Why is the Enneagram set up numberwise as it is?

[skylights]

This is bouncing off the questions raised in the recent "I don't buy the Enneagram" thread.

To borrow from the Enneagram Institute site, here is this:

The "Holy Virtues" of the types

and

The "Passions" of the types


But I don't much understand why they are ordered in the way they are, or why, as others have questioned, wings must lie to either side. I see no real logical progression/connection from number to number.

Can anyone explain more?

 

[Chloe]

maybe reading in this file will make it more clear to you, here, from Sandra Maitri's "the spiritual dimension of enneagram" book.

you can read from page 10 few pages ..and also first few pages (for 3,6,9 triangle)

 

[skylights]

thanks chloe

im sure i'll be back with questions once i've finished reading!!

 

[Magic Poriferan]

My opinion is that a number of people will give you explanations that might sound like they make sense, but I could probably competely change the order and then give you an explanation that sounds like it makes just as much sense.

The whole the order, the wings, the lines of intergration, etc... It's traditional, it's aesthetic, it's tidy, and it's lacking substance.

Link in my signature has much talk about this.

 

[Chloe]

My opinion is that a number of people will give you explanations that might sound like they make sense, but I could probably competely change the order and then give you an explanation that sounds like it makes just as much sense.

Making sense is not the only point. Because enneagram is descrpitive, what people noticed is happening in human psyche, and then they put it together and try to reason it to make sense why human structure is like that.

It's the same like explaining why people have 2 legs, not 3, you CANT really explain it that it makes sense only in that way, there could always be a good reasoning for 3 legs, but we all see we have 2 legs, so we try to figure out how we developed as species to here.

I think psychiatry could benefit a lot from enneagram because in psychiatric cases you see a lot of enneagram disintegrations, it's easiest to see it in 3-6-9 triangle, it looks like layers of onion. So, yeah, completely observational, but the link I posted gave me good enough explanation to accept it.
Also, saw much of myself in 9-6-3 triangle and how one goes to the other...and many people in other types, like 7-1-5

 

[Hopelandic]

I think enneagram numbers almost take on symbolic meaning (not necessarily that a number might mean something, but the number is not being used as a number); which is something I am sure has been a part of tradition from long before. Along with the shape (much like sacred geometry).

Perhaps to illustrate-

YouTube - The Enigma of Numbers (Part 1)

I think it's a very Ni system. It's as if it requires you to suspend the well known perception of the number.