on the enneagram gives a different version of the origin of the enneagram of personality, which is basically confirmed by Claudio Naranjo. Naranjo, too, had belonged to Gurdjieff groups, but found them wanting. On a visit home to Chile in the late 1960s he met Ichazo. Though not impressed with him at first, he found him a powerful person once he had meditated in his presence. He helped Ichazo develop the enneagram and disseminate it in America. Naranjo contributed to the personality descriptions and correlated the Freudian defense mechanisms to each of the nine types. Then, in 1970, he brought a group of 50 Esalen students, including John Lilly and Joseph Hart, to Arica, Chile for Ichazo’s training in the enneagram. When they returned to California Naranjo taught the enneagram to Esalen students — including Helen Palmer, Kathleen Riordan Speeth, and Fr. Robert Ochs, S.J.25 Though Naranjo claims that these people had promised not to teach others the enneagram,26 the above-named people have written and lectured about it since the early 1970s. In particular, Palmer has written one of the basic texts, and Ochs introduced it to the Catholic community.
My contact with the enneagram came through Fr. Ochs, who taught it at our Jesuit seminary. We students who learned it there also promised not to teach it to anyone for at least two years, until we could integrate it into our own lives. However, many of us, myself included, could not resist the temptation to share this esoteric teaching with others. Many of us led classes, seminars, and retreats based on the enneagram, spreading it throughout the Catholic community in America, Australia, and other countries.
Learning about the roots of the enneagram has been difficult because it has been shrouded in secrecy. Its occultic background was not taught to me, and most of the Catholic teachers know little if anything about that aspect. Once I learned about its occultic roots, however, it became clear that some of these teachings seeped through to us, despite demythologization of the system. Bad theology and poor pastoral practice have accompanied the enneagram, for which reasons I now criticize it.
CRITICISM
Nearly all the enneagram books and lecturers accept Gurdjieff’s claim that the enneagram is very ancient, originating in the Babylon or Mesopotamia of 2500 B.C. Faith in the enneagram’s antiquity is in effect a claim for its authority. However, in my studies of ancient literature and archaeology, I find no evidence for the enneagram’s existence in ancient times, neither inscriptions nor drawings. In fact, Ouspensky’s books on Gurdjieff are its earliest appearance. John Bennett says that the symbol may go back to fourteenth century Sufis, since that was the time of the discovery of zero and the decimal point.27 The enneagram’s dependence on the decimal point for its inner shape prohibits an earlier date. However, external evidence for a medieval date is lacking; there is merely the possibility that it has mathematical roots back then.
After taking an enneagram course, I searched for more information about the enneagram of personality types. While Ouspensky and other Gurdjieff disciples described cosmic interpretations of the enneagram, or used it to describe the process of cooking or scientific experiments, none of them described nine personality types. Only after hearing Claudio Naranjo’s lecture28 and reading Palmer’s book did I learn that Oscar Ichazo invented the enneagram of personality types in the 1960s.
Significantly, Ichazo’s enneagram employs the numerological background of the Sufi decimal point symbolism in understanding personality dynamics. For instance, according to the system, the number one gets worse by following the direction of the arrow on the line connected to type four; four gets worse by becoming like a two, and so forth. People improve by moving in the direction opposite the arrows; that is, a one gets better by becoming like a seven, a seven should become like a five, and so on. Remember that this inner dynamic of the six-point figure and of the triangle is based on the numerology of dividing seven into one or three into one, a dynamic rooted in occultism and divination. This occultic dynamic was Ichazo’s a priori structure into which he conformed the nine personality types and their inner principles of spiritual improvement or regression. Many people accept this and adjust their spiritual and psychological life to these principles.
Even if one demythologizes the occultism, or assumes good will among those who are ignorant of the occultic roots, one must nonetheless demand an examination of this system by psychologists and behavioral scientists. What is the evidence that a resentful perfectionist (one) should seek the virtue of the happy-go-lucky planner (seven)? Why should the vengeful, power-hungry person (eight) become a helper (two) rather than seek other virtues? Besides faith in the antiquity of the system, which it does not possess, how can anyone know the best virtues to pursue for any individual type? No research has been done in this regard, yet enneagram experts suggest specific spiritual goals based on this system to their students in parishes and retreat houses. The lack of scientific study should set off alarms for anyone interested in this approach to spiritual growth.
A second area to be questioned and tested is the existence of the nine personality types. Nine is the a priori number suggested to Ichazo and Naranjo by the occultic enneagram figure. What psychological proof do they have that only nine basic types exist? And what is the evidence that these are in fact the correct nine? This has not been researched, either.
A third area needing research is the theory of personality structure taught by enneagram experts. Following Gurdjieff, they assume everyone was born in their essence but chose an ego fixation around age three or four. Children choose these egos as a defense against their parents’ egos, but get trapped by their own defense mechanisms.
The experts also teach Gurdjieff’s theory that three centers of consciousness — mind (path), heart (oth), and belly or instinct (kath) — is true. Some associate the head center with types 5, 6, and 7; the feeling center with types 2, 3, and 4; and the belly with types 8 and 9.29 They teach Gurdjieff’s doctrine that human personality problems derive from the imbalance of these three personality centers. One goal of enneagram therapy is restoration of the interdependence of the three centers.30 But where is the evidence for the existence of such centers? Can psychologists confirm their existence, describe their imbalance, or test therapies that restore their balance? The enneagram industry, as Naranjo now calls it, tries to awaken these centers through “spiritual exercises” derived from yoga, zen, and Sufi practices, much the same way that kundalini yoga attempts to awaken psychic energy in the seven “chakras” of that school of yoga — a practice that is considered dangerous even by its own adherents. Why are the enneagram teachers doing this, and what is their warrant except the practices of occultists like Gurdjieff and his followers?
Theological Problems with the Enneagram Doctrine
Besides these scientific and psychological problems with the enneagram, Christians have many theological difficulties with it. The frequent use of such occult practices as divination and spiritism in Gurdjieff and Ichazo immediately throws up a red flag. In Deuteronomy 18:9-15 and many other Scripture passages, God our Lord forbids such pursuits. Most of the “experts” I know, however, avoid the occult or know nothing about its presence in the enneagram’s background. Despite this avoidance or ignorance, theological problems appear in enneagram workshops across the country.
Some enneagram experts claim that original sin begins when small children choose their ego type or fixation. This is utter nonsense to the Christian. Original sin, by its nature, is not some wrong that a person commits. Rather, because of the Fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve (in trying to “become like gods” by grasping for forbidden knowledge about good and bad — Gen. 3:5), all humans inherit original sin. Due to the fallenness of human nature, people are prone to commit actual sins, and frequently do so. Identifying a three- or four-year old child’s choice of compulsion with original sin is a biblically false doctrine.
Another theological error follows from this one, namely, humans can undo the effects of this so-called original sin of ego fixation by means of Gurdjieff’s, Ichazo’s, or someone else’s spiritual “work.” Certainly, people can get help from others to overcome psychological problems, and they should seek the wisdom and counsel of solid, Christian psychologists when they need that type of help. However, such “work” can never be the removal of original sin, or any other sin, for that matter. Only the saving death on the Cross of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, can remove our sin. This is a free gift of God’s grace which no human can earn or deserve. We accept this grace from the merciful God and return gratitude to Him, which is itself His gift to us. Any removal of the effects of sin — the psychological residue or ramifications of sin — may be alleviated by psychological help along with other aids, such as charity to the poor, proclaiming the Gospel, and so forth.
Further, the prophet Isaiah wrote that wisdom, understanding, and counsel are gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isa. 11:2), so we should seek psychological help from Christians blessed by these gifts. The Christian should know and proclaim to the world that even psychological techniques require God’s grace if they are to be effective in removing the effects of our sin. Both the forgiveness of our sins and the removal of their effects demand God’s unearned grace in our lives.
Another theological error is the claim that Jesus our Lord possesses the virtues of all nine types within Himself.31 Only a contrived exegesis (interpretation) of the Gospels permits this silly idea. Assessing someone’s personality is very difficult, even when that person speaks directly to the therapist or interviewer. Determining our blessed Lord’s personality type from the Gospels is an abuse both of Scripture and therapeutic technique. Jesus did not grant any interviews for a psychological profile. Nor did He personally compose the texts of the Gospels. How can anyone claim to know His ego type from these texts?
Furthermore, the evangelists did not intend to give us a psychological profile of Jesus; they intended to proclaim the gospel that God became flesh, died on a cross, rose from the dead, and thereby redeemed the world. The evangelists’ purpose was to summon the readers and hearers of the Gospels to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, not to analyze the Lord! These claims are absurd and should be rejected outright.
Naranjo taught that the Holy Idea or Virtue of each type is one of the nine faces of God; the compulsive aspects of each type turns the face of God upside-down and becomes a demon. The purpose of the “work” is to free oneself from the demons. Perhaps Naranjo intended this merely as a figure of speech, but it has become commonplace within the enneagram industry. Any Christian who hears it should recognize three errors here.
First, God does not have nine faces. Jesus our Lord revealed that there are three coequal persons in the one God, forming what the church has long called the Trinity. However, these three persons are neither multiplying nor subdividing into nine faces. That is a silly way to speak, ungrounded in divine revelation or common sense.
Second, no human can turn the face of God upside-down, right-side up, or any other way. God is our uncreated Sovereign, unmoved by created beings in any direction. Claiming that the upside-down face of God is a demon moves beyond absurdity to blasphemy. God, who is all-good and all-loving, cannot be remolded into a demon. No one should speak that way.
Third, as is true of sin, so also with demons: we humans cannot free ourselves from the demons. God delivers us from them. No technique or meditation delivers us from the power of evil or the elemental spirits. Jesus our Savior saves us from these evils.The enneagram practitioners, and anyone tempted to take their courses, must become aware that their doctrine must conform to Scripture and (at least in the view of the Catholic, but also to a lesser extent for many Protestants) church teaching. Wherever their teaching does not conform to God’s revelation, they must adapt themselves to God. No matter how esoteric the Sufi tradition or what the claim may be, they will have to account to God for spreading false doctrine in the church of Christ.
Practical Problems with the Enneagram Industry
Books and teachers frequently claim that the enneagram helps everyone to categorize not only themselves but other people around them. In its framework experts classify different types of people, appreciate how they differ from us, and learn how to get along better with dissimilar types. The teachers usually take public figures as examples of the nine types. Palmer names groups of “famous” people belonging to each type. For instance, good Protestants such as Martin Luther and Jerry Falwell are “ones,” as are nonbelievers such as George B. Shaw and Ralph Waldo Emerson.32 The enneagram experts do not agree, however, on their categorization of these characters. Some consider Hitler an “eight,” but Palmer makes him a “six.” Similar contradictions exist among the books and speakers.
A basic problem is that these famous people never had the privilege of making the enneagram workshop, so they could not type themselves. Therefore, when the experts categorize and countertype famous people, their example teaches the students to categorize the people they live with. Once one feels like an enneagram expert, one can classify friends, spouse, or children. The expert may feel privy to secret knowledge granting the power to categorize others.
The abuse that follows from this practice is the trivialization of relationships. People believe they have more insight into someone else than that person has: the inner dynamics of the compulsions and the expected behaviors are known to the enneagram expert better than to the person under consideration. This opens some people to the abuse of relating to others on the basis of their enneagram expectations rather than what the people actually choose to reveal about themselves. This is not healthy but potentially abusive. I have done it and have seen others do it. Unleashing this on parish groups opens the way to serious problems in the time between the end of the workshop and the cooling down of the enneagram fad.
I do not have much respect for the enneagram industry at this point. Its occultic roots have not been thoroughly purged (if they can be), and it has opened itself to theological error and social and psychological misuse. The lack of scientific investigation means there are no controls to determine who actually is an expert, nor which advice is helpful or detrimental, nor whether the goals of the enneagram system are sound.
If anything of psychological value can be redeemed from the enneagram, its practitioners must thoroughly purge the system of unchristian elements. If any true insights within the system are to be useful, it requires psychological testing and control. Other-wise counselors will roam through the church, subtly taking people away from Christ their Lord and perhaps doing damage to their psyches. I recommend avoidance of the enneagram industry until the day it can be made completely compatible with Christian faith and sound scientific methodology, if indeed that is possible.
Fr. Mitchell Pacwa, S.J., was a professor of Scripture and Hebrew at Loyola University of Chicago when this written. His book on the New Age movement, Catholics and the New Age: How Good People are Being Drawn in Jungian psychology, the Enneagram, and the Age of Aquarius, included two chapters on the enneagram and was published in 1992.
NOTES
1 Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men, 53-54.
2 Ibid., 37, 59-60, 62-72, 79-81, and psychic pet dog, 135.
3 Bennett, 3-4.
4 Gurdjieff, 148-65; Speeth and Friedlander, 113, 116.
5 Gurdjieff, 164-65.
6 Speeth and Friedlander, 81-82.
7 Gurdjieff, 227; Speeth and Friedlander, 93.
8 Speeth and Friedlander, 35-36.
9 Bennett, 75, 79, 83.
10 See Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1985), chapter eight, “The Theosophical Society.”
11 Gurdjieff, 227-43.
12 Ibid., 270-85.
13 Anderson, 64.
14 Ibid., 63.
15 Riordan, 293; Bennett, 2-3.
16 Anderson, 71-72.
17 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 294.
18 Bennett, 31.
19 Ibid., 32, 47.
20 Ibid., 32.
21 Keen, 64.
22 Lilly and Hart, 341.
23 Naranjo.
24 Palmer, 46-47.
25 Ibid.; see also Naranjo.
26 Naranjo.
27 Bennett, 31.
28 Naranjo.
29 Beesing, Nogosek, and O’Leary, 144-47.
30 Ibid., 141-43.
31 Ibid., 49-98.
32 Palmer, 94
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