To index page Last major modifications in 2002, a little tidying and other minor stuff since then (April 2006).
Brief Introduction
Below this brief introduction there is presently (1) a short essay on the enneagram which reflects my understanding of a couple of years ago (2) other examples of the octave process developed mostly in e-mail discussion. The common thread is an attempt to get to grips with the meaning of the "inner lines" of the enneagram. I often refer on these pages to the "octave" and the "enneagram" as if they were interchangeable which is of course not quite correct; rather, in terms of one particular tradition of understanding the octave, the enneagram is a symbol used for mapping and explaining it.
There are two (comparatively) worked out process octaves in the "primary Fourth Way Material" (ie the writings of Gurdjieff and of Ouspensky when quoting or expanding Gurdjieff). These are the Ray of Creation and and the Food Diagram (ie Diagram of Transformation of Food), both attributed to Gurdjieff in Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous . In addition there are further examples in (Gurdjieff's student) Bennett's writings on the enneagram, and various other material which seems clearly to go back to Gurdjieff. Some further stuff on that can be found in the surviving archives of the the old Octave List,via index page of this site). and anyone interested could do worse than join the current Octave and Enneagram Mailing List. The archives are open. An example of a disguised reference to the enneagram in Gurdjieff's own writings appears to be his reference to the traditional "Crossing the River" puzzle in Meetings With Remarkable Men , this puzzle works out as an enneagram. (I saw this pointed out on another site since defunct). No doubt there are other disguised references to the enneagram in Gurdjieff's own writings in addition of course to his open references to the octave. (In his Beelzebub's Tales for example Gurdjieff describes Beelzebub as visiting earth six times. I have little doubt that the six visits would on investigation turn out to correspond to the six "wing points" of the enneagram)
"Lifestage Enneagram", which is in my view quite important, is developed by me from a hint in published material deriving from the Nicoll group. Below is a picture of the enneagram made when I started this site (I'm going to have to do a new one!) which distractingly shows the "type" attributions (see "lifestage" link) but also shows how the octave fits along the enneagram. (See also the Fibonacci page where I've parked some material which may show how the octave/enneagram relates to the Pythagorean tetractys). Note that while the =>Mi-Fa shock is where on of the two half tone steps occurs in a major diatonic scale, the =>Sol-Fa shock is not. The other half-tone step is between the last note of the octave and Do, and indeed this according to Gurdjieff is where the second "shock" is needed. But it is not so shown on an enneagram. The usual explanation for this anomaly is that another octave starts at the =>Mi-Fa shock point and the =>Sol-Fa shock is properly the =>mi-fa shock of that new octave.......urghhhh.....if that confuses you are not alone, have a look at the lifestage or Food Diagram links above link above or just forget about it for the moment and read on.
The most commonly known form of the enneagram is the "Fourth Way"
form taught by Gurdjieff in the first half of this century.
It was claimed to be an ancient symbol being made public for the first time.
9 points in counting order are marked around a circumference, points 9-3-6 are
connected in a triangle, and points 1-4-2-8-5-7-1- are connected in that order
in a closed figure.
The purpose of it was to model processes, part of the Fourth Way cosmology is
that the world, the cosmos, is patterned after the octave or "Law of Seven"
although the complexity of the way octaves interact usually prevents us noticing
the octaves.
To properly understand any process, cooking a meal, manufacturing chewing gum,
creating
a universe one must understand it as an octave or interaction of octaves. The
enneagram as used by Gurdjieff is a diagram representing the "Law of Seven".
The inner lines show certain non-obvious connections between the points,
one of the main reasons for analysing a process as an octave
is to learn more about it by contemplating those inner connections.
In "In Search of the Miraculous" by Gurdjieff's disciple Ouspensky, for example,
the passage of food through the human organism was mapped onto the enneagram
while the inner lines indicated the circulation of the blood.
The meaning of the inner hexagram would have been mysterious to people
who didn't know of the circulation of the blood...
In the case of the
life-span
enneagram looked at in the section below we are in a somewhat better position than these imagined
students, due in part to the work done on the enneagram of personality-type.
A very brief example of my own
Suppose I wanted to put the process of writing an essay onto the enneagram. We're talking here of a fairly pedestrian essay based on library research for school or University. Constructing such an enneagram my thought processes went something like this: "Well.. the first thing I have to do is find a topic, so I suppose point one, Re, is 'choose a topic'. Er.... whats the material being transformed which enters at point 3 (=>Mi-Fa)., the 'food' so to speak?, I suppose it's the reference material use as a source, the academic journals and the like. Or the relevant information in them.... Anyway what do I do with it? I turn it into notes so I suppose point 4, Fa, is that stage, ie the contruction of a usable set of essay notes. So whats the stage before that?...It'd have to be selecting and reading the sources I was planning to use. So now we have point 2, Mi, and also Re and Fa. What now?...
ah..er..well whats the end product anyway? I hand up an essay to be marked. Presumably having the essay marked is the final stage,point 8,Ti. Whats the stage directly before that? A bit hard to tell. Whats a stage before Ti but after Fa? When I actually write the essay, put it into coherent form from the notes That'd be point 5, So. Is there a stage between that and Ti?. Yup. The work has to be revised , and proofread, typed into a form and style acceptable to the particular department I'm dealing with. So I've got point 7, La. (Point6,=>So-La, is another question which I won't go into right now. The entry of the 'food' at point3 itself is the Do of a new octave and point6 is the 'food entry' point of that new octave).
These conclusions can be checked against other considerations of process enneagram theory . For example ,while the octave does not need a 'shock' at point6 (=>So-La) to continue, it does need that shock (which is also the 'food' of the Do entering at point3)to be outwardly manifested. We can see that this works, in this case the 'shock' at point6 is in effect the marker of the essay without whom there would be no external developement to La. (In this connection consider the life-span enneagram dealt with under Personality II.) Another consideration helpful in checking is that Fa and So constitute the 'organizing idea' of the octave, in a sense its goal. So marks the point where the core process has been completed ('the food has been cooked' at So to use J.G. Bennett's example of a kitchen's organization) , note again the life-span enneagram where Fa-So covers the period of puberty.
You noticed, most likely, that in constructing the enneagram I followed the direction of the inner lines.
This enneagram can be broken down into further enneagrams in various ways. Each interval is itself an octave, the most interesting for our purposes being Fa
-So where the 'creative' work of the essay is done. Again my thought processes in working out this inner octave
go something like this...
...Presumably Re(point1) is the reading of the notes.
Whats the 'food' here, the substance or influence of 'shock' that enters at point3 (=>Mi-Fa)? It'd seem to
be my own knowledge, experience or views, my pre-existing 'data'. So after that data enters the next step
Fa(4) seems to be to interrogate the notes I have before me,
to ask questions and make comments. Now I can see that the second step, Mi(2),
must have been to organize those notes into a picture,
to find a coherent thread running through the area of the literature I have
chosen to use. Well, what are we trying to here again? We're trying to have the
essay written in 'substantial' form. So point Ti(8) must be revision and
checking of the draft. So, So(5) is the contruction of the 'argument'
of the essay; the answering of the questions asked at Fa and so forth. La(7) is
the actual creation of the draft.
Below is the substantial body of Message 179 from the Octave list archive. Related stuff can be found there. Some background to the
discussion, it was pointed out by a member of the list that Ouspensky's disciple Collin had given a typology of enneagram types as follows:
123 - Growth, Multiplication
132 - Destruction, Elimination
213 - Refinement, Digestion
312 - Corruption, Disease
231 - Invention, Healing
321 - Regeneration
(Here "1" is "Active" Force and "3" is Neutralizing, and "2" is "Passive".)
Supposedly if an octave is of the general algebraic form abc (standing for 123, 132 etc) then do will represent force a, re will represent force b and mi will represent force c, (you guessed?).....but then mi will also represent force a with respect to the force entering at the mi-fa shock, which will be force b. And so forth. There are aspects of this which remain unclear to me. What does seem clear that if our octave is of the form abc then as well as do being force a then the =>mi-fa shock will be force b and the sol-fa "false shock" will be force c. Look at the example below if the last few sentences didn't seem to make any sense.
When I compared this with published Bennett and Ouspensky material I discovered (or "agreed") that this typology appeared to go back to Gurdjieff and to underly what there was published of worked out enneagram examples. See especially Bennett's Enneagram Studies edited by A.E.Blake. (One can track down Blake on-line through the Duversity site, see main page links.) In the discussion which followed this example of a "231" or Passive-Neutral-Active" octave was developed by me:
From Message 179
For the past few years I've been a law student. While most of my legal problem solving has been artificial, I've also done some placement work and given real advice. I'm proposing that giving legal advice is an example of this triad. Do The Problem (Passive) Re Facts given to advisor Mi Facts reduced to legally salient points (see below on this) =>Mi-Fa Application of the Relevant Law (Neutralizing) Fa Legal consequences of salient facts drawn out Sol Overall legal position, and legal options, clarified. (see below) => Advice Transmitted to The Client (Active) La Client understands and considers advice, chooses options. Ti Client Acts. OK....now looking at the inner lines, Re-Fa-Mi-Ti-Sol-La-Re one can see that the only places the inner lines run _against_ the clockwise time flow is at Fa-Mi and Ti-Sol. In this octave it is easy to see why this is. Before one can decide which facts are salient (Mi) one has to have some notion of the law, one has to peek ahead to Fa. Likewise before one can give the client good advice as to options (Sol) one has to have some idea of what the client is capable of doing (Ti)....such as how much money they have for litigation, and other factors.
An example of a 321 Octave is the Kitchen Octave given in several places by Bennett as his chief example. This is also meant to be the octave of "self-remembering", so it is fairly important. I think the "Crossing the River" enneagram mentioned above is also a 321. Out of sloth I have pasted the following description of the Kitchen Enneagram from the archives, with minor adjustments.
DO KITCHEN RE Ready MI Cooking Implements Prepared =>Shock, FOOD enters [and FOOD octave starts] FA Food prepared for cooking SO (or "sol") Food cooked. =>Shock, COMMUNITY assembles, "Dinner bell rings" [=>mi-fa of FOOD] LA Food served TI (or "si") Food eaten Again, note that at RE one must look forward to FA before proceeding to MI.
This following is an exercise based on some thinking about the proposition
that the enneagram of self-remembering is a "321" enneagram. That is, an
enneagram analogous to the Kitchen Enneagram where the Kitchen is
Neutralizing or Third Force and the Food is Passive or Second Force and the
Community is Active or First Force.
I'm not claiming any authority for the exercise. I call it "Feeding the
Birds"
RE Readiness (321)
MI "Stopping Thoughts", concentration. Analogous to preparation of kitchen
implements. (213.)
=>Reception of impressions, that which is to be "cooked"
FA Depersonalization, Non-identification.ie inducing the "What me, here?"
feeling. One separates oneself from ones impressions and opinions and then
perhaps ones personal history, one's body etc. To me, it seems that this
stage in itself is sometimes confused with "Self-Remembering"; it would be
better called "Self-Dismembering". Analogous to cleaning and preparation of
food for cooking. (132) Mid-point of the enneagram.
SO I don't have a snappy title for the next stage, and no doubt there are
many ways of carrying it out. My way is to remember that all of the
impressions memories etc alienated in the previous stage are happening in my
own mind, that the depersonalisation is necessarily illusory. Analogous to
"cooking". (231) The intention is to prepare material which maybe the higher
centres can use. And if its all wrong maybe intention counts for something.
=> Prayer ("Ringing the dinner bell")
LA and TI are concerned with the action of higher centres.
It is a provisional supposition of mine that each point of the inner
hexagram is associated with one of the six enneagram triads, so LA and TI
would presumably be 312 and 123 respectively.
As always, I'd be interested to know what others think.
Found another refinement octavement, courtesy of Mr G.
In the chapter "Beelzebub in America" in Book 3 of _Beelzebub's Tales_ the
triad of making (unleavened) bread is discussed, in such a way as to make
the octave easily sketched in. Its page 156 of the Dover paper back edition.
Flour, according to Beelzebub is Passive, Water Active, and Fire
Neutralizing. (He discusses this in the context of ways of preserving foods,
here he is talking of the preservation of water!)
Do is the flour. (Passive)
Re and Mi refer to the sifting and other preparation of the flour.
At =>Mi-Fa the water enters (Active)
At Fa the flour has been saturated with water, the flour and water are
"mixed".
At Sol the flour has been turned into bread dough, kneaded and shaped.
At =>Sol-Fa fire enters, the oven. (Neutralizing).
At Fa the bread is baked.
At Ti or "Si" it is cooled and ready for eating.
Its interesting to compare this octave to the Food Octave as given in detail
by Ouspensky (and in less overt detail by Gurdjieff in _Beelzebub_).....and
to the attempt to define a Distilling Octave. By the theory of triads we
have lately been assuming these are all of the
"Refining" triad, 213.
The point which really strikes me immediately is the relationship beteen the
Active and Neutralizing points. The Active point involves introducing water
and the Neutralizing point involves a partial loss of water in the baking
process. This strikes me because it is similar to one of the most puzzling
points of my proposed Distilling octave. That is the Active point involves
applying heat and the Neutralizing point involves removing heat(ie the
condensing chamber.) I'd have expected Active & Passive, not Active &
Neutralizing, to have this +/-
realtionship. But it does yield one interesting prediction, as in the Food
Diagram "Air" is the Active element. Could it be that the process of
self-remembering in its biochemical aspect involves a reduction reaction of
some sort? Bring on the biochemists!
Another thing, water is "hydrogen 384", right? Properly speaking the octave
should be at 384 at Mi to enable water to fuse with it. In what sense is
this so? It occurs to me that at Mi the sifted flour is properly speaking a
mixture of flour and air, I think, which may help explain it is arounf
"hydrogen 384" and thus able to mix with water. But that is just a first
pass at an answer to that one.
For leavened bread activated yeast would be added at =>Mi-Fa with the water.
The octave of the yeast would have already begun, and would unite with the
bread octave. The activated yeast might have been used for some other
purpose (such as brewing!)...so this is an area where forking octaves can be
looked at.
The Fa-Sol "phase change" is the transformation of flour into dough, not as
might have been expected the baking itself. I think this may be important in
understanding the nature of the "phase change".
I'm running out computer time so must go. But there is a lot more in this.
I hope we can spend some time looking at this stuff indetail1
Luv,
Jeremy
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