It's launch day!

My online Enneagram courses go live today and I'm feeling excited and apprehensive. It starts with a free introductory teleseminar at 7.30pm BST. I've included details about registration in my last couple of posts, so I won't repeat them here. You can sign up for a course at www.enneangel.com.

Two days to launch!

I'm back from my holiday in Scotland and ready to get going with the Enneangel online Enneagram course. This will be available from Wednesday 28th July and will be launched with a teleseminar on what the course involves and what it can do for you.

Sign up for the teleseminar here.

Launch Date for Online Enneagram Courses

The Enneangel online Enneagram courses will be available from Wednesday 28 July. There will be a teleseminar on the day of the launch where you can learn more about them and ask questions.

What these courses will help you do:

• Find out how you are sabotaging yourself, why and what you can do about it.
• Learn how to turn your weaknesses into strengths.
• Improve your relationships at home and at work by better understanding of yourself and others.
• Learn about your Enneagram type, the gifts you bring to the world and the angel inside of you.

The Enneangel packages combine personal development using the Enneagram with different levels of personal coaching. They have a practical focus - not only do you learn about the Enneagram but you are encouraged to use your newfound knowledge in your own life. In this way it is suitable both for those new to the Enneagram and those already familiar with it but wanting do do more with it.

Register for the teleseminar here or send me an email.

[Note: I'm going to be away from phone and internet for a couple of weeks so it might take me a while to respond but I will reply to any comments and requests when I get back.]

Furthest from God

Image via Wikipedia

In my last post I talked about the connection between the nine types of people on the Enneagram and the nine types of angel in the Celestial Hierarchy, and what I believe is behind this connection.

The one thing that doesn't tie up with the Enneagram is the order of the choirs of angels, with the head centre angels at the top, then the gut centre angels, with the heart centre angels at the bottom. One might expect them to match up with their order in the body, with the gut centre at the bottom.

When Plato talks about the three-part soul in Phaedrus, he divides it into the rational (head part) at the top and lumps the irascible and concupiscible parts (gut and heart) together at the bottom, so he didn't actually give a hierarchy to the last two parts. This still doesn't explain the seemingly counter-intuitive order of the Celestial Hierarchy, though.

My guess is that it is due to the function of the heart centre - it's all about reaching out to people. The angels of the purifying choir are the messengers that connect with people. They are closest to us and therefore, in a hierarchical system, they must be furthest from God.

One thing I like about the Enneagram as we know it today is that it isn't a hierarchical system. The nine types are arranged around a circle and no type is better or worse than any other. We all have our gifts to bring to the world.

Plato may have believed that the head centre was better and more desirable, and he may have had good reason to, in the time and place in which he lived. But we all need to be able to use all three kinds of intelligence - intellectual, emotional and instinctual. In the world we live in today, at least in the richer more powerful nations, it is often more of a problem for us that we become out of touch with our heart centres, losing our empathy and becoming detached from other people. Or that we lose touch with our gut centres and our will to act and direct our lives.

Neoplatonist Angels

I said in Angels and the Psychology of Goodness that I would add more about the link between angels and the Enneagram, so here goes.

There are different ways of categorising angels, but the first one I came across (and one which has always been popular) is Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's Celestial Hierarchy. When I first stumbled upon a list of this hierarchy and saw that there were nine different types of angels, I couldn't resist matching up the descriptions with the nine different types of people on the Enneagram. Imagine my surprise when I did so and found that all three head types were in one choir, the three heart types were in another choir and the three gut types were in the third choir! (The Celestial Hierarchy divides the angels into three choirs of three types of angel.)

Could this be a coincidence? Admittedly this wasn't a very scientific approach and it is only my interpretation of which angels seemed most like which Enneagram type. Having done this, though, all sorts of patterns began to emerge which I couldn't have predicted. As well as the three choirs matching up with the three centres (the perfecting choir being made up of the head centre types, the illuminating choir being made up of the gut centre types and the purifying choir being made up of the heart centre types), the hierarchy of head/gut/heart is repeated within the choirs.

Let me explain. As Hurley and Donson describe in What's My Type?, the nine Enneagram types can be defined not just by their home centre, but by their least preferred centre. So for example, for Type 1, their preferred centre is the gut centre, their heart centre comes in the middle and their least preferred centre is the head centre. For the Type 8, their preferred centre is again the gut centre, their head centre comes in the middle and their least preferred centre is the heart centre. As you can see on the Enneagram diagram, Type 1 is closer to their secondary heart centre and Type 8 is closer to their secondary head centre. Similarly for Types 2, 4, 5 and 7.

Things are slightly more complicated for Types 3, 6 and 9 on the inner triangle. For these three types their home centre and their least preferred centre are one and the same. In The Enneagram and the Triune Brain I hypothesised that this is because being weak in their home centre they use the balance of their other two centres to mimic the functions of that weak home centre. I have also heard an alternative hypothesis that these three types use their home centre for the functions of the other two centres, leaving insufficient energy for the home centre to perform its own functions. Whatever the explanation, it makes them hard to place on a hierarchy.
Now let's look at Pseudo-Dionysius's hierarchy alongside the Enneagram types and their centre stacking.

• Seraph, Type 7, head/gut/heart
• Cherub, Type 5, head/heart/gut
• Throne, Type 6, head/[gut,heart]

• Dominion, Type 8, gut/head/heart
• Virtue, Type 1, gut/heart/head
• Power, Type 9, gut/[head,heart]

• Principality, Type 3, heart/[head,gut]
• Archangel, Type 4, heart/head/gut
• Angel, Type 2, heart/gut/head

As you can see, the head/gut/heart hierarchy is repeated within each choir as well as in the ranks of the choirs themselves.

Finding these patterns does seem to be getting too much for coincidence. But what is the explanation? What is the connection? Well, Pseudo-Dionysius's work was strongly influenced by Neoplatonism. The Enneagram too has Neoplatonist influences. The three centres themselves are reflected in Plato's three-part soul. Is it possible that people were already aware of the nine Enneagram archetypes and their relationships with the three centres of intelligence when Pseudo-Dionysius was writing in the 5th or 6th Century? Did this influence Pseudo-Dionysius's categorisation of angels on the principles of "as above, so below"?