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"?