Talk:Fourth Way enneagram

Here we are

OK, the split was reasonable; althoguh few people, I'm sure, know of any enneagram other than the fourth way enneagram, I really wonder if the geometric enneagram needs a separate article.
It is not reasonable to merge the present article with "enneagram of personality" as has apparently been suggested. The enneagram is an important symbol and tool of a school of thought which has been an important intellectual influence in the 20th century. The "personality enneagram" is one fashionable and disputed application of it. Some readers regard the whole subject as "occult nonsense" of course, that is a POV among others.
I'm not sure what the tags about citations are on about. There is a large part of the article explicating the enneagram without detailed citation, it is all drawn from Ouspensky"s In Search of the Miraculous referred to in text. Of course page numbers should be supplied; the parts I wrote are deficient in that too. I will remove the uncited reference to Mouravieff, Mouravieff does refer to the enneagram but is of very doubtful relevance. The uncited refrence has been sitting there for months. And what is wrong with the tone? Is the problem that the article doesn't call the subject of the article "occult nonsense"? What "tone" is expected for articles on the Christian superstition? Jeremy (talk) 10:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

No, we're not supposed to call anything occult nonsense. In its current version, however, this article seems to assume that the enneagram hypotheses are true, which is also "a POV among others." - ∅ (∅), 12:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Kewl. I've read the application section through and can't find what the tone problem is. I've added an intext source note but even as the matter stood the section began "according to Gurdjieff" and so far as I can see doesn't deviate from that attitude or tone. Where does it? Can you quote something objectionable? The section simply explicates the concept. If every sentence is meant to begin "none of this is scientifically proven but the idea is" then we can apply the same principle to other sites. I understand the concern about promotion, and have seen plenty of articles on wikipedia which justify it, but I can't see that this is one of them. Also the referencing tag is mispalced. The tag the article needs is the one calling for page numbers, that would be a fair cop.

This is not to say that the article as it stands has no problems apart from page numbers. The subject of the enneagram is a huge one, the difficulty from the wikipedia point of view may be that a satisfactory article would be too long. The problem will probably have to be covered by more complete references....the "enneagram of essence types" as developed by Collins-lineage Fourth way should be mentioned for example; and the work done on the enneagram by Bennet-lineage people. Jeremy (talk) 08:32, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I've replaced the tone tag with {{pagenumbers}} and {{OR}} with {{primarysources}}. - ∅ (∅), 16:22, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

OK......now I wonder if the primary sources tag is appropriate? It surely approriately refers to an article about a person of a group of people, and article on a Fourth Way group for example could not rely on that groups publications for an account of its doings......but for an account of the concepts of that group waht else should one rely on? There are different Fourht Way groups which have different ways of using the enneagram of course. More of them should be cited in the article. But, look, consider an article on transactioanl analysis for example. I'll have a look at the article on transactional analysis, just a shot in the dark but I suspect that when the article discusses the meaning of the Parent and Child psychological levels in transactional analysis it uses as references.....writings from within transactional analysis! The only other place likley to describe the concepts would be another encyclopedia. Presumably wikipedia is not meant to just copy from other encyclopedias. Jeremy (talk) 09:03, 21 January 2008 (UTC) Yeah as I thought. The TA page expounds TA theories at length and with little detailed referencing using Ta materials as source. Fair enough, and also fair enough for tthe Fourth Way use of the enneagram. It is going to have to rely primarily on Fourth way sources.....or on another encyclopedia! An online variation of the the material in ISOTM is at [1]. Incidentally Iwas wrong to say that the enneagram was first published (in hard copy) in 1947, it was first published in aflyer in 1927 or thereabouts. Jeremy (talk) 09:21, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I think a primary source would be something by Gurdjieff on this topic. Perhaps something like the lecture from Ouspensky's book, it is purportedly the text of Gurdjieff's lecture, so could serve as primary materials for the article. The citation would then be something like: The Enneagram, A Lecture by G.I. Gurdjieff, from Chapter 14 of In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky. There is a version of the text of this lecture here: http://www.endlesssearch.co.uk/philo_enneagramtalk.htm, which could be added to external links.Sreed888 (talk) 04:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)