This is very earnest and a lot of study has gone into it. Certainly there is material here that could help people, but since Madame de Salzmann is evoked with respect, I feel the need to comment. We all need to realize that the enneagram figure was originally presented by G.I. Gurdjieff as quoted in In Search of the Miraculous. None of this material is mentioned, and as far as I can tell, Jeanne de Salzmann would not have sanctioned the system presented here any more than describing herself as a type Eight. If she is mentioned, we also need to bring up sacred dances, perhaps music, and so on. So the whole context needs to be there or authenticity is missing. From another point of view, the symbol has to do with the division into seven, which is how you get the figure inside the circle; and the intersection of seven with three. It is a symbol and therefore is not easily approached, especially out of context. Madame might say that the best way to understand it is to dance to it. All this other material came after the fact. I recommend that anyone interested in this material check out the site gurdjieff.org, if only to have a glimpse of how large the whole enterprise is.

Yes--but...Ann Mia. The enneagram in its various transmissions, existed far earlier, far before Gurdjieff. Just as you rightly point out, that it existed well before Russ, and before the popularizing transmission in the deserts of Arica , Chile by Oscar Ichazo, and on his coat tails, from Claudio Naranjo. (And all those who have followed from them...which is MOST of us, today). What's true is that in his travels along the Silk Road, Gurdjieff discovered... an already EXISTENT enneagram, and then employed it in his own unique way, and as an offering to the unique time and places in which he lived; an early 20th century world that unknowingly had been spiritually impoverished. That world hadn't seen anyone like Gurdjieff in forever--and few, like him since... However... just because the conversation we just listened to mentioned Madame de Salzmann, the fact that Russ's evocation of the enneagram failed to include, for example, mention of Gurdjieff's sacred dances, or might not have been "sanctioned" by a student of Gurdjieff (Madame de Salzmann) that in no way should suggest that the perspective offered by Russ is somehow lacking in authenticity. And even if Madam might say the best way to understand the enneagram is to dance it, that isn't the ONLY "correct" way to authentically understand, or teach it. You're right, however, to mention "how large the whole enneagram enterprise" is. But you become a bit of a narrow partisan, in taking Gurdjieffian work to be its source, or the only bearer of authenticity. Not very wide-minded of you, Ann, if you'll forgive me for saying so. As a person who's been working with the enneagram for nearly 45 years--and who gave the keynote address to the 2000 International Enneagram Conference--I found Russ's perspective to be valuably needed. Namely, that the Enneagram be connected to, and taught as part of a "larger enterprise"--assisting us to become more embodied in our own native Presence, rather than the fixations of the ego structure. For when the enneagram is taught while lacking the larger project (of self-realization) or for that matter, if it is taught without teaching The Enneagram of the Holy Ideas, it remains little more than the Enneagram of the Personality--an enneagram of the Fixations-- which is all that most people know when they "know the enneagram." The distinction between them is actually quite central--in of all places, "the Gurdjieff Work," actually; the distinction Gurdjieff made between "Essence and Personality." In a narcissistic, sound bight culture still lacking in depth, this distinction is inadequately understood or taught--even in Grad Psych programs. And it's a central offer of "Transpersonal Psychology"--at least, in its less hare-brained forms. Though I haven't had the pleasure of meeting either Russ or Tami in person, I praise what got said in the conversation between them.