ENNEAGRAM OR ENNEAGON ? SUFI, PYTHAGOREAN, OR ?
Before I took my first Arica training in the fall of 1971 in New York City (the three-month training known as NY I), I had read several books by or about the teachings of a Mr Gurdjieff, who spoke often of a very important nine-pointed figure or diagram he called the Enneagram. He didn't cite a specific origin for the figure, merely stating it was very old.
At the time I heard about Oscar Ichazo, in Big Sur, California in 1969, it was generally assumed, although apparently incorrectly, that Oscar was in some manner connected with both Sufism and Gurdjieff and that his system and mission was some sort of natural progression of Gurdjieff's Work, the "next step" if you will.
Oscar Ichazo in his lectures and Arica Institute in America (legally constituted in 1971) and its trainers in trainings, training manuals as well as in advertisements, consistently used the word Enneagram (not enneagon) to describe this figure during the ten-month training of the Americans in Arica, Chile (1970-71) and in all the trainings given by Oscar Ichazo and Arica Institute in America from October 1971 until sometime around the end of 1972 or early 1973 (the exact dates can be found in Arica Institute internal management documents or from the transcripts of Oscar Ichazo lectures.) Oscar also used the term in his earlier lectures in Santiago.
Specific examples:
Suddenly, the Enneagram became an enneagon. This assertion can be confirmed by any person who was involved with Oscar Ichazo or Arica Institute during the period cited. No public explanation (members of Arica's inner "closed-circle" may have been given one) was given for this abrupt change.
I and those that I discussed the matter with at the time, assumed Arica/Oscar decided to use "enneagon" because Enneagram was already in common use (in such works as In Search of the Miraculous) and could not be copyrighted or service marked. I still feel this is the case. (Service marking or copyrighting has always been an element of paramount importance in Arica strategy and Ichazo/Arica Institute have copyrighted/service marked around 1000 terms [mid 1999 estimate: 3,700], including for example "enneagon", in The Arican, Winter 1990, to cite one example.)
So I was somewhat surprised to read the following statement appeared on Page 102, of the Autumn 1991 issue of The Arican, in an essay by Oscar entitled: "Letter to the Transpersonal Community" :
"As we can see, my approach to the enneagon figure is totally different from that of Mr Gurdjieff, including the name because it sounds completely absurd to call the geometrical form that is an enneagon an enneagram. The suffix "gram" means writing. If we say pentagram, we clearly mean five lines over which we can notate music. Enneagram would be nine lines over which nobody knows what to notate, but to arbitrarily name a well known geometrical figure otherwise is playing with and making violence to language unnecessarily."[What total and deliberate nonsense.]
It would seem natural, in light of this statement to inquire why Oscar and Arica used the inaccurate word Enneagram, "nine lines over which nobody knows what to notate", repeatedly and exclusivly for so many years to describe what suddenly became the enneagon.
As for the use of the word Enneagram constituting "...playing with and making violence to language unnecessarily.", this assertion is not supported by the Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition or the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged.
The suffix "- gram" is something written down, drawn, or recorded (from the Greek, gramma), for example, a diagram, while the suffix "- gon" (from the Greek gonon, gonia, an angle, or angled) indicates assembling angles to form a figure having a specified number of angles (i.e. pentagon).
Thus figures with the suffix "gon" are simple geometrical forms with a number of straight lines linked at various angles to enclose a space. The prefixes, "penta" (5), "hexa" (6), "hepta" (7), "octo" (8), "ennea" (9) "poly" (many) etc., indicate the number of angles and lines. In "regular" - gons the lines are all the same length and the angles identical. (see illustrations - not provided in this email version)
Figures with the suffix "gram" are more complex, more like a diagram, than the simple geometry of a "gon". In order to make the distinction absolutely clear, let us take two examples from the Random House dictionary: "pentagram" and "hexagram".
A pentagram has five lines, like a pentagon, but is quite a different figure than a pentagon, which is defined as a polygon having five angles and five sides, while a pentagram is a "five pointed, star-shaped figure made by extending the sides of a regular pentagon until they meet, used as a symbolic by the Pythagoreans..."
A hexagon is defined as "a polygon having six angles and six sides (the magenta figure in the Arica symbol is a regular hexagon) and a hexagram is defined as "a six-pointed star-like figure formed of two equilateral triangles placed concentrically with each side of a triangle parallel to a side of the other and on opposite sides of the center. Six pointed star or Star of David " In Webster, a hexagram is called "a six-pointed star formed of two often interlaced equilateral triangles, a mystic symbol in the middle ages also called Star of David."
For the nine pointed figure Random House says: "A nonagon is a polygon having nine angles and nine sides. Also called enneagon." Although there is no entry for Enneagram in either dictionary, the logic is clear. Just as the added complexity changes a pentagon to a pentagram and the two superimposed triangles result in a hexagram, not a hexagon, an Enneagram is NOT a polygon having nine angles and nine sides, i.e. an enneagon, but rather a figure composed of two overlapping separate figures, a triangle and a six-pointed figure which results in a "nine-diagram" or Enneagram.
As for the origin of the Enneagram (or enneagon as Oscar called it from 1973-1996), on Page 101 of his "Letter to the Transpersonal Community", The Arican, Autumn 1991, Oscar says:
"The enneagon figure, which the Gurdjieffians affirm that I took from their master, is in fact one of the forms known as 'seals' which were produced by the Pythagorean school (500 BC), and the Platonic mathematicians (300 BC) who studied the internal relations of numbers with the geometrical forms, giving to each number, not only their characteristics, but their internal interrelations."
However, Oscar also stated, in the interview by Karimu Kudura in "Inside", June, 1979 entitled "A Historical Movement", reproduced in "Interviews with Oscar Ichazo", (c) Arica Institute Press, 1982:
