Should Christians Use the Enneagram?

The Enneagram is a popular tool used by many individuals, as well as corporations, to sort people into various personality profiles. There was a season where it was not uncommon to be in a conversation with somebody and have them explain their behavior by referencing their Enneagram number, or by asking you what your Enneagram number was. I actually saw a Church in my own city host an entire sermon on the Enneagram, equipping their people to utilize it for bettering themselves (this revealed that particular church’s fundamental misunderstanding of what a sermon is and what a church is… but that topic is for another time).

Many Christians feel as though the Enneagram is a harmless tool, something akin to the Meyers Brigg. But is that true? In this article I want to expose the Enneagram’s demonic roots, and demonstrate why Christians ought to refuse to participate in it.
Tracing the Demonic Origins of the Enneagram

Perhaps, the best place to begin our inquiry is by examining what the Enneagram is and where it originated. The official Enneagram Institute says the following about its origins, “The person who originally put the system together was Oscar Ichazo. Ichazo… as a young man, moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina to learn from a school of inner work he had encountered. Thereafter, he journeyed in Asia gathering other knowledge before returning to South America to begin putting together a systematic approach to all he had learned.”
Ichazo went on to create the Arica School to transmit the knowledge he had learned. The article goes on to say, “The Arica school, like any serious system of inner work, is a vast, interwoven, and sometimes complex body of teachings on psychology, cosmology, metaphysics, spirituality, and so forth, combined with various practices to bring about transformations of human consciousness.“

As you read that short snippet, you will have noticed the term “inner work” used twice. That is code language for the occult. The true story that the Enneagram Institute does not put on its website, is that Ichazo claimed to have discovered the nine points of the Enneagram as they were delivered to him by an Archangel while he was high on mescaline. Yes, you heard that right. This is the same type of thing that Mohammed claimed when he received the Quran and that Joseph Smith claimed when he received the Book of Mormon. The training that Ichazo offers at his Arica Institute includes preparations for making contact with various spiritual beings of a higher dimension, with the eventual hope of getting in touch with an “interior master” also known as the “Green Qu’Tub.” See a fascinating discussion where Naranjo (a future major proponent of the Enneagram, who trained under Ichazo and was also obsessed with hallucinogenic drugs), discusses his belief that these revelatory messages from angels actually did occur here.

In fact, there were two other predecessors of Ichazo, P. D. Ouspensky and Georges I. Gurdjieff, both well known published occultists of their day. Here are some of Ouspensky’s titles: The Fourth Dimension, Esotericism and Modern Thought (focused on the possibility of mystical knowledge),The Symbolism of the Tarot, What is Yoga, On the Study of Dream and on Hypnotism, Experimental Mysticism, Eternal Recurrence and the Laws of Manu (which was primarily concerned with time, reincarnation, and the evolution of the individual). [see more here]. Once again, I am simply trying to show that as the Enneagram developed it was consistently developed through men who believed they were engaging with higher powers, deeper consciousness, and demonic ideas.

Back to Ichazo. Read how he speaks about mankind and his nature and his purpose in this quote from an interview.

“We have to distinguish between a man as he is in essence, and as he is in ego or personality. In essence, every person is perfect, fearless, and in a loving unity with the entire cosmos; there is no conflict within the person between head, heart, and stomach or between the person and others. Then something happens: the ego begins to develop, karma accumulates, there is a transition from objectivity to subjectivity; man falls from essence into personality.”
Interviews with Ichazo, page 9

The above quote from Ichazo is the kind of thinking that is at the root of the Enneagram. He has redefined sin as some combination of ego and karma. In fact, the Scriptures teach the exact opposite of what Ichazo states above. The Bible says we are not “perfect, fearless, and in loving unity with the entire cosmos.” The Bible teaches us that we are distinct from the cosmos, that we bear the image of God, but that as a result of sin we are now imperfect, immoral beings. At our core, is a soul in need of salvation for our rebellion to God. The issue is sin, not karma and ego. The solution is Christ, not discovery of self.

For a lengthier history, including images, I recommend this summary on the Cultish Show.

So What Ought We Do?
When Christians engage with culture, we must determine to what level we can engage with various ideas and activities. Just like the first century Corinthians who had to labor through whether or not they could eat food that had been sacrificed to idols in local temples (see my article on 1 Corinthians 8), we have our cultural decisions to make, and they are not always simple. But sometimes they are!

When a Christian comes across a cultural artifact, such as the Enneagram, that was clearly rooted in the occult, and believed by its human creators to contain supernatural knowledge given to them by angelic beings while high on hallucinogenic drugs, the Christian can have no problem whatsoever refusing to participate, simply on the grounds of Galatians 1:8 “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” We do not need to look for its redemptive qualities, nor do we need to find a way to detangle the Enneagram from its spiritual roots. It is what it is.

In Acts 19, The Apostle Paul encounters a community that had been practicing occultism. When the community is convinced of Jesus’s death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins, the first thing they do is they rid themselves of everything they owned having to do with the occult.

Acts 19:18-20 "Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily."

Notice how they did not attempt to read Jesus into their occult books. They did not attempt to justify their behavior because it was popular among the people. They burned the books in a physical gesture that communicated, “Because of our love for Christ, we will have nothing to do with the demonic.” We must do likewise. The Apostle Paul commands us with quite firm language, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” If you have engaged with the Enneagram in the past, may I suggest you rid yourself of engaging with it again.
More importantly, this entire discussion brings up another vital topic, how we define ourself is a matter of great importance to God. The Enneagram’s goal is to help you define yourself. While it is not sinful to have a sense of oneself, one’s strengths, weaknesses, inconsistencies, spiritual gifts, and even an awareness of one’s personality and how we relate to others, we must learn to see the answers to all of those questions arising from the Bible up, not from angels down. The work of knowing oneself, is not as simple as taking a quick personality profile test. To know oneself, we must know God. As our soul magnifies Christ, the light we shine upon him reflects back upon us in such a way so as to bring greater understanding of our own selves as well. In other words, we know ourselves only as much as we know ourselves in reference to Christ. This requires patient reflection and meditation before God.

The great preacher Thomas Manton once wrote, “A man that is a stranger to meditation is a stranger to himself.” Meditation for a Christian is not some kind of new age emptying of one’s mind, rather it is saturation of one’s mind with the Word of God in the presence of Christ through prayer. Christians are to be a contemplative people, a reflective people, a thoughtful people, a Biblical people.

One of the reasons so many Christians raced to the Enneagram, was because the Enneagram promised quick and cheap answers to some of the bigger questions people ask about themselves, who am I? The only problem is that this particular tool was designed from the ground up, to give you answers not rooted in the truth of God’s Word, but rooted in pagan mysticism and occult/demonic revelation. We must learn to walk in the old paths once again. If we are to be a people of substance, who do not easily fall for every new age trick that is thrown at us, we must dig our foundations deep upon God’s word.
Whenever we flee one thing, we ought to race towards another. I pray this short post has provided you with a healthier direction to run.