There is an intriguing story in P. D. Ouspensky’s classic book, In Search of the Miraculous. This story took place more than one full century ago. G.I. Gurdjieff, the father of the Enneagram, was walking in the park with five students. The subject of discussion turned to Gurdjieff’s views on astrology. G said, “Astrology deals only with one part of man, with his type, his essence—it does not deal with personality, with acquired qualities. If you understand this you understand what is of value in astrology.” The question in discussion was what in man depends on planetary influences and what does not. Suddenly as they were walking, Gurdjieff dropped his walking stick and one person of the group bent down, picked it up and gave it back to him.
Gurdjieff starting walking again and then stopped and said, “That was astrology. Do you understand? You all saw me drop the stick. Why did one of you pick it up?” Then, each one spoke of their experience. One said he was looking another way and did not see the stick drop. Another said he saw that the stick had been dropped on purpose and was holding back waiting to see what happened. A third said that he saw it drop but was so absorbed in his thinking about the discussion that he was distracted from the stick. The fourth said he saw the stick and was getting ready to pick it up when someone else did. The last said he saw it fall and then just picked it up to hand it back.
‘This is astrology,” Gurdjieff concluded, “In the same situation one man sees and does one thing, another—another thing, a third, another and so on. And each one acted according to his type. Observe people and yourselves this way and then perhaps we will afterwards talk of a different astrology.”
This astrology mention wasn’t the only one in the book. Further on the author, Ouspensky, mused one of his own thoughts. He writes, “the enneagram could be an astronomical symbol… I did not try to go any further as I did not have the necessary books to (on) hand and there was very little time.” He includes a figure where he applies the ruler planet of the days of the week to an Enneagram point. By his thinking, seven of the nine Enneagram points could represent the seven planets of the ancient world. Figure 1
Figure 1 Gurdjieff’s Enneagram plus a planetary idea from Ouspensky.
Let’s jump forward a bit in time to 1947. I want to share a letter from the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung to an equally famous Indian astrologer, B.V. Raman, world-renowned editor of The Astrological Magazine, a leader in its field in India. The letter was in response to a question from Raman to Jung inquiring about Jung’s view on astrology.
"Since you want to know my opinion about astrology, I can tell you that I've been interested in this particular activity of the human mind since more than 30 years.
“As I am a psychologist, I am chiefly interested in the particular light the horoscope sheds on certain complications in the character. In cases of difficult psychological diagnosis, I usually get a horoscope in order to have a further point of view from an entirely different angle.
“I must say that I very often found that the astrological data elucidated certain points which I otherwise would have been unable to understand. From such experiences I formed the opinion that astrology is of particular interest to the psychologist, since it contains a sort of psychological experience which we call 'projected' --this means that we find the psychological facts as it were in the constellations.”
Then students of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky started appearing that had picked up on Gurdjieff’s comments. Rodney Collin was one such student. He wrote an amazing book that I carried around for 35 years before I was ready to read it. The book, The Theory of Celestial Influence, was first published in 1954, just before his untimely death, two years later. When I bought the book and even when I started reading it, I didn’t realize that Collin was Ouspensky’s student and that the book was full of astrology and Enneagram based on Gurdjieff’s and Ouspensky’s work. It had an Enneagram figure on the front cover and I completely missed it. I was carrying around for a long time, resolutions to inquiries, that I didn’t have yet. Collin was like a mentor to me, encouraging me to know, it’s ok to be outside the box.
We can see now how Gurdjieff’s ideas have grown. Colin writes, “Nine-tenths of the problems of ordinary psychology, and even more of the plots of literature, drama, and legend depend upon the interplay of human types, that is the interplay of different types of essence.” On the figure we have not planets like Ouspensky, but planetary types and the half-tones (like black notes on the piano) of three kinds of “conscious food,” daily bread, the breath of life and the light of the world. Collin sums up Enneagram by writing, “the first commandment on the way of development is for man to free himself from pretense and imitation, discover how he reacts, discover the nature of his type, and try to live accordingly. He must learn to be himself.” My point here, isn’t to learn or share Collin’s play of human types, but notice the pattern established—awakening, types, planets, psychology, Enneagram. Notice how Ouspensky’s figure above has been changed here from days of the week to just the planetary energy itself. Figure 2
Figure 2 The Types of Humanity by Rodney Collin
This same teaching was further refined by the Fourth Way, a system of self-development started by Gurdjieff. Students of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and Collin too, spent decades picking up on the gentle nudge in that cane story in developing this system. The book, Human Types Essence and the Enneagram by Susan Zannos, first published in 1997, explains in detail how the Fourth Way system works. Note this is not the Enneagram of Personality, that was also developed by this time. In this system, each planet became a type, with patterned behavior that it manifests. My point is sharing this once again, is the use of Enneagram and astrology together in explaining human personality with the goal the releasing of the personality stories. Susan writes, “The system itself… reveals more, becomes richer and deeper, the more it is used as a tool with which to increase the understanding of human experience.” Self-observation or self-remembering is at the core of this system as a tool to understand the self, to live beyond the limitations of a specific type.” I’ve never taken any classes in Fourth Way, though I did know some members who shared this system with me. Because of my own background, I feel personally close to this mystery school tradition, but not to this form of classic Enneagram. This system is a true expression, from my perspective, of what G had in mind, his proposition had been fulfilled. Figure 3
Figure 3 This is very similar to Collin’s Enneagram, but now the lines have been added inside the circle. We can be a Jovial type or a Lunar type or a Jovial-Lunar type because they connect by the lines.
Gurdjieff proposed it.
Jung confirmed it.
Collin explored it.
The Fourth Way demonstrated it.
Then, in the late 1960’s, Oscar Ichazo, a Bolivian spiritual philosopher, developed completely on his own the Enneagram of Personality, a different map/tool along the same lines. He used the “Chaldean Seal,” he said, perhaps the original version of the Gurdjieff Enneagram, and instead of planets or planetary energy, Oscar put personalities at the points. Astrology was disconnected from this new Enneagram world. The Enneagram of Personality went in different directions and Enneagram of Personality and astrology were separated. Figure 4
Figure 4 ego-types, Oscar Ichazo’s Enneagram
When I sat in my first Enneagram of Personality class in 1999, I had already had been a student of astrology and spirituality for over 25 years and had lived in an ashram for 20 years. I knew of astrology and Gurdjieff, but I didn’t know of his Enneagram or Ouspensky or the Enneagram of Personality, that I was learning about. This was a bit of a turbulent time in my life and a friend had suggested that I go to a weekend retreat on the Enneagram of Personality. It was during a class on Saturday, when it appeared to me that there was a similarity between astrology and this new-fangled Enneagram. That weekend turned into a major inflection point in my life.
At the simplest of levels, the Enneagram of Personality is a psychological tool that helps us to know ourselves better, have better relationships and more compassion. The word Enneagram comes from Greek and means a “nine-sided figure.” Enneagram is a model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types. There is no end game in psychology, other than watching behavior. But as a spiritual tool, the Enneagram is unique. It has no bias; it doesn’t care what your story is. The end game spiritually is to live in the moment. It’s this aspect of the Enneagram that I was attracted to right from the beginning. The Enneagram gives us our core triggers and helps us live in the moment.
Figure 5: The diagram of the Enneagram of Personality today, with the nine personality points shown.
It is said that one of the Enneagram nine points is at our core. We live life from this lens. It expresses our compulsions and obsessions on the low side, stories and behavior that we work through in life. Each point also has a high side, the gifts and skills we share with humanity. By understanding the patterning of behavior inherent to the Enneagram point at our core, we become freed from the behaviors as consciousness grows. The nine points are referred to by a number one to nine, but there is no hierarchy based on the number. The points also have names. All points have inherent difficulties, none is any better or worse than any other.
One of the things about the descriptions of the Enneagram of Personality points, that I noticed immediately, was how similar they sounded to astrology. From the front page of Goggle, “Taureans are known to be intelligent, dependable, hardworking, dedicated, and stubborn.” I’m not suggesting there is a one-to-one correlation between Taurus and an Enneagram point, I’m saying the language was very similar, and thus, familiar to me. There is more to the Enneagram of Personality. It goes deeper, like astrology. There are mathematical, sacred geometry and mystical aspects to explore in the different levels of both modalities.
All the astrology/Gurdjieff Enneagram theories above, were not the understanding I was recognizing when I first met the Enneagram. The core question to me was, is there an astrological configuration that compose each Enneagram of Personality point? Was there a system that explained it? This was my inspiration as I came to the Enneagram of Personality as an astrologer. I wondered what in a chart made an E5, the Observer or an E7, the Enthusiast? What astrologically could create the doubt of the E6, the Loyalist, the pride of the E2, the Helper, or the accommodating of the E9, the Peacemaker? How can we use that information to loosen the grip of our fixations? I felt that Enneagram and astrology somehow were connected because I could see one in the other. I made a soul call to find someone who had knowledge as to how astrology and Enneagram worked together and a teacher, Dr. Curtis Blair, appeared in my life. My call was answered.
I propose a marriage of astrology and the Enneagram of Personality, in a system I call the Celestial Enneagram. I’m sharing this system because we can learn so much about ourselves and others. The modalities support each other and us very well. After all astrology/Enneagram aren’t really so different, when they are looked at from a stepped back perspective, and this is their history. This marriage, for the greater good of all, can result in happily ever after. I’ve explored this marriage for over 25 years. I have the experience of working with over fifteen hundred clients to help define and refine the system and increase my understanding and personal growth. This knowledge has changed me and has changed my clients. Once you see yourself in new light, it is not possible to go back into old darkness.
Because astrology has been disconnected from the Enneagram of Personality for these 50+ years, most students and teachers I’ve connected with, have resistance to these ideas. Astrology is not only not understood by Enneagramers, it is not seen, in its deepest sense, by astrologers. What has happened to astrology in the last sordid 2000+ years-- splintering, traditionalists, rigidity, dark sides, disagreements about intentions—this probably is a forerunner of what has happened and will happen in the Enneagram world. I’m reminded how after Muhammed’s death, his teachings evolved into separate branches of Islam: the traditionalists Sunnis, the successionists Shi’ites and the mystic Sufis. This is the just the nature of things.
As Jung so clearly saw, astrology can add much clarity to enable deep insight and impetus for transcendental change. I attracted a teacher who explained to me a system of how Enneagram and astrology worked together. This system can be used for both insight into our stories and to help figure out the Enneagram point and help give us deep self-understanding through astrology. We can use it for predictability for figuring out one’s Enneagram point, at an 85-90% accuracy rate.
As an astrologer, the Enneagram has added greater depth to my readings. I went on a deep dive into the history of astrology, our sciences, human life and the Earth, all the way back to the beginning, and saw how and where, it has all affected our astrology. Man added his own perceptions to planetary energy and the pure energy of the planetary configurations were lost and hidden. In reading how techniques developed in astrology, how we got to where we are today, I was able to synthesize (be open to) the “essence” of astrology in the natural state. Many of the traditional astrological techniques became distractions to the chart reading, for my purposes, and I stopped looking to them. What came, instead, was to focus on the comfort of the placement of the planets in their house and sign as the leading indicator, what is called dignity in astrology. I experienced that with a particular frequency of a sidereal Vedic astrology chart, it is possible to see the Enneagram of Personality compulsions in repeatable and constant patterns, with a particular set of astrological markers available for each Enneagram point.
A more holistic approach to astrology was developed naturally, using ways to see the chart and the life as a whole. I learned about the nature of behavioral patterning and saw how the psyche is composed. Enneagram and astrology are like tinkertoys that can help us understand the human psyche. When we can recognize how the psyche functions, we, naturally, let go of our hurtful positions. Doing an astrology chart reading became like reading planetary genetic code-the reasoning for certain behaviors became apparent. Astrology has a narrower and fragmented focus, Moon is this, Mercury is this, Jupiter helps with this. We view parts of us at a time. The Enneagram takes a wide angle, whole view. Enneagram gives a name to the personality and describes it in holistic ways. I think of astrology as the track coach, focusing on elbows and knees during a race, in order to improve their runner’s time. The Enneagram is the fan in the stands, whose viewpoint is the spectacle of the whole race. Does astrology have any roots in whole view? You bet it does! Figure 6
Figure 6. The method of Whole View from a 1941 book, The Guide to Horoscope Interpretation, by Marc Edmund Jones. Whole View is a method to recognize planetary patterns that I started working with in 1972. Right from the beginning, I was intrigued by this system. Jones writes, “A horoscope is like the man it represents. It must be seen as a whole before any intelligent idea of its parts is possible… The division of all people into seven basic types is a purely psychological screening. The people made distinct from each other by this classification may be quite alike by some other, but this sorting has an effective psychological result that is hard to match in the terms of actual problems solved… These seven temperament-sets provide both the beginner and the skilled practitioner with an utterly simple point of beginning in astrological analysis… It is not important that a man is a splash type, but it is vital that he make full use of his splash gifts… When men are seen in patterns, they are found in their closest approach to their own potentiality.”
Let me share a bit of how astrology and Enneagram work together in this introduction to the subject. The system has complexity to it--there are a lot of moving parts spread over two modalities--so there is some difficulty in its explanation. I’d like to share more of it, in depth, in future articles. We have to start by discussing some of the most basic concepts in astrology, but perhaps with a new twist or two. It helps to have an open and curious mind, to find new wisdom that has value-- new ways to understand how each Enneagram point works and how they are composed astrologically. What my first astrologer teachers, Alan Leo, Marc Edmund Jones and Dane Rudhyar, were to modern astrology, Gurdjieff was to the Enneagram. One thing they all had in common was being open to new ideas and expressions.
Astrology is built on three main elements that form a triad as the base of the modality. The three factors are planets, houses and signs. All three elements in the triad are neutral, there is no good/bad, right/wrong in any of them. Just as no Enneagram point is inherently better or worse than any other, no astrological position is intrinsically better than any other, though some can be more challenging than others. They do have high and low sides (strong/weak) where the energies are more or less accessible. Strong refers to planets in positions of strength, so it is easy to express that planet, to act on its inherent essence or nature. Weak means there are some barriers to accessibility of that planet’s energy. It is harder for the planet to be itself. Afflicted, challenged, and weak have the same meaning.
So here is where things become interesting. Planets are said to be in houses under the influence of a sign. A fiery planet by nature in a watery sign can be felt as something that can be experienced as a tension, a dis-ease, an edgy feeling--the difficult dignity. An earthy planet in an airy sign is similar in that it can feel edgy but not in the same way. How can we understand how this edginess occurs and what it feels like? Imagine what it is like wearing a bikini outside in winter or a winter coat outside on a hot summer day. It’s just not comfortable, though bikinis and winter coats are wonderful to wear in the right season. Just as we live more relaxed wearing the proper garb for the season, planets are more accessible in signs that are comfortable to the planet’s nature.
We act out from our uncomfortable planets and edginess stories with judgements, comparisons, assertiveness, irritability, and being spacey. We run away. We develop needs, desires and expectations. We react with sticky ways of being; positions held which block flow. Stimulus and response lead to conditioned behavior which leads to compulsion and obsession. We compensate in our behavior based on the apparent lacks we feel, from the edginess in our planetary configurations. This compensating in our behavior from the edginess created by weak planets is at the core of the way this system works and was for me, when I learned it, the ahhh moment, when astrology became, in an alchemical way, transformed into motivations and behaviors, the “passion” (motivation behind behavior) behind each Enneagram point. This is what Jung called “projection.” While compulsion is inbred, the behavior that manifests can be influenced by conditioning from family and society references.
To the Enneagramer, the irritability, spaciness and running away lead to the Enneagram behavior patterns that are familiar. For the astrologer, I am suggesting, that the core sensitivity is the sign and house the planet is in, so pivotal for its outlook and balance. In addition, I see planets are readily affected by being retrograde or on the cusp of a house. Retrograde can be compared to when the electric power goes off in our home. We feel like life is standing still, it’s a time of instability. This is what retrograde planets feel like, the energy is not direct, as the planet appears to be moving backward. It’s not bad energy, but maybe it is going to be bad, and this triggers fear in many natives. A planet situated on the cusp (edge) of a house, on either side, triggers feelings of “I don’t know who I am, I don’t know where I am.” These are feelings of personal unworthiness. I may look to see what’s across the chart, the influence of other planets, but most of the compulsions come from how a planet is placed in its house. When we are happy and balanced within ourselves, a noisy neighbor (other planets) is not so much of a problem; when we are triggered, anything a neighbor may do, can be upsetting. For the Enneagram analysis we look to the afflicted planets for clues, our behavior being a personification of the planet’s energy. I should note that some of the Enneagram points have strong planets at key points, not weak ones.
Let me make an important distinction here between these hard wired exalted (strong) and debilitated (weak) planets, which help to form our Enneagram point, how we live our life, and the normal high and low swings that we can experience daily represented in Enneagram in our movements through the wings (coping strategies), the stress and the relaxation points and in astrology, which are highlighted by the transits. This cycling comes with being triggered and then the subsequent release. Even the weak planets can have good days or periods, when we can live on the high side of the planet’s energy. Life is a series of waves where we swing from the high side to the low side of our placements and then back again to the high side. Being judgemental can teach us the importancy of integrity; gluttony can turn into a sense of balance when we live in the moment. Being egotistical will teach us, eventually, to be humble. The x-ray view that astrology and Enneagram combined share is more powerful than each modality alone. Figure 7
Figure 7 A value of modlaities such as astrology and the Enneagram of Personality is that they help to place us in this life, give us understanding of what we are experiencing. This understanding leads to personal growth. We can place ourself more accurately using both modalities (coordinates) together similar to how latitude and longitude support each other for pin point accuracy.
This system is based not on only looking for strong planets but for weak planets because that’s where the compulsions and obsessive behaviors are derived. Each Enneagram point has a set of markers, astroloical configerations, that are expressive of the tensions inherent to that Enneagram point. We are not looking to determine future events, which is a main astrological endeavor, but to find the “causes” of our compulsions, moments where we live not in the present, but in past/future stories, to be able to see through them and let them go. The key points are planets that are unhappy or afflicted. This viewpoint is kind of counter intuitive and is a different focus from what is popularly done in astrology. The difference is looking at the modalities (both astrology and Enneagram) not as structed modalities but looking at them as energy. This is what I was taught by my teacher long ago (“Feel the force” he encouraged me). This is how I have learned to integrate them. What we can end up with, with the wisdom of the Celestial Enneagram, is to see planetary configurations that are expressive of the Enneagram patterning and that can also be generally predictive as to the Enneagram point, to help us to live free of personality’s limitations and in true freedom. If you have comments or questions, please reach out to me at the email below.
Biography: Indra Rinzler is a professional Vedic Astrologer who teaches in the USA and Asia and offers readings to his world-wide client base. Gifted in mathematics in his youth, he started studying astrology and spirituality in 1971. His focus is on the energetic/mystical side of astrology to guide clients to become free of limiting conditioned stories by exposing planetary configurations and compensating behavior that accompanies these vulnerable configurations. In the late 1990’s, he was introduced to the Enneagram of Personality and he offers innovate work using the Enneagram of Personality expressed in astrological terms. His Life Reading include Vedic astrology, the Wheel of Totality and the Enneagram of Personality. He also offers Location Astrology and AstroCartoGraphy. He is writing a book on the subject of this article.
website: IndraRinzler.com
Email: IndraRinzler@gmail.com
