Where does the unusual looking Enneagram symbol originate, and what is its significance?
The word Enneagram (pronounced any-a-gram), is Greek for a nine-pointed star or graph, and appears to date back to Pythagoras. The Enneagram symbol is made up of three components: the circle, the inner triangle, and the outer hexagonal figure. For our purposes, we see that the Enneagram symbol acts as a blueprint for the way in which nine character archetypes common in the human family are organized both by themselves (numerically) and in relationship to each other (intersecting lines). In The Power of Myth interview with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell defines archetypes as “expressions of the structure of the human psyche.” These nine character archetypes are best understood as the building blocks of human character in all of its variations. Your character archetype, or archetypal relational style, is an expression of how your character operates at the deepest level of your psyche. Why the family of human character archetypes is organized so perfectly by this symbol, which reveals nine
