G. returned to the ENNEAGRAM many times and in various connections. “Each completed whole, each cosmos, each organism, each plant, is an ENNEAGRAM,” he said. “But not each of these ENNEAGRAMs has an inner triangle. The inner triangle stands for the presence of higher elements, according to the scale of ‘hydrogens,’ in a given organism. This inner triangle is possessed by such plants, for example, as hemp, poppy, hops, tea, coffee, tobacco, and many other plants which play a definite role in the life of man. The study of these plants can reveal much for us in regard to the ENNEAGRAM. Fragments: Fourteen
“Speaking in general it must be understood that the ENNEAGRAM is a universal symbol. All knowledge can be included in the ENNEAGRAM and with the help of the ENNEAGRAM it can be interpreted. And in this connection only what a man is able to put into the ENNEAGRAM does he actually know, that is, understand. What he cannot put into the ENNEAGRAM he does not understand. For the man who is able to make use of it, the ENNEAGRAM makes books and libraries entirely unnecessary. Everything can be included and read in the ENNEAGRAM. A man may be quite alone in the desert and he can trace the ENNEAGRAM in the sand and in it read the eternal laws of the universe. And every time he can learn something new, something he did not know before. Fragments: Fourteen
“If two men who have been in different schools 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 the 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. Fragments: Fourteen
“The ENNEAGRAM is perpetual motion, the same perpetual motion that men have sought since the remotest antiquity and could never find. And it is clear why they could not find perpetual motion. They sought outside themselves that which was within them; and they attempted to construct perpetual motion as a machine is constructed, whereas real perpetual motion is a part of another perpetual motion and cannot be created apart from it. The ENNEAGRAM is a schematic diagram of perpetual motion, that is, of a machine of eternal movement. But of course it is necessary to know how to read this diagram. The understanding of this symbol and the ability to make use of it give man very great power. It is perpetual motion and it is also the philosopher’s stone of the alchemists. Fragments: Fourteen
“The knowledge of the ENNEAGRAM has for a very long time been preserved in secret and if it now is, so to speak, made available to all, it is only in an incomplete and theoretical form of which nobody could make any practical use without instruction from a man who knows. Fragments: Fourteen
“In order to understand the ENNEAGRAM it must be thought of as in motion, as moving. A motionless ENNEAGRAM is a dead symbol; the living symbol is in motion.” Fragments: Fourteen
Much later — it was in the year 1922 — when G. organized his Institute in France and when his pupils were studying dances and dervish exercises, G. showed them exercises connected with the “movement of the ENNEAGRAM.” On the floor of the hall where the exercises took place a large ENNEAGRAM was drawn and the pupils who took part in the exercises stood on the spots marked by the numbers 1 to 9. Then they began to move in the direction of the numbers of the period in a very interesting movement, turning round one another at the points of meeting, that is, at the points where the lines intersect in the ENNEAGRAM. Fragments: Fourteen
G. said at that time that exercises of moving according to the ENNEAGRAM would occupy an important place in his ballet the “Struggle of the Magicians.” And he said also that, without taking part in these exercises, without occupying some kind of place in them, it was almost impossible to understand the ENNEAGRAM. Fragments: Fourteen
“It is possible to experience the ENNEAGRAM by movement,” he said. “The rhythm itself of these movements would suggest the necessary ideas and maintain the necessary tension; without them it is not possible to feel what is most important.” Fragments: Fourteen
There was yet another drawing of the ENNEAGRAM which was made under his direction in Constantinople in the year 1920. In this drawing inside the ENNEAGRAM were shown the four beasts of the Apocalypse — the bull, the lion, the man, and the eagle — and with them a dove. These additional symbols were connected with “centers.” Fragments: Fourteen
In connection with talks about the meaning of the ENNEAGRAM as a universal symbol G. again spoke of the existence of a universal “philosophical” language. Fragments: Fourteen
At the end of winter when conditions of living became slightly easier I began to look through my notes and drawings of G.’s diagrams which with G.’s permission I had preserved since St. Petersburg. My attention was particularly attracted by the ENNEAGRAM. The explanation of the ENNEAGRAM had clearly not been finished and I felt that there were in it hints at a possible continuation. I very soon saw that a continuation must be sought in connection with the wrong situation of the “shock” Fragments: Eighteen
which came into the ENNEAGRAM at the interval sol-la. Then I turned my attention to what the Moscow notes, in connection with commentaries on the ENNEAGRAM, said about the influences of the three octaves on one another in the “food diagram.” I drew the ENNEAGRAM as it had been given to us and I saw that it represented up to a certain point the “food diagram.” Fragments: Eighteen
The point 3, or the “interval” mi-fa, was the place where the “shock” came in which gave do 192 of the second octave. When I added the beginning of this octave to the ENNEAGRAM I saw that the point 6 came at the “interval” mifa of the second octave and the “shock” in the form of the third octave do 48 which begins at this point. The completed drawing of the octaves came out as follows: Fragments: Eighteen
This signified that there was no wrong place for a “shock” at all. Point 6 showed the entry of the “shock” in the second octave and the “shock” was the do which began the third octave. All three octaves reached Hi 2. In one it was si, in the second sol, and in the third mi. The second octave which ended at 12 in the ENNEAGRAM ought to have gone on further. But si 12 and mi 12 required an “additional shock.” I thought a great deal about the nature of these “shocks” at that time but I will speak of them later. Fragments: Eighteen
I felt that there was very much material in the ENNEAGRAM. Points 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 represented, according to the “food diagram,” different “systems” of the organism, 1 — the digestive system; 2 — the breathing system; 4 — the blood stream; 5 — the brain; 7 — the spinal cord; 8 — the sympathetic system and the sex organs. According to this the direction of the inner lines 1428571, that is, the content of fraction 7, showed the direction of the flow or distribution of arterial blood in the organism and then its return in the form of venous blood. It was particularly interesting that the point of return was not the heart but the digestive system which indeed is the case since venous blood is first of all mixed with the products of digestion, it then goes to the right auricle, through the right ventricle, then to the lungs to absorb oxygen, and from there goes to the left auricle and then the left ventricle and then through the aorta into the arterial system. Fragments: Eighteen
Examining the ENNEAGRAM further I saw that the seven points could represent the seven planets of the ancient world; in other words the ENNEAGRAM could be an astronomical symbol. And when I took the order of the planets in the order of the days of the week I obtained the following picture: Fragments: Eighteen