The Big Lie of the Enneagram

Ultimately the Enneagram is a counterfeit "Christian esoteric" teaching of the Twentieth Century, claiming to have its roots in the Christian Desert Fathers. This claim of sourcing the information from the Desert Fathers is the only claim to legitimacy G. I. Gurdjieff, the inventor of the Enneagram, could make. Since the writings of the early fathers were not available in English, he could make of them what he wanted, and few English speakers would be the wiser. To make this work, they have to slay the Church Fathers, remove from them all Christian Orthodoxy and make them what they never were.

Here is their definition of the Orthodox Christian Desert Fathers:

For these men, Christian faith has little to do with doctrines, telling people what to think or believe, or especially with institutional and organized religion as it often is today. The Desert Elders were interested in experiencing God and in how people experience the spiritual world inside themselves.

Were this lying definition anywhere close to the truth, one would have to toss out the volumes of the Philokalia, which contains centuries of Orthodox teaching and disciplinary admonitions spoken and written by the Desert Fathers. One would have to destroy the relationship between Saint Athanasius (one of the most outstanding teachers of Orthodoxy) and Saint Anthony the Great and ignore the ordained priests in their numbers. The first Desert Father was Saint Anthony, who didn't write anything. (except for a few letters to Bishops that are not extant) Still, he was quoted extensively by Saint John Cassian, and his story was told by Saint Athanasius in "The Life of Saint Anthony"; you will discover nothing of G.I. Gurdjieff's presuppositions in that record. Yet, many have taken up his ideas and written tomes on what we could call The New Age Desert Fathers, whose spiritual pursuit had little to do with battling their own sinful nature and communing with Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit but was about simply methodical and willful, ego-based conditioning of their own psyches.

Just one example of Saint Anthony's Orthodox and how much doctrine meant to him. Saint Athanasius told the story when Saint Anthony left the desert and arrived in Alexandria to defend the Orthodox Faith against the Manichaean and Arian heresies. Knowing that the name of Saint Anthony was venerated by all the Church, the Arians said that he adhered to their heretical teaching. But Saint Anthony publicly denounced Arianism in front of everyone and in the presence of the bishop. During his brief stay at Alexandria, he converted a great multitude of pagans to Christ. He didn't convert them to asceticism in the desert, or teach them the Enneagram, or instruct them in "The Fourth Way" or any of the other Esoteric Ecumenism contained in this counterfeit dogma. Instead, just like Saint Paul, he taught Jesus Christ, crucified, risen from the dead, ascended into heaven, sitting at the right hand of God the Father, from whence he will come to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end, etc. These people were baptized for the remission of their sins, taught the Orthodox Christian faith, and began attending the Orthodox prayers, participating in the central act of Christian worship and spiritual growth, the Eucharist and the Divine Liturgy surrounding it. This true worship was very familiar and practiced by the Desert Fathers.

I will cede to this movement one positive idea. During the period in the West conditioned and controlled by ideas and philosophies of extreme materialism, where any speaking of a spiritual world outside of the firing of neurons in the brain was scoffed at and spirituality seen as mere superstition, some in this movement helped to expose the poverty of that time.