For our mothers Eleanore Dreiling-Rohr Renate Apfelgrün-Mayr I am afraid to drive the demons from my life lest the angels also flee. —R. M. Rilke And God showed me that sin will be no shame, but somehow honor for humanity. . . . God’s goodness makes the contrariness which is in us very profitable for us. —Blessed Julian of Norwich The angels of darkness must disguise themselves as angels of light. —2 Corinthians 11:14 Contents Preface: A Mirror of the Soul, Andreas Ebert Preface: Discernment: How to See, How to Hear Richard Rohr Part I THE SLEEPING GIANT A Dynamic Typology The Mystery of the Number 153 Ramón Lull, 1236–1315 Breakthrough to the Totally Other A Cardinal Wakes Up A Sobering Aha-Experience Gifted Sinners The Truth Is Simple and Beautiful People Are Creatures of Habit Obsessions The Way to Self-Worth Wrong Ways and Ways Out The Three Centers: Gut, Heart, Head The Nine Faces of the Soul Part II THE NINE TYPES Preface to Part II: Original Sin, Richard Rohr Type ONE: The Need to Be Perfect Type TWO: The Need to Be Needed Type THREE: The Need to Succeed Type FOUR: The Need to Be Special Type FIVE: The Need to Perceive Type SIX: The Need for Security Type SEVEN: The Need to Avoid Pain Type EIGHT: The Need to Be Against Type NINE: The Need to Avoid Part III INNER DIMENSIONS Repentance and Reorientation Idealized Self-Image and Guilt Feelings Temptation, Avoidance, Resistance The Triple Continuum Growing with the Enneagram Jesus and the Enneagram The Enneagram and Prayer The End of Determinism An Enneagram Sermon on Christmas, Dietrich Koller The Repentance No One Regrets: Perspectives on Spiritual Work, Dietrich Koller Notes Index Summary Tables Preface A Mirror of the Soul Andreas Ebert In the late summer of 1989 three books on the Enneagram appeared in German- speaking bookstores within the space of a few weeks. One of them was the first edition of this book. Since then more than three hundred thousand copies of it have been handed across shop counters, and the original text has been translated into many other languages. Richard Rohr and I have given numerous lectures and conferences on the Enneagram. The German “Ecumenical Enneagram Working Group” (based in Celle), which has more than five hundred members, has developed a lively organizational life. We have had the opportunity of getting to know other important Enneagram teachers and learning from them. And so it was high time to rework and update our book. But we have given up any really grand-scale solution. That would have meant rewriting the book and working into it the flood of literature that has since come out. We have decided instead on a small-scale solution, since our readers can acquire an overview of the Enneagram itself through other approaches and perspectives. Our book has remained substantially the same. We have inserted only the new insights that we ourselves have come upon and that have become especially important to us. This relates especially to the history of how the Enneagram came into being. Since the first edition we have become convinced that the Enneagram does not derive from medieval Islamic (Sufi) sources, but can be traced back, at least in part, to the Christian desert monk Evagrius Ponticus (d. 399) and the Franciscan Blessed Ramón Lull (1236–1315). Above and beyond that, we have made a few stylistic improvements. The original text of this book has an unusual prehistory. In 1985 when I visited Richard Rohr, he was still the leader of the New Jerusalem family community in Cincinnati. He first introduced me to the Enneagram, which he was using in the framework of pastoral care for his community. At that point there was scarcely anything in print on the Enneagram. In the summer of 1988 I had a chance to take part, at Richard Rohr’s new place, the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in an Enneagram workshop lasting several days. Meanwhile the situation in the United States had changed. Since the mid-1980s a whole series of books on the Enneagram had appeared; many psychologists and theologians were now of the opinion that the Enneagram was an excellent tool to help people on their way to spiritual and mental growth. After my return from the United States I hesitated whether to translate one of the Enneagram books that had been published in America or instead make a book out of Richard Rohr’s taped workshop, with his impromptu talks. For various reasons I chose the latter option. Richard Rohr was already familiar to the German-speaking public thanks to his books The Wild Man and The Naked God. I felt that his style of lecturing—not always systematic, but lively and spontaneous—was more appropriate for communicating the Enneagram than a presentation with high scholarly pretensions. In addition, I have also taken pains to work up the literature that has since appeared. This applies above all to the first and third parts of this book. Beyond that, I had already gathered a series of my own experiences with the Enneagram, and they too have made their way into this edition. While working on this book, I learned that here and there—and unbeknownst to anyone—in the German-speaking world, people had been dealing with the Enneagram. A number of Jesuits and the Catholic “Communities of Christian Life” had used it for retreats and the training of spiritual counselors. In particular, the final product owes essential impulses to Hildegard Ehrtmann, whose participation in Enneagram work was crucial. Finally, I have made use here of the feedback from one of the first German Enneagram conferences, which took place in 1989 at Schloss Craheim in Lower Franconia. Almost seventy participants, including a number of pastors and therapists, critically examined the concept and gave me valuable feedback. Special thanks must go to Marion Küstenmacher, who was an editor at Claudius Verlag back then. She accompanied the creation of the book from the beginning and kept spurring it on with her enthusiasm. Since then she herself has become an internationally known and respected Enneagram teacher and author.