Claudio Naranjo, Automatic Writing, & the Enneagram. One-year-out Congrats! to Marcia Montenegro and Don Veinot!

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One-year-out Congratulations to Marcia and Don!


A pastor named Tyler Zach, who promotes what he calls the "Gospel Enneagram," wrote a little tract in which he asked:

"Let's just get to the heart of the matter and ask the question: If some of the Enneagram’s origins do have occultist roots—should this fact alone be enough for Christians to stop using the Enneagram?"

His basic answer is: No, It shouldn't matter.

Strange thing is, I was actually encouraged to see this. Why?

Well, the reason is that he was responding to Claudio Naranjo's 2010 claim in an interview with E. J. Gold that when he was creating the Enneagram of Personality back in c. 1970, he had relied on automatic writing. In the same interview Naranjo also admitted that he had lied about the enneagram being an ancient teaching (see minutes 1:20-4:20 for both admissions). Zach mentions that Naranjo says he originated the enneagram in the clip but neglects to mention that he had previously lied about it (1:20-4:20).

The nice thing about this for me is that, unless I am mistaken, it was exactly one year ago, on January 27, 2020, that I found that clip and sent it on to Marcia Montenegro along with Don Veinot, both of whom ran with it and have been broadcasting its information ever since, on their web-sites in the book they wrote together (along with Joy Veinot), and then in a seemingly endless podcast appearances in which Marcia talked about it.* (Naturally this is not the first time Marcia and Don had spoken about the enneagram, Marcia, a former professional astrologer, had been on it for years).

Just one year ago though, most of the enneagram "christianizers" were blithely repeating in a host of books and videos the false claiming that the enneagram was an ancient Christian tool used by the fourth century Evagrius of Pontus and the Desert "Fathers and mothers" and the 13th/14th century Franciscan theologian Ramon Llull. But now things are starting to change as promoters of the Enneagram are actually having to discuss the true origins of the Ennegram, and to stop telling false tales about it.

To me this in itself is big step forward, which will have a positive winnowing effect in the Church by posing afresh the charge of Joshua 24:15 " Choose this day whom you shall serve." That way people can decide for themselves based on real information whether they want to derive their religious practices from the Scriptures and/or the Christian tradition, or from automatic writing, and that whole realm of Tarot cards, astrological charts, positive energy candles, and, well...the Rev. Moses' Spell & Curse-Breaker Spray.




Of course it is going to take time to get it out of the Church because peddling false stories about the enneagram has become a multi-million industry with the major Christian publishers including even InterVarsity Press, Baker Books, and Zondervan deeply compromised by it. But Zach's admission as to the source of the enneagram and his lame excuse making represents an encouraging milestone along the way.

(Now, as to the obvious question: How do I know the enneagram "christianizers" did not find that clip on their own? Well? Let me just say that I find the idea extremely unlikely since as a rule they don't do their own research but just quote each other, which is why you find seemingly endless repetition from one to the other of the same false historical claims in almost the same language, the very same out of context and misquote passages from Calvin and Augustine, etc. And there is also a tendency for them to be condescendingly dismissive toward those who might try to offer them better information. Mostly they uncritically parrot  the claims of a single book, Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert’s The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective [2001]).


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*Apart from Marcia and Don, I don't remember passing it on to anyone except recently to my old pastor Douglas Wilson, who put it in a blog post he was doing on the enneagram. And I am sure the following of that blog has had its own impact.

Comments

  1. SweetIncense27 January 2021 at 09:23

    Thank you for writing this, Ron Huggins! You make an excellent point. Now that the automatic writing source is being acknowledged, the line in the sand is much clearer. On which side of the line will people take a stand?

    ReplyDelete

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