The Fascinating Origins of the Enneagram

One Christmas several years ago someone on my Christmas list requested the book The Sacred Enneagram as a gift. I bought it and flipped through it and noticed the section entitled, The Contested History of the Enneagram.  Contested?  As in Questioned?  Challenged?  Disputed?  Yep. This piqued my curiosity, so I began researching the contested history, and boy did I find a lot that the author of the book, Christopher Heuertz, left out!  

The enneagram is supposed to be from ancient times, but it is well documented that the enneagram first came into being from George Gurdjieff, an esoteric teacher. Scholars have verified this. And poor George died on  October 29, 1949. That means that the enneagram isn’t "ancient!"  In fact, for decades there weren't even any words attached to the enneagram design. George wrote that it was a diagram of “cosmic reality” – that you could see the universe in it because it had mystical meanings.  It had nothing to do with personality tests or types!

The second person to promote the enneagram was George's mentee, P.D. Ouspensky.   Ouspensky wrote about George Gurdjieff’s ideas (which he called The Fourth Way) and these beliefs influenced the New Age movement.  Since only the design existed, without words, P.D. said that he and George made up meanings to go with the design during dinner parties, in order to entertain people.

Next, Oscar Ichazo promoted the design.  In Heuertz's book The Sacred Enneagram he said that Ichazo had a religious school.  However, people who have emerged out of the New Age movement have reported that Ichazo’s school in Arica, Chile was an Occult school! Ichazo also did not use the enneagram for personality typecasting, but he did claim contact with two spirits who gave him ideas about it and how to use it.

Then came Claudio Naranjo, a New Age pyschiatrist who was introduced to the enneagram from the Occult school in Chile. Claudio Naranjo is the one who added in the personality types.  He was interviewed in 2010, and on video he admits that he made up the personality types on the enneagram design!  Also on tape he also admits that he and Ichazo made up the idea that it was ancient!  

Even more amazing, on this video he says that the bulk of his work on writing down the personality types mainly came from AUTOMATIC WRITING, which is channeling a spirit through writing, and it is believed that these spirits are fallen angels. Naranjo holds to a “new age” religious view.   (Watch this video, and around the 3:45 mark you will hear these things from his own mouth!)

Naranjo brought his enneagram ideas to Esalen, which was a New Age think tank in California in the 1960’s, where people got naked, took LSD, and beat on drums. (Source: Dr. Ronald V. Huggins)

New Agers and New Age psychotherapists told their followers that the enneagram would uncover their true, “divine Self.” Glorification of Self is extremely important in the New Age (they believe man is from God and has a divine Self).

Guess who was also at Esalen? The Jesuit priest, Robert Ochs. He took Naranjo’s work, used it, changed it to fit his theology, and gave it to priests in the Catholic Church (though the Catholic Church never endorsed it).

Richard Rohr learned of it from one of those Jesuit priests, and he wrote one of the most popular books on it in the 1990s. Sadly, Rohr has many heretical views regarding God, Christ, sin, creation, man, and salvation, plus he believes in Universalism, that all religions lead to heaven.  He teaches a false Jesus and a false Christ, and he says that Jesus was not the “Universal Christ” who Rohr believes was “bigger” than Jesus (see the Universal Christ).  Rohr, unfortunately, has been greatly influential in our biblically-illiterate churches, because people do not read their Bibles.

Next came Alice Fryling.  She said that the enneagram is based on ancient writings from Ponticus.  But Ponticus’ writings have been thoroughly searched and there is no mention of the enneagram.  (See The Enneagram GPS: Gnostic Path to Self.)

In the 1980s the enneagram’s popularity exploded with the blessing of Helen Palmer, a popular New Age writer and teacher. Oh, and she’s also “an intuitive.” Let me translate: that means she’s a psychic.

David Daniels also wrote a book about it, and he is also in the New Age religion.

Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile wrote a popular book about the enneagram, and guess who was her mentor?  Richard Rohr.  Cron and Stabile are adamant that the enneagram is more than just a fun tool. “The true purpose of the Enneagram is to reveal to you your shadow side and offer spiritual counsel on how to open it to the transformative light of grace.” One of the biggest problems with the New Age religion is that New Agers take phrases from the Bible, then attach different meanings to the interpretation of well-known Christian words, such as what "grace" means.  Just look what they did to the word "tolerant." 

Christopher Heuertz followed Richard Rohr, and in his book The Sacred Enneagram he thanked Rohr and three other New Agers.  Critics have said that his book is full of anecdotal fallacies. So much for it being "sacred!"

For a scholarly look at the writings of Christopher Heuertz, I suggest that you read this lengthy and in-depth post by Dr. Kenneth Berding a professor at Biola University, Talbot School of Theology: The Not-So-Sacred Enneagram. Dr. Berding goes through the book extracting Heuertz’s own words and holds them up to the light of Scripture.

Under the heading Biblical Interpretation, Dr. Berding says, "There’s no space for details here, but in the handful of times that Mr. Heuertz mentions or quotes from the Bible (36, 55-56, 72, 98-99, 186-187)—and, truly, he rarely uses the Bible—he never once apprehends, in my opinion, the author’s intended meaning of the passages he mentions. Rather, like Philo of old who interpreted the Bible through Greek philosophy, or Bultmann, who read it through the grid of existentialism, Mr. Heuertz has overlaid the biblical text with his own interpretive grid, the grid of Enneagramic mysticism. Accordingly, he reads the Bible symbolically and allegorically."

The first paragraph of Dr. Berding’s Summary says: “Christopher Heuertz is promoting many false doctrines in his book ‘The Sacred Enneagram.’ I write this with great grief and deep sorrow. ‘The Sacred Enneagram’ is full of incorrect and misleading religious assertions. His teaching does not match what the Bible communicates regarding sin, salvation, sanctification, and probably also other core doctrines such as the nature of God, the person of Jesus Christ, and the atonement. He portrays the Enneagram as sacred, powerful, searching, alive. He mixes false religious ideas together with Christianity, and seems unconcerned about the Enneagram’s syncretistic origins."

Here’s a very concise look at The Fictions and Facts of the Enneagram.

I think Marcia Montenegro (in her article “What About the Enneagram?”)   sums it up perfectly: 

“Despite there being not a shred of evidence for it, some supporting the Enneagram are trying to claim these so-called Christian origins.  At the very least, this is misleading.  There is nothing Christian about the Enneagram or its use.  Its origins are pagan and its purpose as a personality assessment tool was at the hands of some dubious esoteric psychologists (see CANA article on the Enneagram GPS).  That it may seem accurate can be explained by confirmation bias and other factors. 
 
“Millions of people also think their zodiac sign is spot on, so does that make zodiac signs credible?  There is no objective basis for the Enneagram historically, as a personality assessment, or for being Christian.

“Since the Enneagram is false in nature, it means that Christians who recommend it are promoting a false idea and a false method for self-evaluation. How can Christians proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ while accepting a false tool?”

• Marcia Montenegro’s story out of the New Age can be read here:       http://christiananswersforthenewage.org/AboutCANA_SpiritualJourney.html
• You can watch an interesting and detailed interview with Marcia, Doreen Virtue, and Melissa Dougherty about the enneagram here.
• 20 New Age Practices that are Infiltrating the Church 
• The Enneagram: Does it Have a Place in Christianity?
• 10 Reasons Why Christianity and the New Age Cannot Blend
• The Enneagram: A satanic occult spiritual tool within the Church
• Tell Me Who I Am, O Enneagram 
• An A to Z List of New Age Practices to Avoid and Why If you read this list, you’ll see just how far the New Age movement has impacted our every day lives. Many of these ideas are now widely accepted.

I just thought you should know the truth about the enneagram’s origins, since it is so conveniently left out by the people who promote it. The enneagram seems innocent, and horoscopes seem like fun, but both are false, New Age tools that will lead you into confusion, instead of into clarity.

John 14:6 says: Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” (NLT – New Living Translation)

May God bless you as you pray and ask God to lead you to the truth.

Janine