Enneagram Parallels

[Pallas]

Yeah, this is a weird topic and I'm not sure how many people will be able to keep up, but anyways.

When I first read enneagram stuff and saw people trying to compare it to the 7 deadly sins and stuff, my reaction was: what, that's 7, this is 9 :/ The number 9 is mostly tied into various Indo-European cosmologies and symbolism to me. It's also important in Kabbalah and some other systems but not as near-excessively emphasized in any of those I can think of. This makes me think that probably at least the ancient Indo-Europeans were likely teaching the enneagram through metaphor, since back then people didn't really tend to systematize knowledge as much as describe it through metaphor. For one example, look at this:

Nine homeworlds of Norse mythology:

1. Asgard, the home of the Æsir ruled by the god Odin
2. Álfheimr/Ljósálfheimr, the home of the Ljósálfar
3. Niðavellir/Svartálfaheimr, the home of the Dwarves who are also synonymous with the Dökkálfar and Svartálfar
4. Midgard (Earth), the home of humans
5. Jötunheimr/Útgarðr, the home of the Jötnar (Giants)
6. Vanaheimr, the home of the Vanir
7. Niflheim, a world of ice and snow
8. Muspelheim, a world of fire and lava and home of the Jötunn Surtr
9. Hel(heimr), the home of the dishonorable dead sometimes synonymous with Niflheim and ruled by the goddess

These aren't actually given in any order in any surviving text, but obviously you can see parallels if you look. These are my tenuous ones:

1 - Asgard
2 - Álfheimr
3 - Vanaheimr
4 - Niflheim
5 - Jötunheimr
6 - Midgard
7 - Niðavellir
8 - Muspelheim
9 - Helheimr

I largely picked the ordering of these based on harmonically balanced groups and dynamics of motion I see between these (e.g. each of the harmonically balanced groups seems to have two centers feeding into one which is in control) so it came out slightly odd compared to stereotypical expectations, but not entirely ridiculous.


In another branch of Indo-European-descended cultures, you have this:



Obviously vata seems to correlate with head center, pitta with heart, and kapha with gut. There are two elements in each and you can also make a mix of the two in the middle for:

1 - earth
2 - water
3 - steam (boiling water)
4 - fire
5 - space
6 - wind (air rushing around due to changes in space)
7 - air
8 - water
9 - mud (water mixed with earth)


Probably the most obvious overusers of the number 3, however, are the Celts:

http://branawen.blogspot.com/2011/02...-number-3.html

Also, someone might find the etymology of the words interesting:

https://austronesiancounting.wordpre...-numbers-1-10/

For example, the word for 9 is related to the word for "new" because to them it was seen as both a beginning and an ending (cf. German: „neun“ - 9, „neu“ - new, for an obvious resemblance, but this can be widely found). Now, how is E9 usually metaphorically described? 8 can also be thought of as 2 4s like 3 is thought of as 2 6s in terms of the dynamic, and as to 1, 2, and 3 being deictic: 1s are focused on themselves being perfect (1st person), 2s are focused on helping the other (2nd person), and 3s are focused on public image (3rd person). Isn't that not suspicious at all? :angel:

Finally, here's http://www.halexandria.org/dward091.htm a bunch of random parallels, but please, as always, don't just follow everything people say (I would just straight up say this http://yellowravenink.deviantart.com...ield-333734920 because this paragraph feels way too dry, but that sounds really silly without people knowing the symbolism ).

[lynn]

the three doshas could be related to the instinctual variants: vata = social, pitta = sexual, kapha = self pres .

[Chae]

Apart from what you elaborated, one could relate every type of trinity there is to the instincts and centers

[GuavaDrunk]

If you haven't already, you should read up on Gurdjieff's biography and how he came about to the self-development system that included the nine types. He was extremely interested in mystic traditions of all kinds and spent a large part of his life travelling around the Middle East and the -stans (Afghanistan, etc.) and iirc maybe all the way to Northern India via Pakistan.

Hindu mythology and philosophy for eg is widely well-regarded, and at the time the 'Western world' was opening up to 'Eastern mysticisms' of all kinds. Given Gurdjieff's sphere of travel and interests it'd be strange if he hadn't come across it, as well as Buddhism, and been at least a little influenced by them. Other sources mentioned include a large dose of Sufism (cf. fourth section in the last link quoted.)

It would make sense that the enneagram has deeper historical roots in mystic symbolism than commonly discussed (I don't count a list of Buddhist worlds and their blurbs as deep).

That being said, I would be careful with assigning significance to similarity of words without looking up formal etymological research, as it's entirely too easy to take coincidences for meaningful facts in that field.

WRT numerology:

This link suggests that Gurdjieff was more concerned about sets of 7 and 3, than nine, and that nine came about from combining three and seven in a convenient symbol. However the enneagram symbol itself has been used independently of the personality typology to 'describe natural processes (paraphrased from memory), so there being nine points could again, be due to Laws of 7 and 3, or to prior use for sets of nine.

It probably makes sense in another way given numerology traditions, that geographically distant traditions (Norse, etc.) would match in terms of numbers of special things/categories. There are only so many small, easily-countable numbers* to assign significance to.

*say below a hundred units, and in everyday use even if you're not a merchant --> older origins for inclusion into some sort of cosmology/shamanism etc.