enneagram - a bit from my PhD disser
"Regarding the source of Gurdjieff’s Enneagram Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani (1995) in his Naqshbandy Sufi Way History and Guidebook of the Saints of the Golden Chain: Collector’s Edition has a short chapter “A Meeting with Gurdjieff” where he claims that Gurdjieff received “the knowledge of the power of the nine points” with no permission to use it. That knowledge was revealed when “Shaykh Abd Allah said, “You are interested in the knowledge of the nine points…” … [and he] called Gurdjieff to come and pray with him”
According Naqshbandy Sufi Way History… Enneagram’s special power was received by Gurdjieff after 1917 in Turkey, i.e. this knowledge transfer happened after Gurdjieff’s “escape from Russia at the time of the Communist revolution”. We know about the Enneagram lectures in 1916 as it was reported by Ouspensky when Gurdjieff said: “If two men who have been in different school meet, they will draw the enneagram and with its help they will be able at once to establish which of them knows more and which, consequently, stands upon which step, that is to say, which is elder, which is the teacher and which the pupil. The enneagram is the fundamental hieroglyph of a universal language which has as many different meanings as there are levels of men”"
According Naqshbandy Sufi Way History… Enneagram’s special power was received by Gurdjieff after 1917 in Turkey, i.e. this knowledge transfer happened after Gurdjieff’s “escape from Russia at the time of the Communist revolution”. We know about the Enneagram lectures in 1916 as it was reported by Ouspensky when Gurdjieff said: “If two men who have been in different school meet, they will draw the enneagram and with its help they will be able at once to establish which of them knows more and which, consequently, stands upon which step, that is to say, which is elder, which is the teacher and which the pupil. The enneagram is the fundamental hieroglyph of a universal language which has as many different meanings as there are levels of men”"