“Perfectionist * Giver * Achiever * Tragic/Romantic * Observer * Contradictor * Enthusiast * Leader * Mediator
The nine-sided enneagram was popularized by the Greek-Armenian spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff (1866-1949) as a way of both analyzing and then reforming character—for the final goal is to achieve a balance of all these aspects. It is also associated with the Kabbalah, while the attributes are close to those of the ideal god-loving Muslim, who is both reformer, helper, achiever, individualist, investigator, loyalist, enthusiast, challenger, and peacemaker.
Gurdjieff’s enneagram was developed by the psychologists Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo to create a personal character map, which you can do easily enough for yourself. By marking your characteristics (on, say, a scale of 1 to 10) you can chart your particular strengths and weaknesses, and then see how these compared to those drawn for you by your friends or a counselor.
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
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