I may be given a hard time about this, but it is my belief that the origin of the 9 types began not in some arcane place and time, but with Oscar Ichazo's discovery of the laws of the Enneagram in the 1950's.

After all, G.I. Gurdjieff, who is the only known source in the west to have delivered the enneagram here, made no reference to "typing". (He did have a unique ritual called an "idiot toast" in which he toasted one chosen student of that particular evening based on that students ego-weakness. There were not nine references to these kinds of 'idiots' though. There were many, many of them.)

I saw no reference to types in Gurdjieffs literature. I may be mistaken, and certainly I can be called on that mistake if it's so. But it would seem to me that without Gurdjieff, the enneagram would have made a slower appearance in the West, and at least, if he WAS the western "delivery boy", he would be the one to have made references to 'typing'.

If one were to get the now fast-disappearing information on the Arica Theory And System in its early stages (Ichazo's system), one would see startling parallels between the popularized enneagram types and Ichazo's theory of Protoanalysis. (There are hardly any books to be found these days, but the system itself lives in some of Ichazo's students and with Ichazo himself who lives in Hawaii.)

I may begin a thread telling the tale of how all of this stuff became so popularized and where these popular fads about it leaked from. But I may not either because it sometimes frustrates me to see how the theory has been pretty much desecrated from its original state.

The "ancient" origins of the Enneagram refer to the symbol, more than the personality descriptions.

There's a really good summary of the origins of the Enneagram in the preface to the Riso/Hudson book "The Wisdom of the Enneagram" (I don't have a copy handy at the moment, but if I can find it I'll post a little bit...)

--Ryan (Two, with a Three wing)