Talk:Fourth Way enneagram

Here we are
OK, the split was reasonable; although few people, I'm sure, know of any enneagram other than the fourth way enneagram, I really wonder if the geometric enneagram needs a separate article. It is not reasonable to merge the present article with "enneagram of personality" as has apparently been suggested. The enneagram is an important symbol and tool of a school of thought which has been an important intellectual influence in the 20th century. The "personality enneagram" is one fashionable and disputed application of it. Some readers regard the whole subject as "occult nonsense" of course, that is a POV among others. I'm not sure what the tags about citations are on about. There is a large part of the article explicating the enneagram without detailed citation, it is all drawn from Ouspensky"s In Search of the Miraculous referred to in text. Of course page numbers should be supplied; the parts I wrote are deficient in that too. I will remove the uncited reference to Mouravieff, Mouravieff does refer to the enneagram but is of very doubtful relevance. The uncited refrence has been sitting there for months. And what is wrong with the tone? Is the problem that the article doesn't call the subject of the article "occult nonsense"? What "tone" is expected for articles on the Christian superstition? Jeremy (talk) 10:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
 * No, we're not supposed to call anything occult nonsense. In its current version, however, this article seems to assume that the enneagram hypotheses are true, which is also "a POV among others." - ∅  ( ∅ ), 12:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Kewl. I've read the application section through and can't find what the tone problem is. I've added an intext source note but even as the matter stood the section began "according to Gurdjieff" and so far as I can see doesn't deviate from that attitude or tone. Where does it? Can you quote something objectionable? The section simply explicates the concept. If every sentence is meant to begin "none of this is scientifically proven but the idea is" then we can apply the same principle to other sites. I understand the concern about promotion, and have seen plenty of articles on wikipedia which justify it, but I can't see that this is one of them. Also the referencing tag is mispalced. The tag the article needs is the one calling for page numbers, that would be a fair cop.

This is not to say that the article as it stands has no problems apart from page numbers. The subject of the enneagram is a huge one, the difficulty from the wikipedia point of view may be that a satisfactory article would be too long. The problem will probably have to be covered by more complete references....the "enneagram of essence types" as developed by Collins-lineage Fourth way should be mentioned for example; and the work done on the enneagram by Bennet-lineage people. Jeremy (talk) 08:32, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I've replaced the tone tag with and  with . -  ∅  ( ∅ ), 16:22, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

OK......now I wonder if the primary sources tag is appropriate? It surely approriately refers to an article about a person of a group of people, and article on a Fourth Way group for example could not rely on that groups publications for an account of its doings......but for an account of the concepts of that group waht else should one rely on? There are different Fourth Way groups which have different ways of using the enneagram of course. More of them should be cited in the article. But, look, consider an article on transactional analysis for example. I'll have a look at the article on transactional analysis, just a shot in the dark but I suspect that when the article discusses the meaning of the Parent and Child psychological levels in transactional analysis it uses as references.....writings from within transactional analysis! The only other place likley to describe the concepts would be another encyclopedia. Presumably wikipedia is not meant to just copy from other encyclopedias. Jeremy (talk) 09:03, 21 January 2008 (UTC) Yeah as I thought. The TA page expounds TA theories at length and with little detailed referencing using Ta materials as source. Fair enough, and also fair enough for the Fourth Way use of the enneagram. It is going to have to rely primarily on Fourth way sources.....or on another encyclopedia! An online variation of the the material in ISOTM is at. Incidentally Iwas wrong to say that the enneagram was first published (in hard copy) in 1947, it was first published in a flyer in 1927 or thereabouts. Jeremy (talk) 09:21, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think a primary source would be something by Gurdjieff on this topic. Perhaps something like the lecture from Ouspensky's book, it is purportedly the text of Gurdjieff's lecture, so could serve as primary materials for the article. The citation would then be something like: The Enneagram, A Lecture by G.I. Gurdjieff, from Chapter 14 of In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky. There is a version of the text of this lecture here: http://www.endlesssearch.co.uk/philo_enneagramtalk.htm, which could be added to external links.Sreed888 (talk) 04:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

A Warning is Needed
What most disturbs me about articles like this is the lack of any note pointing out that it has no validity according to science. A naive reader might easily confuse the terminology and pseudo-scientific discussion with an area of knowledge that is widely held to be true by recognized academics.

While those given to believing in this kind of thing no doubt regard their own point of view as being as valid as any other position, such belief does not make it so. It's easy to dress up ANY invented mumbo-jumbo in an impressive jargon and make false claims of validity, but without applying any method of distinguishing the valid from the spurious all opinions stand as equal, which they are not. I think the article really must reflect this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.4.38.225 (talk) 09:26, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

There are several things here....firstly, the least important but as a point of information, there were (and I suppose are) plenty of qualified scientists of one discipline or another around the Gurdjieff work; (Robert de Ropp as I recall was a biochemist)....they seemed to think that there was more than mumbo-jumbo to Gurdjieff's spiritual physiology. But of course it would be easy to find plenty of academic scientists to back up the view of "unsigned"; likewise concerning Chinese medicine, Transactional Analysis, hypnotherapy etc. The are physicists who regard the "Anthropic Principle" as mumbo-jumbo ....and those who don't. An idea can be undeveloped and not suitable for scientific testing (either intrinisically or "not yet") without being mumbo-jumbo. Read the cosmology articles in New Scientist and you'll see what I mean. If you read the appropriate pages in ISOTM, unsigned, then you will see that Gurdjieff appeared to be aware of neurotransmitters, clearly included in his "hydrogen 48", well before their discovery by Western science. This could be due to a number of things including coincidence, of course, but it is easy to see why some academic scientists have been intrigued with the system.

Which brings us to the second and more important point which is that there is no single "Church of Science" which can issue excommunications. To think that there is, is a characteristic of the pseudo-religion sometimes called "scientism" There is no such thing as having "no validity according to science", unsigned. You do have to do better than that. Noam Chomsky, to drop a famous name, wrote a book partly dedicated to arguing that there are an infinity of true theories which ar eintrinsically beyond the scope of the human mind. Just as there are impossible languages, according to Chomsky, so there are impossible theories; the iimpossibility is biologically determined by the limits of the human mental system and has nothing to do with their truth of falsehood. (Problems of Knowledge and Freedom I think, worth a read. The true nature of light, and the true nature of consciousness would be examples of the limits). Gurdjieff's Food Diagram uses another model to make the same point. "Scientism" by contrast makes the unproven and highly unscientific claim that if it is not provable by the "scientific method" (usually undefined) then it isn't true. So how do you approach matters beyond the scope of the currently favoured "scientific method"? Once could ingnore them of course, but that does not saisfy us all.

Finally, and all I think that is really important here, is that the article does in fact make abundantly clear that the Gurdjieff's spiritual physiology is a part of his system and does not claim academic imprimatur. Jeremy (talk) 04:17, 17 August 2008 (UTC)Jeremy (talk) 04:20, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * untrue. the scientific method is quite well and rigorously defined. Furthermore, you seem to have a complete misunderstanding of how the scientific methods is applied - in most cases it is not used to prove at all, but rather disprove. More accurate would be: if is is disprovable by the scientific method, it is untrue. If it cannot be disproven by scientific method, one must not assume it is false until proven otherwise. If something can be neither proven nor disproven via scientific method, "it" must make no predictions and is therefore scientifically irrelevant. 50.133.160.189 (talk) 10:11, 4 February 2013 (UTC)


 * What you are describing is Popperian falsificationism, one popular theory of scientific method, not the only one. and you wrongly describe it, getting the direction of inference wwrong. If it makes no testable predictions then it is outside the the scope of falsificationsit method. (A classic example was the heliocentric versus geocentric method, before the introduction of the telescope. There were some scientists who got it right nevertheless) In any case, here we are just describing what was held by Gurdjieff and friends, people will have different attitudes to its truth interest of usefulness, and that's OK ¬¬¬¬

'I think the nature of the dispute here is that, to be blunt, the article is using a lot of terminology that has specific dictionary definitions in a fashion more coherent with the internal jargon of the Fourth Way than the definition with which the remainder of humanity is familiar and in which they operate. The use of 'food', to pick one out at random; it's a remarkably wide word used to refer to a lot of things, but it has a basic technical definition (calories etc) and so does 'air' (a specific mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and trace gases). Combining/mixing/whatever 'food' and 'air' is no more magical than opening up a tin of beans. This is far from the most egregious use of actual scientific terminology and logic to give an air of coherence unwarranted in evidence; it's like deciding that to be a horse something has to spiritually resemble the Horsehead Nebula, and within a paragraph you're discussing whether Barack Obama being a horse is going to hurt him in the polls. My private theory is that you're never going to make hypothesizing on the American people's willingness to elect a nebula particularly sensible, but you can at least make it so that you're not doing that so directly as to make it obvious. 70.173.195.241 (talk) 09:56, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

"Food" and "air" are ordinary english langauge words and are not scientific or technical vocabulary, I have worked worked in academic semantics at post-graduate level and it is jsut nonsense to say that 'calories' etc is aprt of the definition of the ordinary langauge word "food". Gurdjieff's use of "oxygen" etc (which he took from Blavatsky as Webb notes) is another matter, but I doubt that even a single solitary reader ever confused his term "oxygen" with the the element of the same name. (It is apparently the alchmeists "Water"). For (1) the reasons given above and (2) because Webb is referenced, I think the "primary sources" note is inappropriate and if no cogent arguments soon appear I will remove it. The page references tag is fair enough, I'll see to it when I have time. Jeremy (talk) 06:54, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

origin
This claim, entered by User:Karnak666, seems fictional: "Pythagoras, 540 B.C., used the enneagram as his spiritual signature. According to his writings, he learned of the enneagram in the Egyptian Temple of the Goddess Isis located in what was called Heliopolis. However, he was taught that the origins of the enneagram dated back another 10,000 years – from his time – to a civilization which was much more advanced than ours today. "

Pythagoras' signature is otherwise depicted as a pentagram. See for example. Gabriel Kielland (talk) 09:15, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It definitely looked fictional to me. Also, Karnak666's recent edit to " it has been proposed that it may derive from, or be cognate to, the Jewish Tree of Life (Kabbalah)" where he removed the word Jewish is pretty irritating, since edit is sourced -- it's a bit like when editors change a quote, if you change something that is already sourced you are likely to change it to something the source doesn't say. Doug Weller (talk) 09:44, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * What looks fictional to you doesn't mean it is actually 'fictional'.


 * Among the highlights for many of the participants was a system of teachings based on the ancient symbol of the Enneagram. The Enneagram symbol has roots in antiquity and can be traced back at least as far as the works of Pythagoras. 2


 * Ichazo has called the Enneagram the "Ninth Seal of Pythagoras," see Goldberg, 1993.


 * Plato taught that this material world was a reflection of a spiritual world; he also quoted Pythagoras as saying, “All the world can be explained by the numbers one through nine.” The Stoics taught moderation and fulfillment through moral living.


 * The history and transmission of the Enneagram are mysterious and complicated affairs, although they become clearer if we distinguish between the Enneagram symbol and the descriptions of the nine types which are gaining such worldwide attention. The symbol (the circle with the inner triangle and hexagon) is ancient, dating back to Pythagoras or even earlier


 * The sources of the Enneagram are indeterminate and it is more than probable that it evoluted during the last years as well as over the entire history. The sources go back to Pythagoras and it is presumed that he found the knowledge in Egypt. All written versions of esoteric knowledge capable of stating the sources are unknown before 1920, Guerdjieff, Ouspensky, Ichazo, etc.

Karnak666 (talk) 11:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Please don't use block quotes on the talk page unless your quotes are at least 4 lines. And it doesn't matter if someone called something the 9th seal of Pythagoras.  And although it doesn't matter in terms of this article, I'd love to see the original  of the alleged quote  by Plato from Pythagoras 'All the world can be explained by the numbers one through nine'.  So far it looks as though this is something Hurley & Donson made up, which would explain why they didn't actually give a reference for it. And if that is made up, there is no reason to think the rest isn't.
 * None of the citations above are from 'reliable sources' in Wikipedia terms. Personal websites can't normally be used. Enneagram sites aren't a reliable source for anything but what they believe, certainly not for anything historical. If there are no Classical written sources, there are no Classical written sources and modern claims for 'lost knowledge' or whatever can't be used. Doug Weller (talk) 11:37, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Gurdijeff and the sufis are already in the article. Ichazo is rightfully in the article Enneagram of Personality and not here. The Desert Elders origin could perhaps be added. So far the link leads to an interpretation of Robin Amis' book of 1995 which includes several references to Ouspensky. Is there anything more substantial? Gabriel Kielland (talk) 12:23, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Earliest pubslished enneagram
I believe the earliest published fourth way enneagram is this one reproduced here: ; made by de Salzmann as promotional material for Gurdjieff's Institute in 1923. It probably should be reproduced in this article for its historical importance. Presumably it comes under the fair use provisions. Is it also public domain for wikipedia purposes? DeSalzmann died before 1950, publication was in France. Jeremy (talk) 04:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC) It used to be there I will find it again.Jeremy (talk) 10:31, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

7/7
7/7 is 1 and certainly not 0.9999..., which is not even a fractional number but a real number. Maths is still maths ain't it, even in this new age context? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.239.133.167 (talk) 16:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The answer to your objection is already linked within the article. Esoteric indeed. Gabriel Kielland (talk) 21:23, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a minute to clear this up, even though the section objected to has been removed it may well be added back. Yes, 0.99999... repeating is identical to both 7/7 and 1. 7/7 is in fact 0.9999... repeating and also one; and the maths is quite elementary. Here is a quick proof to put this subject to rest forever.

Let us use "N" to represent 0.9999...repeating . Therefore:

10N=9.99999.....repeating. When one subtracts 0.99999... repeating from both sides of the equation one sees that therefore:

9N=9 When one divide both sides of the equation by 9 one sees that therefore:

N=1. As N=0.9999.... repeating, therefore:

0.99999....repeating = 1.

Or alternatively one might consider that 1/3=0.33333....repeating, and one could multiply both sides by three. Or....

Well, enough said. Jeremy (talk) 00:15, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Wow
This article, as it is, is really out there, it needs a lot of work. I've decided to take it under my wing, as it were, and try and clean it up. The tags are for my reference as I do this. Other people contributing is certainly welcome! Irbisgreif (talk) 16:10, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

17 August 2009
Regarding the mass of cleanup tags and proposed rewrite of Enneagram by Irbisgreif:

NB: The Enneagram article started off about Gurdjieff and others' use of what they called the enneagram; then someone added the pseudo-maths; and finally someone decided to move the original material to Fourth Way Enneagram and Enneagram of Personality. Hence, we're left with just the geometry, which is a repeat of the material in Nonagon.

Why not ditch the geometry material at Enneagram (some of which is in nonagon anyhow) and replace it with Fourth Way Enneagram, with a redirect to Enneagram from that article, and a link to Nonagon? May need to add some of the material to Nonagon.  Esowteric + Talk  19:17, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

18 August 2009
Irbisgreif, I notice that you've taken out all the material explaining the application of the enneagram in the Fourth Way (see edit diff). Yes, there were no citations, but I think you are wrong to dismiss beliefs held in a school of mysticism as what you choose to label "pseudoscience". If citations can be found, then this material deserves just as much right to exist here as many other beliefs that others hold, one being the belief that this is pseudoscience.  Esowteric + Talk  07:20, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * My main complaint was that it was being presented as some kind of fact. If you can find citations, feel free to work the information back in, as appropriate. But I think it's best to keep it presented as "X thinks Y" or "The X group views Y as Z", rather than the tone it previously had. Irbisgreif (talk) 12:10, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't Ibsgrief. What you deleted was material summarized from Ouspensky's book which is the main source (but not the earliest published source) and clearly labelled as such. The old article obviously needed work, but you have not improved it rather you have made it less informative for unclear reasons. Presumably someone who looks this article up wants to find out how someone affiliated with the Fourth Way regards the enneagram. Before for all the articles flaws the article was moderately useful for that purpose (ie the purpose of an encylopedia) now it isn't. I'm reverting it. Jeremy (talk) 11:28, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup of cleanup tags
✅ Since the article has been cut back to a stub, I've deleted some of your many cleanup tags, Irbisgreif, so that we can see the wood for the trees.  Esowteric + Talk  11:53, 20 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I've got to admit, unlike the personality page, where I'm seeking the aid of a psychologist, I really don't know what to do here to find better secondary resources. Irbisgreif (talk) 12:27, 20 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, I know what you mean and personally I don't at all fancy tackling Gurdjieff's stuff. I first came across it around 30 years ago and didn't really enjoy wading through the material. It really requires someone who's familiar with and into the Fourth Way and in possession of the books. Snippet view in google books is no good for referencing. Maybe Jayen466 (a veteran III editor) might like a look sometime, but he's usually very busy on other articles.  Esowteric + Talk  12:38, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there's much more I can do for this article. Irbisgreif (talk) 22:22, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Shortened Restoration of Explanation
With I hope Objectionable POV removed, (page numbers still needed but material accurately sourced)Jeremy (talk) 05:23, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

As you will see I haven't literally reverted the previous material but am rewriting it. Page citations will come in time, in the meantime please note that the online citation I gave above. Not by any means finished. Jeremy (talk) 03:14, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Overstone cycle
The mention of the Overstone cycle seems irrelevant. -   Metalello    talk 06:17, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * If relevant ti needs more detail! 110.143.186.35 (talk) 03:22, 17 June 2013 (UTC)


 * ""Another completely unrelated system, known as the "Overstone Cycle", was devised by a nineteenth century banker, Lord Overstone, to describe events on the financial market: starting with "quiescence" it then moves on to "improvement", then through "confidence", "prosperity", "excitement", "over-trading", "convulsion", "pressure" and "stagnation" until it ends again in "quiescence". "....I've put this in talk as as it stands I don't think it it is relevant to article and if it was made relevant probably OR Jeremy (talk) 20:57, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Background in Gurdjieff's Cosmology
I'm beginning to add a new section to the page but can't finish it now. So far I've got: "The enneagram according to Gurdjieff shows the "Law of Seven" and the "Law of Three" united and so some explanation of these laws is necessary here.

The Law of Seven or law of octaves, according to which phenomena evolves in seven steps; and the Law of Three, according to which phenomena are produced by three forces, are presented by Gurdjieff as global laws appearing on all scales and essential to his cosmology. This cosmology offers an alternative view of how the world operates, said to derive from alchemy and more ancient sources, and to complement or complete modern experimental science rather than to contradict it. According to this cosmology everything is material, including consciousness and spirit, and all matter can be assigned a "density", consciousness and spirit for example having lower "densities" than flesh."(end so far)

I'll go on to explain how the octave works and how it is applied to the enneagram with the "shock in the wrong place" etc. Also I'll note that the musical scale Gurdjieff is quoted as using in the so-called Ptolemy's intense diatonic scale associated with Zarlino rather than the usual modern scale. And also a brief exposition of the law of three. Jeremy (talk) 05:19, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I've made a start, obviously need to put in more citations, but I have them. Also need to include the Salzman enneagram, the earliest actually published.110.143.186.35 (talk) 03:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC) Well it has been a while but i have got back to it and will work on this article putting in citations and no doubt rewriting and adding refeences here and there. I've become very rusty on eikiepdai references so i hope people will bear with me a bit as I get into the swim of it. Jeremy (talk) 05:04, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

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Does the Enneagram really have Sufi antecedents?
When this article mentions claims that Idries Shah has suggested Sufi antecedents to the Enneagram, it could mention that the theory that the Enneagram has Sufi antecedents has been hotly contested. Vorbee (talk) 17:10, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Fair enough if it is thought necessary. Everything about the origins of the enneagram is contested though. It seems to me that that is clear from the articleJeremy (talk) 12:12, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Authorship
The article states that "the Fourth Way enneagram is a figure published in 1949 in In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky" which suggests that Ouspensky is the creator of the enneagram at least in the visual form presented in the article. However I think it is clear that Gurdjieff himself used it in his works. This should be reflected in the article's introduction. --Jazzman (talk) 13:12, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Yeah. The earliest publication available seems to be the drawing by de Salzman in I think 1923 which I think was published in the _Herald of the Coming Good_. Ouspensky seems to be describing this drawing when he describes a flyer used for Gurdjieff's Instistitute in from memory 1919 in Tiflis. This should be in the intro sure, Im the editor "JeremY" who appears elsewhere on this page and I haven't been editing for some while. I think the page makes reasonably clear that Ouspensky wasn't the author of the design. 110.143.186.35 (talk) 05:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

unnoticed promotional insert?
user Pondoriro added a bit in "Applications in Human Typology" from, judging from his account, seems to be a link to his personal promotional materials following the release of his book. I imagine this should be removed… as far as I have seen in the Gurdjieff work it is not like he is a prominent figure or this is an externally sourced as relevant work in the Gurdjieff "canon" such as it is

Rianinspace (talk) 11:56, 29 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing that out; I've removed it. Some1 (talk) 22:37, 29 September 2022 (UTC)