As Christians around the world celebrate Easter, over a hundred million Egyptians will be preparing for an ancient festival of their own. The day after Coptic Easter Sunday (Monday 13th April this year), they will rise before dawn, pack picnic baskets with coloured eggs, salted fish, spring onions and prickly lettuce, and head outdoors to welcome the new season. They call this festival Sham el-Nessim, which in Arabic means “smell of the breeze”, and Egyptians have been celebrating it, in essentially this same form, for at least five thousand years.

This makes Sham el-Nessim one of the oldest continuously observed festivals on Earth. Its name derives from Šmw (pronounced ‘Shemu’), the ancient Egyptian season of Harvest and Low Water, whose arrival around the vernal equinox was observed in festivals dating back to at least the 3rd Dynasty (c. 2,700 BCE)1. The core elements of the festival have survived intact through every successive era of Egyptian history: Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, Roman, Christian, and Islamic. The foods, the decorated eggs, and the act of going outdoors at dawn to breathe in the first breath of the new season have all remained the same. And so has the timing: both Easter and Sham el-Nessim are tied to the same ancient astronomical calculation, though Western and Coptic traditions now land on different dates.

The Death and Resurrection of Ausir (Osiris)

In ancient Egyptian mythology, Ausir2 (Osiris) who symbolised the mortal human carrying the potential for spiritual salvation, was killed and buried on the fifth day of an eight-day festival period. Egyptians called that day "the Loss of Ausir". On the seventh day of the festival, being the third day after his death, Ausir was resurrected as the judge and king of the dead, renewed and restored3.

The parallels with the story of Jesus are clear: Jesus was crucified, his body laid in a tomb, and he was resurrected on the third day. The date of Christian Easter was established by the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE based on the same calendrical system used by the ancient Egyptians for thousands of years before the council met. The fact that Western and Coptic Easter now fall on different dates is due to their use of different ecclesiastical calendars rather than the actual astronomical event4.

Like the biblical Jesus, Ausir symbolises the divine in mortal form, and, just like Jesus, Ausir’s death and resurrection offer the promise of eternal life to those who follow the spiritual teachings. In death the Egyptian king was assimilated to Ausir, and since the king represented all people, all people in death were Ausir. The Egyptian Book of Coming Forth by Day (erroneously called the Book of the Dead) is in fact a detailed guide to resurrection in life as well as death, to spiritual awakening and the renewal of life after the passage through darkness.

Ausir and the lunar cycle

Ausir was a lunar neter (god) and so we can look to the Egyptian lunar calendar for important insights into the real meaning of the mythology. The first day of the Egyptian thirty-day lunar month5 is called Psḏtyw (pronounced 'Pesedjetiw'); this is the day of the invisible moon, a liminal threshold between the death of the old and the birth of the new moon.

The word 'Pesedjetiw' shares its root with Pesedjet, from which this publication takes its name, and with the verb pesedj, "to shine". So the day of the perceived absence of the moon carries within it associations with radiance and the completeness of the nine6. The ancient Egyptians were well aware that on this day the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction, rising and setting at nearly the same time and journeying across the daytime sky as one. It is because the Moon is aligned with the Sun that it cannot be seen on this day.

Egyptian temple texts describe the lunar cycle of the Moon (Khonsu in Egyptian) with the phrase:

“He is conceived on Psḏtyw [Pesedjetiw]; he is born on Tp Ꜣbd [Tep ah-bed]; he grows old after Tp Smdt [Tep Semdet].”7

So the Moon dies, is conceived in union with the Sun, and is reborn as the first visible crescent across a three-day cycle spanning the boundary between one lunar month and the next.

Here are the key days of the lunar month as described by Egyptian cosmology:8

• Day 30, The Going Forth of Min: the last day of the old month as the waning crescent dies.

• Day 1, Ennead Day: the Moon is present but invisible as it transits the daytime sky in tandem with the Sun. This day marks the threshold between death and rebirth, and the moment of conception of the new moon.

• Day 2, Beginning of the month: this is the rebirth, the first light of the new cycle as the new moon is sighted for the first time.

• Day 15, Day of the full moon: this day marks the halfway point in the Egyptian lunar month, the astrological point at which the Sun and Moon are in opposition, which is seen on Earth as a full moon.

The three-day resurrection pattern of death, absence, and rebirth on the third day was written into the Egyptian lunar calendar itself, thousands of years before Christianity existed – and celebrated with a festival at the same time as Christian Easter.

The Egyptian ‘Osirian’ Mysteries in Europe

At this point, we might reasonably ask: how did an ancient Egyptian tradition come to be connected to one of the principal festivals in the Christian tradition, named in northern Europe under a Germanic name – Easter?9

The answer lies in the widespread veneration of Isis and Osiris across the Roman Empire. By the second and third centuries CE, temples to Isis and Serapis (a Greco-Egyptian deity incorporating aspects of Osiris) stood in most major towns across the empire. The fact is that across much of the Roman Empire it was normal to find temples dedicated to Egyptian neters (gods), together with their symbolic mythology, until the late fourth century CE, when imperial Christianity was imposed as the sole state religion.

The central mythology of Isis and Osiris concerned the death and resurrection of Osiris, enacted through religious rites that symbolised the natural cycles of life, death and renewal. Within this tradition, Osiris represented the sacred masculine10, while the generative principle of the divine feminine was honoured through the archetype of Isis, who would become Mary mother of Jesus in the Christian story.

When, in the fourth century CE, the imperial Christian Church adopted the timing and structure of the Egyptian equinox festival, it was not borrowing from an alien culture far away. It was absorbing a tradition that was well established, woven into the religious fabric of the Roman world and already practised in the very cities where the new faith was taking root.

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Could ‘Easter’ be connected to ‘Ausir’?

And so we come to the word “Easter” itself. It derives from the Old English Ēostre and Old High German Ôstara, traced by linguists to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to shine” or “to glow red at dawn”. The same root gives us “east”, the direction of the rising sun, and the ancient Greek Eos (Ἠώς), the goddess of the dawn whose name literally means the daily rebirth of light.

These concepts are remarkably similar to associations with Ausir in Egyptian cosmology, but Western etymology continues to insist that there was no significant influence on the ancient Greek language from ancient Egyptian. I disagree, not least because the ancient Greek authors themselves repeatedly acknowledged Egypt as a foundational civilisational source for their religious practices, priestly traditions, and cosmological understanding11.

The Coptic form of Ausir, Ousire, provides us with the most accurately defined pronunciation of his name, and it is remarkably close to the Germanic Eostre and Ostara, which encode the same cosmological associations: the shining one who returns from the east, the light reborn from darkness. And between them sits the Greek Eos, a dawn goddess whose name shares similar phonetics, in a culture which consistently acknowledged Egypt as the source of their religious knowledge. Could Eos be the missing link between Ausir, Eostre, and Easter?

The Eurocentric field of etymology, steeped in colonial intellectual bias, still struggles to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence for a strong African influence on Classical European culture. Its rigid separation of Indo-European and Afroasiatic language families which is the basis for dismissing any such connection, is increasingly tenuous. The gatekeeping of etymology exposes the field to charges of being a colonial project, and the assumption that ancient Egypt could not have influenced European languages and traditions exemplifies precisely the kind of bias that post-colonial academia would do well to move beyond.

Smell of the breeze

Easter in the Christian tradition and Sham el-Nessim in Egyptian culture share exactly the same origin and meaning, associated with both the return of the Sun at the equinox and the monthly cycle of death and rebirth of the Moon, in a festival that has endured for five millennia without interruption.

In the Western tradition, Easter’s associations with painted eggs, chicks and bunny rabbits conceal a thinly veiled ancient celebration of fertility and the renewal of life. Westerners may choose to celebrate Easter in the Christian tradition or the older ‘pagan’ customs from which the festival ultimately derives. Likewise, Sham el-Nessim is celebrated by all Egyptians regardless of their belief system, because it predates both Christianity and Islam.

In the Egyptian version of the festival, painted eggs are enjoyed along with a typically Egyptian instinct to welcome the season of harvest and plenty by “smelling the breeze” as the weather warms up.

Crucially, in ancient Egyptian understanding, the breath represents the spirit of life. When Aset (Isis) restored Ausir (Osiris) to life, she did so through her breath, using magic words of power spoken into the re-membered body of the dead Ausir. Five thousand years later, modern Egyptians will step outside, turn their faces to the rising sun, and breathe in the morning air, in an ancient ancestor of the Christian Easter festival. What more evocative symbolism could there be than smelling the breeze to celebrate the cycle of life?

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Orage was buried in the typically overgrown English churchyard of St John-at-Hampstead, right behind a cinema and the shops of upmarket Hampstead in north London. His gravestone, carved with the Enneagram, is the earliest physical representation of the symbol known to exist, predating its first appearance in print by fourteen years1.

Beyond historical curiosity, the symbol, the inscription, and the circumstances of its creation strongly suggest that Gurdjieff himself may have been involved in the design of this monument to the memory of Orage.

Orage’s finely carved gravestone

Made from high-quality stone, the carving remains sharp and, after more than ninety years in situ, it is noticeably less weathered than many of the surrounding gravestones. At the top is the Enneagram: the distinctive nine-pointed symbol that Gurdjieff transmitted only through personal teaching and sacred movements until it was first published in 1949, the same year he died.

Beneath the symbol, carved in capital letters, is a passage from the Bhagavad Gita. And beneath that is simply written: A.R. ORAGE, 1873 1934.

When I visited the grave recently I found the sight of this beautifully carved symbol lying in such an incongruous location strangely moving. This is the oldest surviving physical image of the Enneagram known to exist, carved in stone while Gurdjieff was still alive and actively teaching. This monument, now largely forgotten, offers a revealing glimpse into the thinking of Orage’s pupils at the time of his death – and perhaps into that of Gurdjieff as well.

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The Real Never Ceaseth to Be

The inscription on the gravestone reads:

THOU GRIEVEST FOR THOSE THAT SHOULD NOT BE GRIEVED FOR
THE WISE GRIEVE NEITHER FOR THE LIVING NOR FOR THE DEAD
NEVER AT ANY TIME WAS I NOT NOR THOU NOR THESE PRINCES OF MEN
NOR SHALL WE EVER CEASE TO BE HEREAFTER
THE UNREAL HAS NO BEING
THE REAL NEVER CEASETH TO BE

These words from Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita come from the moment when Krishna begins to teach the despairing warrior Arjuna about the eternal nature of the Self. This is the foundational philosophical teaching that the rest of the Gita develops: that the body is perishable but the soul — the Ātman, the true Self — is indestructible, eternal, and beyond all change. “The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead”, Krishna says, because that which is Real cannot be touched by death.

The choice of epitaph was apposite because Orage had studied the Bhagavad Gita since his days as a young schoolteacher in Leeds, years before he encountered either P.D. Ouspensky or Gurdjieff. Besides being central to Orage’s understanding of the spiritual path, the Gita resonates strongly with Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way teaching, which is fundamentally concerned with answering the same question: what is real? What in us is permanent, and what is merely the shifting, mechanical personality that we mistake for our true self? Gurdjieff’s teaching emphasised the need to cultivate and strengthen an embryonic soul, a higher self that exists within every human being, but can only be developed through conscious inner work. He drew a clear distinction between “essence” – the authentic core of a person, often buried beneath layers of conditioning – and “personality”, the acquired patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaviour with which most people habitually identify.

The gravestone inscription therefore speaks directly to the concerns that energised Orage’s study of the Gita and his work with Gurdjieff: the distinction between the Real and the unreal, essence and personality. For a man who signed an oath to excommunicate himself, symbolically severing his attachment to ego, there could be no more fitting epitaph than an affirmation that the Real never ceases to be.

The leaves of the sacred fig tree

The inscription draws on more than one chapter from the Bhagavad Gita, and the passages are separated by heart-shaped leaves of the sacred fig tree, known in Sanskrit as ashvattha. The word ashvattha, which means “that which does not remain the same tomorrow”, is a reminder that individual forms are transient, even as the source that animates them remains unchanged.

In Vedantic tradition, the relationship between leaf and tree reflects the relationship between the individual and the eternal: while alive the leaf appears connected, drawing its life entirely from the tree; in death it decays and falls, yet the tree endures.

This is precisely the teaching of the gravestone’s inscription. We grieve for bodies, for personalities, and for the forms we mistake for selves, but the Real — the tree-nature immanent in the leaf, the eternal within the transient — never ceases to be. We grieve for the impermanence of the individual form, while forgetting the eternal reality from which each form arises.

The leaves of the ashvattha tree in the design function as symbolic punctuation in the text, while simultaneously invoking the Gita’s cosmology of the eternal and the transient. This is clearly no ordinary gravestone; it is a sophisticated work of art that expresses in word and symbolism the central question of human existence: the distinction between the Real and the unreal.

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Life is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’

On 6th November 1934, the day he learned of Orage’s death, Gurdjieff immediately began work on his final book: Life is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’. The thematic connection between the book’s title and the gravestone inscription is unmistakable — and it’s hard to believe this is coincidence.

The gravestone declares that “the Real never ceaseth to be”, whilst Gurdjieff’s book answers a question this raises: how do we encounter the Real? Only, he suggests, in the moment of self-remembering, when “I Am”. This sets up a curious counterpoint between the gravestone and the book, centred on Orage’s death — one affirming the eternal nature of the Real, the other signposting how it may be encountered in life.

Orage is mentioned repeatedly throughout Life is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’, with dozens of references across the chapters. In the book’s final essay, “The Outer and Inner World of Man”, Gurdjieff specifically refers to the death of Orage while reflecting on the relationship between a person’s inner and outer life. The book also draws on Gurdjieff’s experience with the American groups that Orage had established and led for several years before his dramatic excommunication and return to England in 1930.

Despite the rupture, Orage’s devotion to Gurdjieff never faltered. C.S. Nott remembers a conversation at the end of October 1934 while walking with Orage along Chancery Lane in London: “Then the talk came round to our life at Fontainebleau2 and our friends in New York. Suddenly he turned to me and said, ‘You know, I thank God every day of my life that I met Gurdjieff.’ A week later he was dead.”3

This connection builds a compelling case that both the gravestone and the book constitute a unified memorial to Orage, and that Gurdjieff almost certainly influenced the gravestone’s inscription and the inclusion of the Enneagram symbol.

A Monument to an Inner World Essence Friend

Let us consider this sequence of events: Orage dies on 6th November 1934. Gurdjieff sends a heartfelt personal message to inform Orage’s students of his death, and begins writing his final book the same day. The gravestone — incorporating the Enneagram symbol from Gurdjieff’s teaching and passages from the Bhagavad Gita — is designed and installed, most likely in 1935.

For over three decades, Gurdjieff transmitted the Enneagram only through oral teaching and the sacred dances known as the Movements, and the symbol never appeared in his own books. When it did finally appear in print — in Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, published in 1949 — this book rapidly became an esoteric classic and placed the Enneagram in the public domain. But Orage’s gravestone came first, predating Ouspensky’s book by fourteen years. So this is a significant memorial; it is effectively the Enneagram’s first publication, carved in stone to honour a student and teacher who was central to its early transmission.

It is almost inconceivable that Orage’s students would have revealed the Enneagram in such a public and permanent form without Gurdjieff’s personal authorisation. They understood the significance of the symbol and it is therefore highly unlikely they would have made such a decision without permission from Gurdjieff.

If Gurdjieff did authorise use of the Enneagram symbol on the gravestone, the likelihood that he had a hand in its design is extremely high. The choice of the Bhagavad Gita passage, its resonance with Fourth Way teaching, and its correspondence with the title of the book he was writing, strongly suggest that the gravestone bears Gurdjieff’s signature.

The Enneagram, a universal symbol of cosmic law and inner transformation, rests above the mortal remains of a man who understood that the true Self is not the body or the mechanical patterns of ego — it is eternal and indestructible. Orage was buried beneath a symbol of perpetual transformation and words affirming that the Real endures beyond death. In this light, the gravestone is a monument to awakening — to becoming Real while still alive, and that which endures in death.

Gurdjieff once said of Orage: “I loved Orage as brother. There was indeed in him, together with the inevitable human faults and weaknesses — the denying part — such a composition of the positive qualities that all sorts and conditions of men could not help but love and respect him.”4

Taking everything into account, my view is this: Gurdjieff honoured his “brother” Orage with the ultimate tribute — the first representation of the Enneagram symbol ever to be made public, thereby creating a unique and lasting memorial to his “inner world essence friend.”5

For those who work with the Enneagram today, Orage’s gravestone deserves full recognition. It exists as a reminder that the Enneagram emerged from a tradition of serious inner work, practised by early pioneers such as Orage who sought to understand the difference between the Real and the unreal.

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Endnote:

The death of Alfred Orage must have come as a personal tragedy for the family he left behind. His second wife, Jessie, was 28 years younger and only 33 when he died. The couple also had two young children: their son Richard was 5, and their daughter Ann just 1.

In the grave next to Alfred R Orage lie:
- Jessie R Orage (b Dwight) 1901-1985 [Wife]
- Ann S Bizony (b Orage) 1933-1983 [Daughter]
- Richard Orage 1929-1990 [Son]
- Anne B Orage (b Hornby) 1929-2014 [Daughter-in-law]

The gravestone of Alfred R. Orage can be found in the churchyard of St John-at-Hampstead, Church Row, Hampstead, London NW3 6UU.

Since then, enthusiasts and researchers, myself included, have sought the Enneagram’s origins in the distant past. We have combed through ancient manuscripts, examined esoteric symbols, and traced the teachings of obscure spiritual lineages from the East, hoping to locate the source of the symbol2. But despite extensive searching, no verifiable trace of the symbol has ever been shown to predate Gurdjieff.

The Enneagram first appeared in print in 1949 in P.D. Ouspensky’s comprehensive account of the teachings of Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous. But few realise that the earliest surviving physical representation of the Enneagram symbol is neither ancient nor Eastern. It is carved into a gravestone in a north London churchyard, where it has lain forgotten for over ninety years.

The gravestone marks the final resting place of Alfred Orage, a close associate of Gurdjieff, who died in 1934.

A twentieth century literary influencer

Alfred Richard Orage (1873–1934) was an influential figure in early twentieth-century Britain, though his name is little known today. He grew up in grinding poverty in Huntingdonshire, after his father, a schoolmaster who had “fecklessly drank” and gambled away a small Cambridgeshire farm, died when Orage was barely a year old. Orage eventually became a schoolteacher in Yorkshire whilst also mixing with Theosophists in the north of England and studying Plato, Nietzsche, and the Bhagavad Gita. As such he belonged to an early twentieth-century current that sought to integrate Eastern and Western philosophical and spiritual traditions.

In 1907, with financial backing from the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, Orage moved to London and bought a small weekly magazine called The New Age which he transformed into what Shaw himself called “the best magazine of literature and ideas England had produced since the eighteenth century”3.

Through its pages passed a who’s who of twentieth century literary figures: G.K. Chesterton, H.G. Wells, Ezra Pound, T.E. Hulme, Wyndham Lewis, and Katherine Mansfield, who Orage mentored as a writer. T.S. Eliot called Orage the best literary critic of his time.

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Orage, Ouspensky, Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way

Orage first met P.D. Ouspensky in 1914, when the Russian philosopher visited London having spent years searching for spiritual and philosophical teachings across Europe, Egypt, India, and Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka). Ouspensky’s ideas left a lasting impression on Orage, even though it would be another year before Ouspensky would meet Gurdjieff – and the Enneagram – following his return to Moscow in 1915. In 1921, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Ouspensky settled in London and began lecturing on what he called “Fragments of an Unknown Teaching”.

Captivated by the lectures, Orage attended regularly, and in February 1922, Ouspensky introduced him to Gurdjieff. The effect was decisive: at the height of his influence, Orage sold The New Age and moved to France to study at Gurdjieff’s school, the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, newly established at the Château du Prieuré just south of Paris4.

As a pupil of Gurdjieff, Orage traded his sedentary London life for manual labour, a key feature of Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way approach: digging ditches and carrying stones quickly transformed the formerly overweight editor into a thin, strong man. Gurdjieff, recognising both Orage’s talents and the urgent need for funds following his near-fatal car crash in 1924, sent Orage to America to establish study groups and raise money. It’s possible that the move may also have been prompted by Gurdjieff’s unease at Orage’s formidable intellect.

For seven years, Orage served as Gurdjieff’s principal representative in America, teaching in New York, and labouring over the English translation of Gurdjieff’s hugely complex allegorical work, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. Orage was, as Gurdjieff later acknowledged, “the first and chief representative of my ideas in America.”5

Then, in November 1930, Gurdjieff arrived in New York and unceremoniously excommunicated Orage.

Separated by a double-bound oath

Gurdjieff accused Orage of teaching incorrectly by emphasising self-observation without self-remembering. He disbanded Orage’s study groups and demanded that anyone wishing to continue working with him take an oath never to communicate with Orage again … and then Orage signed the oath himself6.

Orage’s act was profoundly Gurdjieffian: by signing an oath never to communicate with himself, he was in effect excommunicating his own ego. It was the ultimate act of self-remembering, and when Gurdjieff heard this, he wept. Gurdjieff had once called Orage a friend and brother; now they were separated by a double-bound oath – one that Orage had taken against himself. Yet unlike Ouspensky, whose 1924 split from Gurdjieff broke their connection for life, Orage appears to have continued working with Gurdjieff — communicating, advising, and helping to translate and edit his books — despite the oath.

Orage returned to England in 1930 and founded a new journal, The New English Weekly, cofounding the Social Credit movement7, an economic reform programme designed to address the inequities of industrial capitalism. In 1933, as editor of The New English Weekly, Orage printed “And Death Shall Have No Dominion”, the first published poem by an unknown Welsh teenager, Dylan Thomas.

Poverty, plenty, and death

On the evening of 5th November 1934, Orage stood before a BBC microphone to deliver a speech on Social Credit as part of a series called “Poverty in Plenty”. For the first time in his life, a man who had spent decades addressing readers in the low thousands had an audience in the hundreds of thousands.

During the broadcast, Orage experienced excruciating chest pain. He had suffered from what doctors called ‘functional’ pain below the heart for some years but had not sought further medical advice on the matter. He managed to complete the broadcast, then spent the evening with his wife and friends, making plans to see a doctor the following day. Returning home after midnight he went to bed and never woke up.

When Gurdjieff received the news in New York, he issued an invitation to a memorial service, writing: “I have just now learned of the death of Mr. Orage, who was for many years your guide and teacher and my inner world essence friend.” That same day, 6th November 1934, Gurdjieff began writing his final book: Life Is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’.

Orage was buried in the churchyard of the parish church of St John-at-Hampstead in London where his gravestone, carved with the Enneagram symbol, was likely installed in 1935, making it the earliest image of the Enneagram known to exist.

Orage’s gravestone is a fitting setting for the earliest surviving representation of the Enneagram, not least because Gurdjieff insisted that the symbol must be thought of as moving; a motionless Enneagram, he said, is a dead symbol. There is something poetic in the oldest known Enneagram set in stone at the grave of a man devoted to awakening the best in human nature.

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In Part 2, The First Public Enneagram: A Monument to Alfred Orage, I examine the gravestone in detail: its inscription, its symbolism, and the compelling evidence that Gurdjieff himself may have had a hand in the design as a tribute to his “inner world essence friend”.

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With this foundation in place, we can explore the ancient Egyptian version of the tetractys. In this article we will discover a symbolic encoding of the tetractys that is more sophisticated than the later Greek version. We will recreate the ancient Egyptian tetractys in a form that appears to have been lost since the closure of the last Egyptian temples, restoring a symbolic design in which genesis is revealed through form rather than explanation.

Reading Egyptian Sacred Geometry

Western academia credits the tetractys to ancient Greece, most famously associating it with Pythagoras and his followers. However, when René Schwaller de Lubicz states that the tetractys “originated in Egypt”1 what did he mean?

The challenge in answering this question lies in how the ancient Egyptians transmitted knowledge. The Egyptians never wrote explanatory papers or theoretical treatises in the way the ancient Greeks did, and a format our Western mind can readily understand. This can make Egyptian cosmological concepts challenging to comprehend for a predominantly literal and analytical Western academic mindset. The Egyptians were symbolists who transmitted knowledge through analogy, association, and inference rather than direct explanation.

To read Egyptian hieroglyphs and art through a symbolist lens requires a mental re‑wiring for the Western mind, but once understood much of their communication becomes clear as day. And once we understand there are no coincidences in Egyptian sacred art2, we can begin to understand the symbolic relevance of every detail: the meaning becomes clear, it is so because it can only be so.

In Egyptian art, creative expression came second to geometric design, and geometry was "a sacred science to the Egyptians"3. They had little interest in abstract mathematical theories, preferring instead to creatively express the actual structure of reality.

The Egyptian Tetractys Revealed

If you know how to read symbolically, the tetractys is concealed within a common motif in ancient Egypt, appearing on ceilings “found all over Ancient Egyptian tombs and temples, throughout its history”4 as an array of golden five-pointed stars on a midnight blue ground5. These stars are often arranged in a precise configuration that discloses the tetractys itself.

This ceiling from Queen Nefertari's tomb in the Valley of the Queens in Waset (modern Luxor) shows the characteristic design. Look closely at how the stars are arranged: they form a precise geometric matrix of interlocking tetractyses. If we look for the simplified Greek tetractys in ancient Egypt we won’t find it because the Egyptians were symbolists not literalists. Instead, this ceiling is a clear example of how the ancient Egyptians used symbolic design to transmit knowledge through form, number, and principle.

The accuracy of this alignment – replicated across an entire ceiling in a tomb intended to be concealed for eternity – is remarkable. Far from being superficial decoration, the five-pointed star design encodes the highest principles of the Egyptians’ sacred science. So what is the significance of the five-pointed star?

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The Egyptian 3:4:5 Triangle

The geometric theorem attributed to Pythagoras states that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides: for example, a triangle with sides of 3 and 4 has a hypotenuse of 5. Yet this principle was used in Egyptian sacred architecture long before Pythagoras – who almost certainly learned it from the Egyptians – presented it as an abstract theory in the form familiar to us today. Whereas the Greeks approached it conceptually, the Egyptians applied it practically: to lay out a precise 3:4:5 triangle, they used a 13-knotted rope which creates twelve equally spaced intervals.

[Note: the image above shows a single length of rope consisting of two end knots with eleven knots in-between which create twelve equally spaced gaps. What isn’t obvious in the image is that one of the three rope stretchers is holding the beginning and the end of the rope, so two knots together, while the other two rope stretchers are each holding one of the in-between knots.]

Fortunately, the Greek philosopher Plutarch6 bequeathed an explanation of the geometric and mythical significance of the numbers 3, 4 and 5 in ancient Egyptian sacred science. Writing in Isis and Osiris, Plutarch preserved the Egyptian understanding in an analytical format we can readily understand:

“One might conjecture that the Egyptians hold in high honour the most beautiful of the triangles, since they liken the nature of the Universe most closely to it … This triangle has its upright of three units, its base of four, and its hypotenuse of five, whose power is equal to that of the other two sides. The upright, therefore, may be likened to the male, the base to the female, and the hypotenuse to the child of both, and so Osiris [Ausar] may be regarded as the origin, Isis [Auset] as the recipient, and Horus [Heru] as perfected result7. Three is the first perfect odd number: four is a square whose side is the even number two; but five is in some ways like to its father, and in some ways like to its mother, being made up of three and two. And panta [all] is a derivative of pente [five], and they speak of counting as ‘numbering by fives.’”

This passage encodes an important Egyptian understanding of both geometry and genesis. The 3:4:5 triangle functions as a symbolic structure through which the Egyptians expressed principles of creation.

Let us examine the symbolism of Plutarch’s extraordinary passage to reveal its full sophistication:

Ausar (Osiris) is 3 - the first perfect odd number, the masculine principle, standing upright. Three represents the vertical, the rising force, the generative power, the father principle.

Auset (Isis) is 4 - the square of 2 (2×2), the feminine principle, forming the horizontal base. Four represents the foundation, the receptive power, the womb, the mother principle that receives and nurtures that which the father initiates.

Heru (Horus) is 5 — the hypotenuse, the offspring, the “perfected result”. As the synthesis of 2 and 3, five partakes of both father and mother, unifying their principles in a new form8.

Rather than functioning only as a quantitative number in a linear sequence, for the Egyptians the number five represented the synthesis of the primary cosmic forces: two and three, duality expressed as feminine and masculine, united in the perfected child. Male and female principles in creative union produce a child that embodies both, whilst existing independently as something new and whole.

Five Encoded in the Stars

As Moustafa Gadalla explains, “five is the key to understanding the manifested universe … The Star was the Egyptian symbol for both destiny and the number five”9.

The five-pointed star is therefore the key detail that confirms this symbolic reading of the Egyptian stellar ceiling design, since the principle of five, Heru (Horus) as the synthesis of 2 and 3, is present in all ten positions of the Egyptian tetractys. The use of the five-pointed star as the organising structure of the geometric design is breathtaking in its simplicity10.

For the first time since the end of the Egyptian era, we can now recreate the Egyptian tetractys in a form that would have made sense to an ancient Egyptian sage.

This reading reveals a full understanding of this sacred symbol for what may be the first time in millennia, suggesting an Egyptian provenance for the later Greek version of the tetractys.

The Egyptians encoded their wisdom in a form that encouraged understanding through symbolic seeing: the capacity to perceive multiple layers held within a single design. The stellar ceiling is Egyptian sacred geometry at its most sophisticated, transmitting knowledge that transcends words in a design that still functions perfectly, millennia later. In its elegant simplicity, the Egyptian tetractys demonstrates that five represents the emergence of Spirit into form.

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Dear Pesedjeters,

It has been a great enlightenment (literally!) to learn about the ancient Egyptian language through my research into origins of the Enneagram. The process has been fascinating, frequently throwing up curious surprises - and here’s a seasonal one.

In the northern hemisphere the Sun ‘dies’ on the 21st December when it reaches its lowest elevation in the sky. During this period the Sun spends the maximum amount of time ‘buried’ below the horizon.

The Sun stays at its lowest elevation for 3 days before perceptibly rising higher in the sky for the first time on 25th December. (This is why a great number of messiahs are born on 25th December.)

Three interesting words exist in ancient Egyptian:

• Meri - means beloved

• Qerest - means burial

• Mes - means birth

So this time of the year is all about the death of the Sun, burial and rebirth, and by coincidence the three Egyptian words ‘Meri qerest mes’ correspond to ‘Beloved burial birth’ and Merry Christ-mas.

Whatever your belief, tradition or none at all, wishing you ‘Meri qerest mes’ as we await the birth of the new born Sun.

Ankh, Wdja, Senab
Life, Prosperity and Health

Rob

In A Brief History of Numbers we reviewed the use of numbers throughout the ages, and in this post we’ll explore the mystical nature of numbers from one to four through the lens of the Tetractys. Specifically, we’ll explore how the geometric properties of the numbers one to four explain the metaphysical origin and structural form of the cosmos.

The symbol used in ancient times to transmit this knowledge, known as the Tetractys, consists of a triangular pattern formed by ten points: nine points arranged around a central tenth point. When the connecting lines are included, the tetractys becomes an array of triangles within triangles which form a hexagon around the central point.

In ancient Greece, the Tetractys was central to the teachings of Pythagoras, who believed that numbers revealed cosmic truths about the structure of existence. The Pythagoreans taught that ‘All is number’1, believing that number and harmony lay at the root of all creation. For them, numbers expressed not only quantities but also qualities through which the mystical symbology of numbers revealed the hidden principles underlying reality.

The Tetractys was so sacred to the Pythagoreans that they swore an oath upon the symbol, revering it as a divine blueprint of creation capable of encoding the geometric, numerical, and harmonic principles that shape the cosmos.

This understanding aligns remarkably well with the ancient Egyptian philosophy of numbers, magnificently expressed in the opening text of the Rhind Papyrus, a 3,500-year-old workbook of mathematical exercises:

Rules for enquiring into nature and for knowing all that exists, every mystery, and every secret.2

The striking correspondence between the older Egyptian and later Greek philosophies of numbers supports the ancient accounts that Pythagoras studied with priests in Egypt for twenty-two years3, before bringing their sacred wisdom back to Greece.

From Mystery to Manifestation

So let’s explore how the geometry of the Tetractys can take us from the ultimate mystery of Unity to solid form in four steps. From a metaphysical perspective, this is the essential structure from which all scientific and spiritual teachings unfold. Yet despite the fact that this cosmology would have been incredibly familiar to anyone with an advanced education in the Classical world, this framework hasn’t been taught in Western education for centuries.

To start with, take a look at the four horizontal levels of the Tetractys symbol, which reveal a sequence that takes us from dimensionless mystery to three-dimensional solid in four essential steps. Levels One to Three exist as mystical principles, while Level Four is their manifestation as three-dimensional form.

• Level One - Unity: one dimensionless point signifies The All

• Level Two - Duality: two points form a one-dimensional line

• Level Three - Balance: three points form a two-dimensional triangular plane

• Level Four - Form: four points form a three-dimensional solid called a tetrahedron

This really is all we need to know in order to understand the metaphysical steps that establish the foundation for the physical universe.

Before we explore each level in detail, a word of caution: what follows is an attempt to describe in alphabetic words that which is far better conveyed through symbol because “Metaphysics makes no sense to the mind’s reasoning.”4 The Tetractys symbol itself is complete and whole; it communicates directly what our inefficient, linear writing system can only inadequately convey. If you find yourself struggling with any of the explanations, return to the symbol itself for guidance, because the symbol holds the teaching more perfectly than words ever can.

Level One: The Monad (Dimensionless)
Geometric Symbol: The Point

Level One represents the mystical Monad, which is the All. The Monad represents pure Cosmic Consciousness, it is the intelligent source of all and everything in ours and an infinite number of other universes. This point is mystical, symbolic, and not tangible in any sense that we could understand it, because the Monad is completely dimensionless, meaning that it sits outside of all space and time. It represents all that was, is and will be; it is the origin and return of all; it is eternal, infinite, and perfect.

Different spiritual traditions might call it Unity, the All, Great Spirit, the Indivisible One, God, or even the Void. The Monad is the Brahman of Hinduism, the Nun of ancient Egypt, or the singularity before the Big Bang in Western science - whatever name we assign to it, it is completely inconceivable for a human mind. This Monad symbolises the ultimate mystery. Western science seeks to describe it, while Indigenous cultures understood it as completely unknowable, because to fully comprehend the Mystery would mean becoming God itself, which is out of the realm of any human experience.

The Monad is pure Consciousness which exists in a mystical state that is inert, unpolarised, and non-dual. It is timeless, spaceless, undifferentiated, infinite Consciousness, that is absolute and indivisible. Schwaller de Lubicz calls it the ‘irreducible One’, which in Plato’s language is the ‘Whole of Wholes’5.

The fact that the Monad is indivisible is central to understanding the philosophy of the ancient world, because it means that everything in the universe is inseparable from the All. Nothing can be separate or disconnected from the All6. Another way of saying this is that if ‘God’ is the All, then ‘not-God’ is a logical and mystical impossibility. Nothing can be absent of, or in opposition to the All.

This has huge philosophical and ethical implications which sit in direct opposition to our highly dualised Western mindset, which I explored in Panentheism: A Worldview for Healing Our Planet.

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Level Two: The Dyad (1-Dimension)
Geometric Symbol: The Line

Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.
~ The Hermetic Principle of Polarity7

If Level One represents the All in a state of non-dual perfection, at Level Two duality arises through the first differentiation of Primal Scission. This is the Creative Act in which Consciousness becomes aware of itself8. In this act of reflexive awareness, “by the action of its own nature”9 Consciousness differentiates into the perceiver and the perceived. Crucially however, Unity is irreducible so duality can only be formed within the All.

Think of it this way: the All cannot be doubled, because two Alls would no longer be the All. Nor can it be reduced by division, because any part removed from the All would no longer be whole — and what is not whole cannot be the All. So duality can only exist within the All. The two binaries that form duality cannot exist independently of the All – they are the All observing itself from within itself. For the Western mind, the contradictory nature of this concept can be challenging to grasp: in this cosmology everything is ultimately Unity, while the world of duality that we live in appears as an illusion of separation10.

This means that it’s impossible for the two points representing duality at Level Two to exist independently of Level One the All, or independently of each other. Here we encounter the essential mystery of the Holy Trinity of threefold in one Unity; the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of Christianity; or Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva in the Hindu tradition; or Atum, Ra and Ptah in ancient Egyptian mythology. John Anthony West puts it this way:

Unity becoming conscious of itself creates differentiation, which is polarity. Polarity, or duality, is a dual expression of unity.11

This generative act between Levels One and Two “can be observed throughout all of living Nature that maintains itself by proliferating in like manner”12. This is most obviously observed in the first division of the fertilised egg into an embryo with two cells within a unified system. So it is that the “entire universe, or phenomenal world, is dualized Unity” in which “all creation is situated between the numbers One and Two”13.

The geometric symbol at this level is the line. Recall that this ‘line’ is a symbolic expression of a mystical principle. Because the line exists in only one dimension, it has width but no height or depth so it doesn’t really exist in any tangible sense. At Level Two, opposites are established, but they remain static and inert. There is no perspective yet from which to perceive the opposites, no third point to mediate them, and so no flow of tension can arise between the poles. True polarity, dynamic and fully charged, requires a third point that stands apart from the opposing poles. That third point emerges at the next level, releasing the energetic potential of opposition, bringing the whole system alive.

Level Three: The Triad (2-Dimensions)
Geometric Symbol: The Plane (Triangle)

At Level Three the Monad differentiates again, as the dual nature of two points unfolds into a triad. The three points of the triad form a triangle, creating a plane that exists in two dimensions only, possessing width and height but no depth. Level Three is still a metaphysical realm without solid form.

The addition of the third point is fundamental because it introduces perspective. The third point stands apart from the two poles, creating a vantage point from which the relative positions of the poles can now be seen. At Level Two duality exists but cannot be observed; at Level Three there is now a position from which polarity can be truly perceived. Crucially, this perspective makes the continuum that exists between the poles observable, and in observing movement through relative positions, the principle of time is born.

This is where the foundational law of the universe — the Law of Three14, or the Law of Balance — emerges. This principle is explored in more depth in The Law of Balance: Truth, Power, and the Hidden Third Force and Out of Balance, Out of Time.

The third point is not merely an observer standing apart; it mediates the tension between opposites and serves as the reconciling force that operates throughout Nature and the Universe. Balance cannot exist with only two opposing poles; it requires a third point that can both perceive the continuum between the poles and reconcile the tension that arises between them. The third point introduces the very capacity for balance itself.

Think of a pendulum: two poles mark the extremes of the swing, and the pivot point — the third point — simultaneously perceives movement between the opposing points and mediates the forces in play. This unifying function transforms opposition into relationship, revealing motion as it unfolds in time.

Thus, the Law of Three becomes the primary operational principle of the universe. Through the dynamic interplay of three forces - affirming, denying, and reconciling - all phenomena arise. With the emergence of the third point, Consciousness becomes truly alive.

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Level Four: The Tetrad (3-Dimensions)
Geometric Symbol: The Tetrahedron (Solid)

The metaphysical principles of time and movement arise at Level Three, but they exist in a two-dimensional plane - in the absence of solid form there is no volume in which motion can operate. At Level Four, the addition of the fourth point resolves this by creating three-dimensional space. Four points are required to define the simplest solid called the tetrahedron, and with this geometric form the archetypal principles of volume and substance emerge.

Level Four is the threshold at which the mystical takes dimensional form. Here the four elements come into being, not yet as physical substances but as archetypal organising principles that will give structure to all form: Water, Fire, Air, and Earth.

Level Four as Schwaller de Lubicz writes, “signifies both the last term of creation and the first term of the manifested existence of Being”15. The progression from unmanifest principle to manifested structure is now complete. The Tetrad has established the complete dimensional architecture from which all physical matter will arise.

With the fourth level, the Tetractys has revealed the complete cosmic pattern: from Unity through polarity and balance to three-dimensional form. Here, in the sacred geometry of the number four, the foundation of the cosmos, is established as the archetypal blueprint that makes physical existence possible.

From Mystical Unity to Dimensional Form

The Tetractys maps the journey from Spirit to solid form, with each level building upon the previous and culminating at Level Four where the complete universal structural form is established. Levels One to Three exist as mystical principles, finding their manifestation at Level Four as the foundation of reality.

We can think of this progression as four essential stages:

Level One: Unity — the All before differentiation; stillness itself, pure, perfect Being.

Level Two: Duality — The All becomes aware of itself, opposition is established but cannot yet be perceived.

Level Three: Balance — The reconciling third point enables the perception of relationship between opposites and acts as the third force mediating the tension between them. This establishes the Law of Three, allowing the principles of time, movement, rhythm and harmonic resonance to emerge.

Level Four: Form — The plane becomes solid as three-dimensional structure emerges, creating the space in which time and movement can function. The archetypal principles of volume and substance take form, establishing the dimensional architecture that provides the foundation for all physical reality.

So the natural emergence across the four levels is established: Unity → Duality → Balance → Form. Level Four is where the geometry of existence becomes the architecture of reality, the place where the mystical principles encoded in the Tetractys manifest as the complete dimensional blueprint of the universe.

The ancient Egyptians expressed a parallel theory of universal manifestation through their mythology of the enneads, encoding these four levels within their creation stories and sacred art. In the next post, we’ll explore how the Pesedjet - the ancient Egyptian Great Ennead describing nine principles of creation - maps onto the Tetractys. We’ll discover how the ancient wisdom-keepers of the Nile valley understood the journey from the primordial waters of the Nun to the manifested cosmos, and how their temple architecture and mythological narratives preserve this teaching in symbolic form.

Read Part 2 of this series on the ancient Egyptian Tetractys: The Hidden Ancient Egyptian Tetractys.

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If I were to ask what numbers are for, you’d probably say they enable us to count, divide, and order things - right? And of course you’d be correct. Cardinal numbers are numbers we use to count things in quantity; rational numbers allow us to express fractions as parts of a whole; and ordinal numbers are numbers that show position or order.

• If you have three apples - ‘three’ is a cardinal number which represents quantity

• If you have half an apple - ‘half’ is a rational number which represents a fraction of a whole apple

• If you have a row of red apples in which the fifth is green - ‘fifth’ is an ordinal number which denotes sequential order

While we’re taught about how numbers describe quantity or order, what a modern education does not teach is the quality and harmonic resonance of numbers which was well understood by anyone with a reasonable education right up until the dawn of the modern age. In the next post we’ll explore the mystical quality of numbers, but to start our exploration, let us review the earliest evidence of numbers and counting.

Africa, Mesopotamia and Base 60

Carved bones showing tally marks found from the Palaeolithic era over 40,000 years ago likely served as mathematical notes and counting aids, and they’re considered the earliest evidence of a human ability to count. However, it’s reasonable to assume that human beings were counting well before this time – probably using stones or pebbles. If so, no evidence has survived because to an archaeologist a pebble is just a pebble.

Foremost amongst the carved bones is the Ishango bone discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa and dated to approximately 20,000 years ago1. Described as “the oldest mathematical tool of humankind”2, what’s remarkable about the Ishango bone is that the system of counting appears to be in either base 12 (called duodecimal) or base 60 (called sexagesimal)3. Speculative explanations for what the Ishango bone was used for range from a numeric reference table, or a counting tool similar to a slide rule, to some kind of astrological or lunar calendar. However it was used, what we can say with reasonable certainty is that the Ishango bone is the oldest known computational device, providing evidence that humans were recording quantities, recognising patterns, and perhaps exploring the idea of prime numbers around 20,000 years ago.

Arranged in three distinctive rows, the “deliberately planned”4 cut marks on the Ishango bone show intriguing patterns: one row adds up to 48 (which is 4 x 12); the other two rows both add up to 60 (which is 5 x 12); and one row clearly shows all of the prime numbers between 10 and 20, which add up to 60 (11 + 13 + 17 + 19 = 60)5.

What is the significance of a sexagesimal system? Its significance lies in the fact that the oldest definite records of counting and mathematics come from Sumerians in Mesopotamia around 5,500 years ago - and they definitely did use base 60, theirs was a sexagesimal system. If we think about that for a moment, isn’t it curious that the oldest known numerical system in the world is in base 60, a more complex system than our own base 10 decimal system? The importance of the number 60 is that with twelve divisors - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 & 60 - it can be divided in more ways than any smaller number.

Using their sexagesimal system, the Sumerians developed the measurement of angles and of time itself. Our division of the circle into 360 degrees and the hour into 60 minutes still follows the base-60 system they developed. It’s highly unlikely this sexagesimal system appeared spontaneously out of nowhere; by far the most probable explanation is that it was the result of a long process of development whose earlier stages have been lost to history.

Ancient Egypt and the Decimal System

Around the same time as evidence of Mesopotamian mathematics appeared, we find the first written evidence of mathematics in ancient Egypt. However, instead of using the Mesopotamian sexagesimal system (base 60), the ancient Egyptians worked with the decimal system (base 10) that we still use today.

From the outset of the dynastic period, the ancient Egyptians possessed an advanced understanding of numbers and arithmetic. They had a sophisticated system of weights and measures along with the mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division; in fact, their highly efficient method of multiplication and division by doubling was used well into the Middle Ages in Europe.

The Egyptians counted into the millions, and they were adept at working with fractions. Although the concept of zero existed6, and despite having no symbol for ‘0’ and no notion of decimal places, their way of working with fractions and scaling gave them a remarkable degree of accuracy. In effect, they could reach results that, when translated into our system, look just like calculations to several decimal places.

For example, if we consider 1,000 as ‘1’, then dividing 1,000 by 500 gives 2 – which, in our notation, would be equivalent to writing 1 ÷ 500 = 0.002, an accuracy of three decimal places. The Egyptians themselves would have expressed this in division or fractions, yet this method of shifting the scale would have allowed them to achieve high levels of precision.

This way of thinking, in which numbers were treated relatively rather than absolutely, provides a glimpse into a wider principle at the heart of Pharaonic thought: the relational and the proportional often mattered more than the absolute. In our culture, the emphasis is far more on absolute numbers. Pharaonic relational thinking can seem bewildering at first, but once understood it loosens the grip of fixed measures and opens the mind to a more relational, flexible and creative way of seeing.

Our knowledge of ancient Egyptian mathematics comes principally from two papyri - the Rhind Papyrus (mentioned above) and the Moscow Papyrus which show that ancient Egyptians possessed advanced skills in mathematical computation, logic and reasoning.

The ancient Egyptians were masters in understanding shape, form and harmonic design. Their advanced understanding of geometry is clearly expressed in their art and architecture, including, of course, the pyramids. Beyond the astonishing beauty and scale of what has survived from ancient Egypt, it is the precision and geometric virtuosity of structures such as the Great Pyramid on the Giza plateau that is staggering. The Great Pyramid is a tour de force of geometric mastery aligned “to the cardinal points [north/south] with an accuracy of better than four minutes of arc, or one-fifteenth of one degree.”7

The true magnificence of Egyptian mathematical understanding was brought to life by Egyptologist René Schwaller de Lubicz, through his extensive studies at the temple of Luxor8. His detailed architectural analysis reveals how Egyptian architects worked with fundamental mathematical ratios including ‘pi’ and ‘phi’ (the golden ratio) centuries before they were formally described by later mathematicians9. Their buildings were living “symphonies in stone”10.

So for the Egyptians, functional relationships often mattered more than absolute measures. They worked with the living relationships between forms, understanding that mathematical principles expressed themselves through natural law, proportion, and harmony. This perspective allowed them to blend mathematical truths with esoteric teachings for the initiated, seeing the connections between numbers, form, and meaning in a way that is radically different from our own.

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Numbers and Theory in Ancient Greece

Towards the tail end of the ancient Egyptian empire, a new intellectual force arose in the Eastern Mediterranean – Ancient Greece. The relationship between Egyptian and Greek mathematical knowledge remains a subject of academic debate11; however I support the view that Greek culture was significantly shaped by the Egyptians, not least because the Greeks themselves were absolutely clear about the origins of their mathematical ideas.

Herodotus tells us that geometry came to Greece from Egypt12, and prominent Greek mathematicians including Pythagoras, Plato, and Thales are said to have travelled to Egypt for education and initiation into the mystery schools. These would have been extended periods of study, in fact Pythagoras reportedly spent over twenty years learning from Egyptian priests. The Greeks made no attempt to conceal their source (why would they?); indeed, they considered Egyptian learning the foundation upon which their own innovations were built, and venerated the Egyptian sages.

What the Greeks did do for the first time was to reformat the mathematical wisdom the acquired from Egypt into systematic intellectual concepts expressed through treatise and logical proof. The famous theorem attributed to Pythagoras, for instance, was known to Egyptian builders and Babylonian astronomers centuries earlier, but the ancient Greeks were the first to establish it as a general theorem through logical proof.

The Egyptians and Sumerians had worked with mathematical principles as expressions of natural law and cosmic harmony, infusing their calculations with broader frameworks of meaning and spiritual significance. The Greek shift toward theoretical abstraction marked the start of a gradual drift away from this integrated, spiritually-informed approach.

Perhaps more significantly, it was the Greeks who gave us the systematic approach to mathematical knowledge we’re familiar with today. The transformation of numeric symbolism into theoretical concepts explains why it was easy to crown them as the originators of modern mathematical knowledge. Their approach matched our own emphasis on abstract reasoning and logical proof, however 19th-century academics were too quick to dismiss the remarkable debt that Greek mathematicians owed to the ancient civilisations that preceded them.

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The Invention of Nothing

One of the most significant developments in the history of numbers was the invention of zero which was fully developed in India by the 5th century CE. Transmitted through Arabic culture and introduced into Europe via Moorish Spain, the system of ‘Arabic numerals’ began to spread more widely in the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly after Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci was published in 1202. The Mayans incidentally also invented numerical zero around the same time in the 4th century CE.

Whilst the numerical concept of zero is simple to grasp, it introduced a metaphysical error into mathematics. For example, if I have zero apples, the idea of 'apple' must still exist in some form for the statement ‘zero apples’ to be meaningful. In this sense, there can never be truly 'zero apples' – if the concept of ‘apple’ is defined, it must exist somewhere in some form in the universe. Aristotle argued this same point saying that “nothing” cannot exist13. Zero cannot actually signify ‘no-thing’; its only reality is as a convenient symbol that simplifies calculations.

Although the ancient Egyptians had a word for the concept of zero, mathematical zero as we use it would have seemed illogical to them, since they understood all numbers as fractions of an ultimate Unity. Rather than needing a symbol for ‘nothing’, they worked with relationships in which every number was a fraction or multiple within a fundamental whole. This elegant approach sidestepped the puzzle that zero introduces: how can ‘nothing’ become ‘something’ we can actually use in calculations?

This Egyptian approach, in which everything was a subdivision of Unity, created a mathematical system that remained connected to physical and spiritual reality. The arrival of zero in medieval Europe through Islamic mathematical texts revolutionised calculation, making possible the complex mathematics that would fuel the Scientific Revolution. Yet this practical advancement came at a huge philosophical cost. Our modern system, whilst computationally powerful, has drifted into abstractions disconnected from the natural world. We've gained the ability to model complex theories but lost the integrated understanding that saw numbers as expressions of cosmic harmony and natural law.

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The Numerical Wisdom of the Enneagram

Fortunately, the ancient understanding of numbers as expressions of cosmic order has been preserved in certain symbolic systems including the Enneagram. The nine-pointed figure embodies the principles we've explored: it begins with Unity (the circle) and expresses itself through division into the Law of Three (the triangle), expressed in a cyclical harmonic development through the Law of Seven (the hexad). The Enneagram preserves the understanding that numbers possess inherent relational qualities and express fundamental patterns of reality, allowing us to move beyond seeing them solely as absolute quantities.

The Enneagram symbol demonstrates how specific numerical relationships mirror psychological and spiritual dynamics, operating within the same framework that ancient Egyptians and Greeks understood: mathematical relationships reflect the macro structure of reality itself. Working with the Enneagram enables us to reconnect with the integrated understanding that saw no separation between mathematical truth, natural law, and spiritual insight.

In the next post - The Sacred Geometry of Creation: Four Steps from Spirit to Solid - I will explain how the ancients explained the four logical stages necessary for pure Consciousness to emerge into three-dimensional form, a philosophical and scientific progression that was well understood in the Classical world.

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5

Schematic layout of the marks on the Ishango bone:

Could the biblical phrase "God made man in his own image”1 be one of history's most dangerously misunderstood ideas? The doctrine of imago Dei (Latin for ‘image of God’) suffers from an interpretation error that has fed over three millennia of human exceptionalism. This misinterpretation has deadly consequences: we are presiding over the sixth mass extinction2, and we have breached seven out of nine planetary boundaries3 required for Earth's safe functioning as we systematically destroy the web of life that keeps us alive and safe.

If humans truly reflected Divine Nature, how could we be guilty of such extraordinary planetary vandalism?

The current polycrisis demands an urgent course-correction, and for this we can look to ancient Egyptian philosophy which understood our planetary role far more clearly than modern interpretations. Through the legacy they left us, the Egyptians offer critically important real-world solutions to help us navigate our current predicament.

An Image of Human Hubris

The most narcissistic interpretations of imago Dei have been extraordinarily literal. We have imagined God as an anthropomorphic being, a white-skinned bearded patriarch in the sky, and concluded that resembling this image grants us special privileges. This interpretation has generated a cascading series of distortions: male-centric theology that claims divine backing for patriarchal systems; systemic white supremacy that subjugates the global majority; human exceptionalism that positions us at the pinnacle of creation; licence to dominate nature; and the dangerous habit of projecting our own tribal neuroses onto the Divine.

These misreadings have led to a catastrophic Western worldview which believes that human beings received divine authority to exploit the Earth's resources. This separates humanity from nature instead of recognising our absolute dependence on the Earth’s planetary systems. It justifies dominion over ecosystems rather than stewardship within them, it promotes human exceptionalism rather than humble participation, and engenders anthropocentric pride rather than a cosmic humility – the prerequisite of genuine wisdom.

The consequences are all around us – in the climate emergency, rampant ecocide, biodiversity collapse, and the systematic breakdown of humanity's life-support systems. For the first time in human history, our actions are affecting the Earth's habitability as a whole – not merely our local environment, but the planetary systems that sustain all life on Earth. Indigenous cultures, who were often careful stewards of local ecosystems, never had to consider their impact on a planetary scale. The unprecedented scale of our global impact means we cannot simply adapt ancient traditions without recognising that we face challenges no previous civilisation ever had to confront.

Rediscovering Ma'at: Egypt's Principle of Cosmic Balance

Notwithstanding, ancient Egyptian philosophy offers a profoundly different perspective through the principle of Ma'at. Where misinterpreted imago Dei became anthropocentric (human-centred), Ma'at was firmly cosmocentric, emphasising a responsibility to maintain environmental harmony within a clearly established cosmic order, rather than asserting misguided notions of divine supremacy.

In Egyptian understanding, humans possessed unique capabilities, not as mini-me gods but as environmental stewards who recognised that their survival depended on maintaining right relationship with cosmic functions within a stable environment. The pharaoh's divine status was functional rather than ontological. His role was firmly embedded in the planetary plane, requiring him to maintain harmony with nature, not dominion over it. The Pyramid Texts describe the pharaoh's purpose as "to bring Ma'at and repel Isfet" – to promote harmony and repel chaos within the earthly realm.

This represents a completely different understanding of human uniqueness to imago Dei. Rather than seeing our unique capabilities as signs of divine favouritism, the ancient Egyptians saw them as inseparable from existential environmental responsibilities. They recognised that we are significant not because we transcend nature but because we are conscious participants in a sacred system of ecological equilibrium that sustains the proper functioning of life on Earth.

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Schwaller de Lubicz’s Doctrine of the Anthropocosmos

French Egyptologist René Schwaller de Lubicz understood this when he defined the Doctrine of the Anthropocosmos (Human-cosmos): "We have nothing to discover outside ourselves"4. At first glance, this might seem to align with imago Dei thinking, but Schwaller de Lubicz’s doctrine bears no resemblance to a chronically misinterpreted imago Dei. In his Doctrine of the Anthropocosmos, Schwaller de Lubicz defines something radically different.

Through his detailed study of Egyptian symbology, he reconstructed the Egyptian teachings in which the human being contains the full microcosm of cosmic functions – a living laboratory in which universal laws and processes can be experienced and understood firsthand. This reflects the Egyptian view that the neteru (cosmic functions or divine principles — often mistranslated as ‘gods’) are living, functional forces that manifest both through the human experience and in the world around us.

The path to cosmic understanding doesn’t require looking ‘out there’ to abstract ideologies, because the same intelligence that moves galaxies also animates our sensing, thinking, and feeling. We don’t need to transcend our humanity to reach cosmic consciousness, because our humanity, properly understood, already expresses cosmic consciousness in uniquely human form. Crucially, it was understood that cosmic consciousness is also expressed through the individuality of the many varied life forms, planetary ecosystems, and universal processes around us.

This interpretation is profoundly panentheistic. It recognises divinity within all things, rather than positioning humans as God’s special ambassadors on Earth. Properly understood, Egyptian sacred science sees everything as microcosmic, with each life-form expressing particular cosmic principles through its own perfectly unique nature. Thus, human significance lies not in being the supreme microcosm, but in being conscious participants within a larger planetary microcosmic nature.

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From Hubris to Humility: Three Principles of Anthropocosmic Wisdom

Based on Schwaller’s understanding of Egyptian cosmology, we can formulate a principle of human humility: the idea that humans are the cosmos becoming conscious of itself within the Earth’s nervous system, capable of either sustaining or destroying the planetary system we inhabit.

This perspective transforms our human uniqueness from a source of prideful exceptionalism to a humble realisation of our profound planetary responsibilities. As we outgrow narcissistic notions of divine favouritism we can perceive our humanity more accurately as evidence of Nature’s experimentation with advanced intelligence – an experiment whose success depends entirely on the long-term flourishing of all life on Earth. (Spoiler alert: Nature’s experiment with advanced intelligence is not going well.)

Three principles emerge from this understanding. First, participatory intelligence recognises that human intelligence participates in a larger cosmic intelligence. We recognise ourselves as temporary focal points of intelligence within a universal field – significant but not supreme, with responsibility to align our planetary stewardship with immutable cosmic principles.

Second, ecological embeddedness acknowledges humans as utterly dependent participants in the Earth's web of life. Our bodies are literally earth, water, air, and fire organised temporarily as physical hosts of conscious life. Unlike an implicit separation from nature commonly misunderstood through imago Dei, ecological embeddedness recognises our total dependence on planetary systems. As temporary custodians of the Earth's resources, our role reflects a common indigenous understanding that we hold the sacred land in trust for future generations.

This leads to the third principle of planetary stewardship: our unique capabilities come with sacred responsibilities to support Earth’s systems, rather than misguided notions of cosmic favouritism. Like organs within a living body, we play our part in maintaining the homeostasis of the whole. This depends on the optimal functioning of each organ in harmony with the natural laws that sustain the whole system. Our significance lies not in dominion, but in the degree to which we take conscious responsibility for our unique capacity to impact the planet, either positively or negatively.

Together, these three principles call for human humility in recognising our true place within an evolutionary unfolding, and accepting full responsibility for our short- and long-term planetary impact.

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The Great Remembering: Towards Planetary Citizenship

The Egyptian sages offer vital correctives for our time, reminding us that our place within the cosmos is participatory, not privileged. The Egyptian understanding of neteru as cosmic functions rather than separate ‘gods’ models genuine panentheistic thinking in which every aspect of existence is a participatory function of divine Unity. Furthermore, their cosmology emphasised both eternal cycles and linear emergence, recognising that sustainable progress requires working with natural rhythms rather than attempting to transcend them.

The ancient Egyptians offer us time-tested perspectives that are radically different from the assumptions of Western thinking. Recognising ourselves as participants within a greater planetary intelligence reframes environmental destruction as a form of self-harm. It engenders a reverence for all life on Earth while focusing the efforts of our unique capabilities on sustaining the delicate balance of Earth’s systems.

The Choice Before Us

The path forward invites us to question what we might call theological speciesism – the belief that humans have been bestowed with divinely ordained privileges over other life forms. Instead, we can return to what indigenous traditions long understood: we are temporary custodians participating in a community of sacred beings including plants, animals, and elemental forces. What could change if we stopped chasing quarterly profits and started asking, "How can we serve the planetary community that sustains us and honour the cosmic principles that govern all existence?"

The current ecological polycrisis is a direct consequence of humanity's adolescent rebellion against cosmic order. It is a predictable consequence of the colonial religions that convinced us we are cosmic royalty rather than planetary participants. Humanity’s transformation into full adulthood requires us to recognise ourselves once again as humble participants within the planetary systems we depend on.

So we arrive at a crossroads. The question is existential: will humanity step away from the delusion that we are separate from — and superior to — the natural world? Or remember our true potential as planetary stewards in time to avoid ecological collapse?

Do we continue down the path of narcissistic hubris that’s destroying the very systems that sustain life? Or do we choose a sober humility by recognising ourselves as temporary travellers, benefitting momentarily from all that has been bequeathed to us, while holding it in trust for future generations?

Properly understood, imago Dei - image of God - does not bestow us with divinity, but calls us to reflect the Divine Nature through presence, intelligence, care, and love.

The ancient wisdom of Ma'at awaits our return.

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To help answer this question, I want to propose three terms that describe different orientations towards human flourishing, each emerging from distinct historical eras:

• Philoharmony, a love of harmony and cosmic balance that I see embodied in the ancient Egyptian concept of Ma'at.

• Philosophy, a love of wisdom and intellectual understanding as exemplified in ancient Greece.

• Philotechny, a love of technology that has reached extraordinary dominance in our modern era.

Each represents profound human achievements that have shaped entire civilisations. However, when one of these ‘loves’ is over-amplified, the system in which it exists becomes dysregulated, leading to specific risks or dangers. In our current time, as we live in the most unbalanced global civilisation ever created, there is an urgent need to bring all three 'loves' together into conscious relationship.

What if our future survival depends on achieving what few civilisations have managed before: the integration of harmony, wisdom, and technology in service of the ultimate ‘triple bottom line’ of people, planet, and peace.

The relationship between harmony, wisdom and technology can be visualised as a triangle within a circle, with each point of the triangle representing one fundamental orientation, and the circle representing the balanced wholeness that emerges when all three work in concert together.

Philoharmony: A Love of Sacred Balance

Long before Pythagoras expressed his love of wisdom when he coined the term 'philosophy', the ancient Egyptians had an advanced understanding of the concept of philoharmony. They recognised that operating in alignment with the cosmic Law of Harmony was a prerequisite for the functioning of any system. Their world-view was in effect advanced Egyptian systems-thinking in which steady-state stability was seen as essential for the proper functioning of any system. In Egyptian terms, this was expressed through their guiding principle of Ma'at.

You can read more about Ma’at and The Law of Balance: Truth, Power, and the Hidden Third Force in this post:

The Law of Balance

The Egyptians understood that harmony is the dynamic balancing force that holds all things in right relationship – maintaining planets in their courses, the Earth's ecosphere in equilibrium, and human beings in homeostasis. This is the result of a universal pull towards harmony that we observe throughout nature - from the intricate feedback loops in our own bodies to the symbiotic relationships that sustain entire ecosystems. Nature herself demonstrates that Harmony is the fundamental organising principle of existence.

Ma'at was so important to the Egyptians that they constructed their entire society around the maintenance of balance, harmony and order. For them, the principle of harmony was a lived reality in which everything found its proper place.

Philoharmony shifts our worldview from the individual 'I' to the collective 'we'. It effectively changes the question of meaning from "What do I want?" to "What does the harmony of the whole system require?" Through philoharmony we see that personal flourishing and ecological balance are not separate concerns, they are the product of maintaining order within a radically interconnected system.

In our own time, philoharmony finds expression in systems thinking, a renewed interest in indigenous wisdom traditions, growing ecological consciousness, and the psycho-spiritual dynamics of the Enneagram, which maps how we fall out of harmony with our essential nature and provides pathways for returning to authentic alignment.

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Philosophy: A Love of Understanding

Pythagoras' love of wisdom – philosophy – was exemplified by the ancient Greek propensity for intellectual analysis, linear enquiry, and systematic thought. Where philoharmony was primarily concerned with the holistic functioning of all parts operating in right relationship, philosophy sought to understand the theoretical principles underlying those relationships. Philosophy amplified logic and reason, leading ultimately to the ascendance of the modern scientific method.

Interestingly, the principle of Harmonia was also central to Pythagorean cosmology. According to Philolaus, the earliest Pythagorean whose writings have survived, "Harmonia comes to be in all respects out of contraries; for harmonia is the unity in multiplicity, and the agreement of things that disagree."1

This shows that, like the Egyptians, the Greeks were well acquainted with Harmony as the foundational cosmic principle: a logical necessity required to maintain the correct functioning of the universe. Yet as philosophy developed, it increasingly emphasised rational analysis over lived harmony, and abstract understanding over participatory experience. Philosophy divorced from philoharmony tends toward theoretical abstraction – brilliant intellectual analyses that somehow miss the living wholeness they're trying to understand.

The philosopher’s question, “What is true?”, remains essential. Yet the rational mind alone cannot arrive at ultimate truth. Perhaps our greatest error in modern times is the foolish belief that we can think our way to a ‘theory of everything’ that will explain all of existence. The great mysteries of life itself exceed the limits of human understanding. They call for a participatory kind of gnosis, grounded in direct experience of living in harmony with what we seek to understand. Without this, philosophy risks becoming trapped in theoretical debate, disconnected from lived reality.

Philotechny: A Love of Technology

Philotechny – a love of technology, innovation, and productivity – represents humanity’s capacity to manipulate the natural world through tools, machines, and computing power. From the first stone tools to artificial intelligence, philotechny has been the driving force behind humanity's extraordinary rise to planetary dominance - and abuse.

Love of technology has given us medicine that extends life, communication technologies that allow us to instantly connect across vast distances, and other tools that enhance human capacities in remarkable ways. At its best, technology can also serve as a medium for creating beauty and excellence through tools that amplify human creativity and craftsmanship.

However, it’s clear that philotechny has a dark side, especially when it serves ego or greed. Untethered from the context of wisdom and harmony, it becomes a compulsive ideology — a belief in tech as a kind of god that can solve any problem, including those created by tech in the first place. Technology for its own sake leads to blind faith in the modern gods of efficiency, productivity, and money.

The consequences of rampant philotechny, cut adrift from philosophy and philoharmony, are everywhere. Social media connects billions, yet fragments genuine connection. Polarised click-bait is rewarded over meaningful dialogue. The toxic byproducts of technology pollute the planet, with little regard for the wellbeing of people or the future of life on Earth. Meanwhile, we live increasingly isolated lives, with little understanding of what true community even means. And now, in the latest technological turn, we’re building artificial intelligence simply because we can, without fully considering its long-term impact.

Behind all these symptoms lies a clear pattern. The loss of philoharmony hasn’t only distorted philosophy, turning it into rational abstraction; it has propelled us further into a technocentric system where philotechny risks cutting us off entirely from soul, ethics, and Nature.

The Great Work

This separation has given us immense technological power, but without the understanding or alignment to use it wisely. The many interconnected crises we face — climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequality, political polarisation, and the existential risks of emerging technologies — are not separate problems needing separate solutions. They are symptoms of a deeper pattern: philotechny without philoharmony leads to technologies that destabilise systems faster than we are able to adapt, while philotechny without philosophy produces innovation without doing the due diligence on long-term consequences.

This separation shows up everywhere:

• Technology companies create platforms connecting billions whilst undermining social fabric, optimising for attention without asking what serves human flourishing.

• Academic philosophy retreats into theoretical debates with little bearing on grounded living in a complex world.

• Spiritual movements embrace naive notions of philoharmony whilst rejecting the rigorous thinking and practical innovation needed to address systemic problems.

Each approach, isolated from the others, becomes distorted. Philotechny becomes techno-optimism or addiction. Philosophy becomes intellectualism or analysis-paralysis. Philoharmony becomes escapism or self-abnegation.

The table below illustrates how each love serves a vital function when integrated, but creates specific distortions when isolated:

The current polycrisis is what happens when philotechny runs ahead of philosophy and philoharmony, the inevitable result of unleashing human creative power without adequate attention to wisdom or order.

This perspective helps us to answer the question of how technology should be used. The challenge is not to choose between harmony, wisdom or technology, but to bring all three into conscious relationship in which each informs and strengthens the others:

• Harmony grounded in reality: Spiritual and ecological justice that directly informs technological innovation rather than retreating into disconnection or fantasy. We need harmonisers who can think systemically and act decisively.

• Wisdom applied to real-world problems: Philosophy that leads to practical outcomes rather than endless theoretical debates. We need thinkers who understand both cosmic principles and the craft of innovation.

• Technology in service of life: Innovation guided by beauty, excellence, and ethical purpose, rather than blind productivity or profit for its own sake. We need technologists who are also passionate wisdom-keepers and system-thinkers.

There is an urgent need for us to stop prioritising philotechny over philoharmony and philosophy. This means working towards integration by learning to live, think and innovate in service of the larger wholeness that supports all life on Earth.

This is the Great Work of our time: restoring the sacred balance between harmony, wisdom, and technology, the three drivers of human evolution that were never meant to work alone.

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We live in an age of increasing polarisation. Political divisions are antagonistic, war and civilian atrocities are being live-streamed into our homes, and our relationship with the natural world has become so toxic that we've destabilised six out of nine planetary boundaries required for Earth's healthy functioning1.

In the face of such these challenges, how can the Enneagram signpost us towards peace?

On this World Enneagram Day2, with its theme of Enneagram for Peace, let’s explore peace through the idea of philharmony, a love of sacred balance. On the Enneagram symbol, the harmony point sits at Point Nine – associated appropriately with love and peace – it’s the point of dynamic equilibrium that holds the entire system in balance. We can call Nine the Peace Point.

The Ancient Understanding of Harmony

In previous posts I’ve expressed my view that our modern world operates on a fundamentally flawed premise. As I explored in The Law of Balance, "the fundamental problem is that our culture tells us that humanity is in competition with nature. We consider nature as something to be 'conquered' rather than what it really is: our only life-support system in outer space."

This competitive, exploitation mindset has led us catastrophically astray. We've forgotten what wiser civilisations once understood: that real security doesn’t come from plundering nature, but instead from living in alignment with the universal Laws of Nature.

Long before Pythagoras articulated the term ‘philosophy’ – a love of wisdom – the ancient Egyptians revered what I’m calling philharmony, a love of harmony. This was a deep respect for the dynamic equilibrium that holds all things in right relationship with cosmic order: the rhythms of nature, the seasons in their cycles, the human body in homeostasis, and the state in stability.

The Egyptians called this principle Ma'at. As I wrote in Out of Balance, Out of Time, ma'at was "not a philosophical concept but a lived reality, a field of sacred reciprocity within which everything found its proper place." In life the pharaoh’s primary role was to maintain ma’at, and in death a person’s soul was judged on how their heart weighed against the feather of Ma'at, based on the integrity of their actions. To an Egyptian, being ‘lighthearted’ or ‘heavyhearted’ resulted in either eternal life or annihilation.

Nine: The Peace Point

Point Nine occupies a unique position on the Enneagram symbol: vertically, it's the highest point, and horizontally, it's the only point that's placed centrally. This positioning reveals Point Nine's fundamental role as the fulcrum of the entire Enneagram system, the upper pivot where stillness enables the movement of the system, and from which equilibrium is maintained.

Think of Point Nine as the pivot point of a pair of scales. Without this point of stability, the dynamic forces represented by the other eight points would pull each other into disarray, tipping the whole system into chaos. So Nine is the unifying force that holds the other energies together, creating a coherent and dynamically balanced system.

By overlaying the Enneagram on an image of a pair of scales we can see how this works:

We can see clearly that Point Nine is the point of stability from which dynamic movement in the system becomes possible. Counter-intuitively, the power broker in this dynamic system asserts itself through stillness - Point Nine is the still point through which the energy of the entire system is mediated, enabling everything else to move freely.

As I noted in my exploration of Egyptian systems theory, "ma'at [balance] sits at Point 9 of the Enneagram, defining the purpose of the whole system." What makes the Egyptian understanding of ma'at so sophisticated is their recognition of the necessity for three elements to achieve harmony. As I discovered when exploring the hieroglyphic spelling of ma'at, "the three vertical strokes … show that the Egyptian concept of ma'at was threefold in nature."

Gurdjieff later described this as the Law of Three, which states that every phenomenon arises from the interaction of three forces: an affirming, denying, and reconciling force. This law is reflected in the Enneagram's structure, in which the reconciling third force sits at Point Nine on the inner triangle.

We typically perceive only the first two forces – the opposing sides, the push and pull, or the tension – in other words, the primary conflict. Yet it's the hidden reconciling force that maintains the integrity of the system and holds the real power to transform.

It’s fascinating how the Enneagram reveals its elegant design here: we consistently overlook the reconciling force at Point 9, precisely where 'self-forgetting' and 'self-remembering' form the central polarity of the Enneagram Type 9 personality pattern. The beauty of this correlation is that it reveals the coherence of a universal system in which cosmic law and psychological patterns match with absolute precision.

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Justice Starts with Inner Work

The path towards greater personal wisdom, planetary harmony, and peace requires confronting a fundamental obstacle: the illusion of separation that creates ‘othering’. Othering is the unconscious process by which we divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’, whether between humans or between humanity and Nature itself.

Othering leads to injustice.

Deborah Egerton, in her powerful book on the Enneagram and activism, Know Justice Know Peace, explains that "we, as a communal species, are at a pivotal point in our human evolution; we are faced with the need for a critical course correction." Her insight that "the work of the Enneagram opens you up from the inside out" reveals that inner work is the start of the course correction – it's the wellspring from which all genuine transformation arises.

Ma'at, as I explored in Out of Balance, Out of Time, encompasses justice as well as harmony as expressions of the same underlying principle. Justice, in the sense of ma’at, is the restoration of right relationship – a rebalancing of what has fallen into dissonance, back into cosmic order. This applies equally to social systems that create artificial hierarchies and economic systems that treat the natural world as a mere commodity to be exploited.

Egerton describes how "inner work reveals who you were created to be—sometimes referred to as your higher self or authentic self." When we commit to inner work guided by the Enneagram, we can begin to see through the constructed disconnections that fuel our inner fragmentation, along with social injustice and ecological destruction in the outer world. We can recognise that the same fragmented consciousness that gives rise to prejudice also fuels a mindset that allows us to poison rivers, clear-cut forests, and bomb other human beings.

Those who have experienced marginalisation – Egerton calls us 'Love Warriors' – carry lived experience about the cost of separation and the necessity for justice. And it’s by no accident that Point Nine is where Love sits on the Enneagram. This connection between the balance point, the reconciling force, and Love teaches us that true harmony isn't passive or inactive, but emerges from Love actively engaged in service of the whole.

For the Type Nine pattern in all of us – this is the intrinsic pull towards steady state stability between our inner and outer experience – brings both extraordinary gifts and serious responsibilities. It begins with the inner work of returning to sacred balance within ourselves. This becomes the true foundation for outer peace. When we learn to meet conflict from our essential nature rather than from our reactive patterns, we can become powerful agents of change.

Real love doesn't avoid difficult action; it acts to restore balance where imbalance has taken hold. A true harmoniser isn't a passive peacekeeper who avoids all conflict - to seek real peace sometimes requires standing up for what serves the greater harmony. The goal is what Egerton calls the "Platinum Rule—treat people the way they want to be treated." Applied to our relationship with the natural world, this Platinum Rule becomes: treat the Earth as the conscious living being it actually is, not as the resource stockpile capitalism pretends it to be.

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A Return to Philharmony

So how might we restore philharmony - a love of harmony - to an increasingly disharmonious world?

Philharmony reminds us that personal flourishing, social justice, and ecological balance are not separate, but expressions of a higher consciousness inherent in the fundamental Laws of Nature.

As Egerton urges, "we cannot move forward without reeducating ourselves and restoring our world as one unified human race." This unity extends beyond the human family to embrace what we might call one unified Earth community, by recognising that our flourishing and the flourishing of the natural world are fully interdependent.

With this year’s focus on peace, World Enneagram Day brings an opportunity to rediscover the importance of philharmony, a love of sacred balance.

As the ancient Egyptians understood:

We exist by Balance, in Balance, and for Balance.

We exist by Harmony, in Harmony, and for Harmony.

We exist by Ma’at, in Ma’at, and for Ma’at.

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One of the world’s top thinkers2, and eloquent as ever, Sheldrake proposed that consciousness is not a byproduct of the brain, but the fabric of reality itself. What if Divinity (for some, ‘God’) is not elsewhere, but is in fact everywhere, within all things and beyond the time and space of this universe?

A Culture Cut Off from Spirit

The idea of panentheism is far removed from the dominant Western worldview in which Divinity is either an anthropomorphic male God controlling the world from afar (for those who are religious), or altogether non-existent (for those who are atheist). Yet for many organicistic indigenous cultures, panentheism was — and still is — a perfectly natural way of understanding reality.

Rather than seeing the Earth as a living being, the Western system treats the world as a stockpile of resources to be exploited and monetised. We pollute the oceans, exhaust the soil, and mine the planet with no regard for the sacredness of the Earth as a conscious being that keeps us alive and safe in space.

In the dominant mindset, consciousness is assumed to reside in the human brain, and Divinity — if acknowledged at all — is imagined as a distant ruler, separate from the world ‘He’ supposedly created. This disconnection has real consequences. When we no longer see Spirit in the tree, the mountain, or the river, we lose reverence for the sacredness of life and the mystery of consciousness, neither of which can be explained by science.

Environmental activist David Suzuki expresses the benefit of returning to a more holistic view of nature when he says:

If we regard a mountain as a deity rather than a pile of ore, a forest as a sacred grove rather than lumber and pulp, other species as our biological kin rather than resources, the planet as our mother and life-giver and not an opportunity, then our actions will reflect far greater humility, respect and responsibility.3

In my view, panentheism offers Western ‘culture’ a more intelligent framework by recognising that Spirit must be both immanent and transcendent. From a cosmology grounded in Unity, it would be a logical contradiction for anything to exist outside Spirit. By definition, in panentheism, it’s a logical impossibility for any thing to be ‘not Spirit’.

How Cultures Map the Divine

In his talk, Sheldrake clarified how different traditions understand the nature of reality:

• Materialism says the universe is mechanical, dead, or accidental. There is no Divinity.

• Theism says Divinity is real but separate from the universe.

• Pantheism says Divinity and the universe are one and the same.

• Panentheism says Divinity is in the universe, and beyond it.

Panentheism goes a step further than pantheism, stating that the Divine exists beyond time and space, with our universe being a subset of a greater Mystery. This aligns with modern scientific thinking, as even the New Scientist explains: “Among physicists, it’s not controversial. Our universe is but one in an unimaginably massive ocean of universes called the multiverse.”4

Sheldrake explained that if consciousness is not produced by the brain but is in fact a fundamental quality of being, then the Earth, with its vast networks of life and intelligence, must be more conscious than any individual human being. And by extension, the Sun, as the sustaining source of the entire solar system and all life on Earth, may even be more conscious than the Earth.

I find the idea that we live in a conscious planetary system genuinely compelling. It speaks to the intelligence of the heart and is also strikingly rational, uniting both intuitive knowing and reason.

Of course, consciousness can’t be measured by science, so science struggles to explain what consciousness actually is, despite its self-evident presence all around us. Sheldrake calls the belief that humans represent the peak of consciousness “human chauvinism”, a narcissistic arrogance that denies the possibility of higher, non-human forms of consciousness.

One of the challenges with consciousness is that it is undeniably real, yet elusive. As Gurdjieff said, “You can know consciousness only in yourself”. We can observe its effects in others, but we can only ever experience consciousness directly within. This makes human chauvinism somewhat understandable: we most easily recognise consciousness in others who speak, act, or think like us — and so we assume human consciousness must be the pinnacle.

But ancient and indigenous traditions never fell into this mistaken thinking. They’ve long understood that the Spirit of Consciousness is not confined to the human mind, but extends throughout the natural world. Moreover, many of these traditions reached a grander, rational conclusion: that although we each experience consciousness within ourselves, there can be only one universal consciousness. Our personal experience of consciousness is simply a fraction of a unified whole.

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A Sacred Pattern Across Time

The ancient Egyptians arrived at the same insight thousands of years ago. The panentheistic view that the divine is both within and beyond the world is reflected in Egyptian cosmology, Hermetic teaching, and also in the spiritual dimension of the Enneagram.

In the Egyptian worldview — and in panentheism more broadly — nothing can be greater than Unity. The Egyptian principle of Unity in diversity holds that everything in the universe is a fraction of a greater whole, in which the an essence of Unity remains immanent in the parts. The Divine therefore, is not separate from the universe, but suffused throughout it, even while transcending it.

This principle is also central to Hermeticism, the Hellenistic tradition that grew out of Egyptian philosophy. Hermetic teachings speak of the Decad, the Unbegotten One, the non-dual source of all being. From this undivided origin, all levels of existence unfold: consciousness, light, and form.

The mystery of this Unity has many names across the esoteric wisdom traditions — the Monad, the All, the One, the First Cause.

The Enneagram too reflects this cosmology through the Holy Ideas5 — nine non-dual insights into the nature of reality, each one a facet of the Divine. Two examples include:

• Holy Origin – There is, always has been, and always will be, a connection to the Source of all things. A disconnection from the Holy Origin is a physical and spiritual impossibility. Everything remains inseparable from the Holy Origin.

• Holy Love – The essential nature of all that exists is good. Each of us is a direct expression of that love.

In this way, the Enneagram aligns with Egyptian and Hermetic traditions, teaching that all things are emanations of Unity, infused with consciousness, and never disconnected from their Origin.

All three systems — Egyptian, Hermetic, and the Enneagram — point to the same sacred pattern:

• A non-dual mystery at the source of existence

• From that, the arising of consciousness

• From consciousness, the emergence of light and form

• And within all form, the hidden presence of the unified source

This is panentheism in action: a living cosmos, arising from mystery, illuminated by consciousness, and held together by Unity.

A Return to Sacred Relationship

Panentheism teaches that rather than being composed of dead matter, the world is alive with consciousness. We are not separate or disconnected, but embedded in a vast, intelligent ecosphere. Spirit is not ‘out there’, but right here — in the earth beneath our feet, the breath in our lungs, and the Sun that rises each morning.

This worldview reflects the wisdom of people who have not forgotten how to listen to the Earth. As David Suzuki puts it:

By placing too much faith in science and not enough in the knowledge of people who have lived in place, we have lost essential wisdom and understanding.6

To embrace panentheism is to come back into relationship with the Earth, with each other, and with the great mystery that lives through all things.

It means seeing Nature not as a supply chain, but as a sacred partner.

In this way, many so-called primitive cultures lived by a more accurate cosmology than we do today by embracing a worldview that recognised the sacredness of the world and our place within it. Our scientific achievements have brought extraordinary technological wizardry, but they are not the whole story. The invitation now is to reconnect science and technology to the Sacred Science7 from which they emerge.

If there is a path forward through the challenges of our time, I believe the signpost is this: to see the world as sacred again, as panentheism invites us to do.

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This leads to an intriguing question: is the Vatican unaware of the link between the Novemdiales and the Enneagram? Or is it aware, and deliberately glossing over it?

A Curiously Dogmatic Denouncement of the Enneagram

The Enneagram has become a popular tool for personal and spiritual development in many traditions, including among Catholic Christians. However, in two key Vatican documents the Catholic Church's official stance on the Enneagram has been decidedly critical.

In Jesus Christ, The Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian reflection on the “New Age”1, the Enneagram is explicitly mentioned among New Age practices that risk introducing “an ambiguity in the doctrine and the life of the Christian faith”.

Meanwhile, A Brief Report on the Origins of the Enneagram was even clearer in its scepticism, raising concerns about the Enneagram’s “association with esoteric and non-Christian belief systems”, its “non-Christian origins”, and most curiously, its supposed lack of “scientific evidence”.

In fact, the report mounts what can only be described as an unexpectedly empirical critique. Here are a few examples of how the report frames its objections:

"… the more practical question of the accuracy of enneagram teaching from the perspective of modern science."

"The burden of proof is on proponents of the enneagram to furnish scientific evidence for their claims."

"The work of the enneagram authors is plainly unscientific and without rational foundation, because it is based on dogmatic formulations."

Surely these are odd objections for a religious institution to make?

The report concludes decisively that "enneagram teaching lacks a scientific foundation" and is "of questionable value as a scientific tool for the understanding of human psychology."

Again, this is a curious argument from a Church whose foundations rest on the miraculous, from transubstantiation to divine revelation. Why the sudden demand for scientific validation when it comes to a psycho-spiritual system such as the Enneagram?

And if scientific validation is now being treated as the gold standard for an aid to spiritual development (surely a contradiction in terms?), it’s worth noting that the psychological dimension of the Enneagram has been explored empirically. Research published in Personality and Wholeness in Therapy2, presents scientific evidence for the nine distinct personality patterns defined by the Enneagram. The work, based on over 20 years of research, was led by Dr Daniel Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine in collaboration with the PDP Group3.

In a further curious twist we also learn from his biographer that the late Pope Francis reportedly “knows the Enneagram well and is not against it"4, though he apparently maintained some reservations about potential misuse (I’m sure any serious Enneagram practitioner would share these reservations). The contradiction between the institution’s official scepticism and the openness of its highest authority only adds to the inconsistencies.

The Novemdiales: An Enneagram Hidden in Plain Sight?

As I outlined previously, the Novemdiales ritual closely matches the structure of the Process Enneagram. Both follow a similar sequence of steps that are distinct in quality and intentional in purpose:

• Each is built around an arc of nine clearly defined stages

• Each stage expresses comparable qualities and functions

• Each stage evolves through a spiritual cycle of energy and cumulative growth

It’s also worth noting that ninefold patterns aren’t limited to the Novemdiales. Catholics have long practised the Novena5, a widely used devotional ritual consisting of nine days of prayer and meditation, often in preparation for a feast, to call on a particular saint, or to focus on a specific spiritual need. There are hundreds of Novenas to choose from, spanning a wide range of themes and intentions. Practicing the Novena is an ancient tradition, dating back to the Apostles, who according to biblical tradition prayed with the Virgin Mary for nine days following the Ascension in the lead-up to Pentecost6.

So, far from being a peripheral feature, the nine-day structure appears to be central to Catholic spiritual practice. The Church must therefore be thoroughly familiar with the symbolic significance of ninefold wisdom. This leads us to the two possibilities: either the Vatican is unaware of the connection with the Enneagram, or it recognises it and chooses not to acknowledge it.

Scenario 1: The Vatican is unaware of the connection

If Church authorities genuinely haven’t noticed these parallels, this raises questions about their grasp of both their own ritual tradition and the quality of their research into the Enneagram. For such clear structural similarities to go unnoticed would suggest a surprising lack of symbolic literacy.

Scenario 2: The Vatican is aware but chooses not to acknowledge it

This is the more fascinating possibility. If the parallels are known but not acknowledged, what’s at stake in keeping quiet about them? Is it simply the modern “New Age” framing that’s troubling? Or might the real concern be the democratisation of spiritual knowledge, opening up access to wisdom that has traditionally been held exclusively within ecclesiastical hierarchies?

Origins Matter

Despite its popularity, I believe the full potential of the Enneagram — as a psycho-spiritual map of the human psyche, and as a metaphysical system of understanding the cosmos and our place in it — remains largely unrealised. A hundred years since Gurdjieff introduced the symbol and its underlying philosophy to the West, and sixty years since Ichazo developed his system of personality types, the Enneagram is dogged by the myths both men spun about its historical origins.

In my view, this messy and unresolved history is actively limiting the Enneagram’s credibility and growth. As Samuel Bendeck Sotillos rightly observes:

"Without knowing its origins, one cannot account for the Enneagram, and its meaning will thus be left to the winds of conjecture and subjective whim."7

And that’s exactly where the Enneagram finds itself today.

Meanwhile, the Vatican performs a nine-stage ritual of mourning and transition that closely matches the system it publicly denounces. Let’s remember that the Novemdiales isn’t some obscure relic. It is one of the most solemn and symbolically significant events in the Church’s liturgical life. And yet it follows the very same ninefold structure that is condemned when it appears in the form of the Enneagram.

The result is a muddled contradiction that serves no one well. Ninefold wisdom, and its relevance to human development, appears consistently across too many cultures and traditions to be dismissed so lightly. Whether expressed through the Catholic Novemdiales, the Novena, in ancient Egyptian philosophy, or in the modern Enneagram, this pattern of ninefold wisdom deserves great respect and attention.

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What’s Really Being Concealed?

At this point, we’re left with more unresolved questions:

1. Why might the Vatican be uncomfortable acknowledging the Enneagram system that so clearly mirrors one of its most sacred rituals?

   Is it just that the origins are unclear – or is the Enneagram brushing up against a wisdom tradition the Church would rather keep shrouded in mystery?

2. Could it be that the Enneagram reveals an ancient process of personal and spiritual transformation?

   Might it connect to a universal system of understanding that the Church is well aware of, but prefers to keep hidden?

3. If the Enneagram points to a tradition older than the Church itself, could that threaten its claim to exclusive spiritual authority?

   Is the Enneagram being dismissed because it’s esoteric or not scientific enough – or because it’s too close to a universal truth?

Might the Enneagram, in fact, be the universal symbol Gurdjieff claimed it to be? A symbolic key to understanding the cosmos ‘above’ and human transformation ‘below’ that aligns too closely with esoteric knowledge the Catholic Church has long kept concealed? Perhaps in the Novemdiales there is tantalising evidence of a historically significant common origin with the Enneagram, one the Church has, for centuries, chosen not to reveal.

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During the Novemdiales, nine daily Masses are held for the late pope, marking the transition from the death of the old pontiff to the start of the Papal Conclave, in which his successor will be elected.

Each day of the Novemdiales, beginning with the Pope’s funeral, is marked by a Mass celebrated by different cardinals and constituent groups. What is striking is that the theme and focus of each of the nine Masses exactly follows the sequence of steps outlined in the Enneagram.

Could the Novemdiales and the Enneagram really be one and the same?

The Enneagram of Process

In The Nature of Nine, we explored how the symbolism of the number nine represents a full set or a complete cycle. This symbolism is reflected in the ancient ritual of the Novemdiales, which takes its name from a nine-day period of mourning traditionally observed two thousand years ago in ancient Rome.

The Enneagram of Process describes how cycles of manifestation unfold in nine distinct stages, moving step by step around the circle of the Enneagram. Unlike the Enneagram of Personality, which focuses on internal patterns describing human behaviour, the Process Enneagram focuses on the natural progression of events, offering insights into the mechanics of manifestation.

Faith Javane and Dusty Bunker describe it in this way:

“The digits 1 through 9 symbolise the stages through which an idea must pass through before it becomes a reality. All manifestation is the result of these nine stages.”1

These nine-stages of the Novemdiales describe a complete transformational process: the transition from the funeral of the deceased pope to the start of the Papal Conclave to elect the new Pontiff.

The Ritual of the Novemdiales

To illustrate how the Enneagram of Process maps onto this ancient ritual, let’s take a look at the structure of the Novemdiales itself. Each of the nine daily Masses follows a particular theme, and each is offered by a specific group within the Catholic Church.

Day 1: Initiation.
During the funeral Mass, the global congregation pray for the Pope’s soul and purification as his earthly body is laid to rest. This marks the end of the previous Pontificate and initiates the start of a new cycle leading up to the Conclave to elect the new pope.

Day 2: Gestation.
The employees and faithful of the Vatican City, pray for forgiveness of the Pope's sins and human failings. Symbolically, this Mass continues the process of purification, as a grassroots gathering comes together in compassion and humility at the start of a period of gestation.

Day 3: Nourishment
The Church of Rome gives thanks for the Pope’s good works and pastoral fruits. This Mass provides spiritual nourishment by acknowledging the results of the Pope’s endeavours, creating a foundation from which the Church can build upon previous successes.

Day 4: Threshold
The Chapters of the Four Papal Basilicas in Rome pray for the Church the Pope leaves behind. In the last Mass to directly involve the departing Pope, the earthbound body of the Church takes final leave of the spirit of the departed Pope. This is the last goodbye, the death of the identity of the Catholic Church as it previously existed, in preparation for the transmigration of the soul of the Church from the old to the new by crossing the threshold of the existential gap between steps 4 and 5.

Day 5: Guidance
This Mass begins the process of evolution as members of the Papal Chapel pray for the future Pope. The cardinals, archbishops, and other hierophants of the Church gather to seek guidance on what they need to know about the traditions, the institution and the process of the Conclave.

Day 6: Faith
The Roman Curia is the central governing body of the Holy See and the Vatican that handles various aspects of the Church's affairs, including doctrine, governance, and diplomacy. In this Mass, members of the Roman Curia, described as the “inner authority” of the Catholic Church, pray for the unity of the faithful in the process to elect a new pope.

Day 7: Potential
In this Mass, the Eastern Churches pray for the Cardinal electors who will choose the next Pope. Since ancient times, the East signifies the new sun at the start of the new day, and the rising of the new. This Mass marks the start of the Holy Work of electing the new Pope, via a process of evaluating the candidates, and the potential he could deliver as Pope.

Day 8: Truth
This Mass is offered with members of the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life — communities and groups whose members dedicate their lives to poverty, chastity, obedience, or apostolic mission. Together, they pray for the Holy Spirit to descend upon the Church, to guide and watch over it. This Mass invokes the power of the Holy Spirit for the revelation of Holy Truth to guide the sacred process of succession.

Day 9: Unity
In the final Mass of the Novemdiales, the members of the Papal Chapel pray in thanksgiving for the Pope’s life as a whole. This ninth Mass marks the moment when all previous stages converge with Holy Love in a single act of closure. Through this act of unity, the Novemdiales reaches completion; the life of the deceased Pontiff sown as the generative seed for the next, opening the way for the Papal Conclave and the election of the new pope.

The ninth day marks the completion of the full cycle of mourning. In this sense, the Novemdiales enacts a transformational cycle of involution and evolution, illustrated as follows:

The Novemdiales is not only a time of mourning but also one of preparation. Once the nine days are complete, the Church becomes ready to begin the Papal Conclave — the sacred process by which a new pope is elected.

During the Novemdiales, the College of Cardinals gathers in Rome for prayer, reflection, and discussions. This is a time of discernment, where the Cardinals begin to sense the kind of leadership the future Church may require.

The Novemdiales serves as a bridge between pontificates. It honours the life and legacy of the late pope, while preparing the way for the Church to receive new leadership. By moving step by step through grief, hope, and renewal, the Church is able to move forward with continuity and intention.

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A New Historical Anchor for the Enneagram

The structural and qualitative correlation between the Novemdiales and the Enneagram of Process cannot be coincidental. As I have outlined above, there is a precise match between the sequence of the nine Masses and the nine stages of the Enneagram of Process model.

More significantly, the intrinsic qualities of each stage — in both the Novemdiales and the Enneagram of Process — align closely with the key psychological patterns found in the Enneagram of Personality2. The emotional, cognitive, and symbolic themes embedded in the ritual correspond directly to the essence of the character patterns observed in the nine Enneagram personality types.

The Novemdiales has been used to bury over 250 popes. Although it is not clear when the nine-day process was established in its current form, it clearly continues a ritual pattern that developed from the ancient Roman practice of nine days of mourning.

Whether the current form of the Novemdiales predates the modern Enneagram remains an open question. If the modern Novemdiales was established in the 20th century, it may have been influenced by knowledge of the Enneagram. However, if the format was already established long before the 20th century — which I consider the most probable — this would offer an important new historical reference point for the development of the Enneagram.

What we may be witnessing in the Novemdiales is an ancient ritual based on a fully formed Enneagram pattern: not the geometric symbol itself, but the structural concept of nine successive stages, unfolding in sequence, each with its own intrinsic quality and function.

This reveals a fascinating new historical anchor in the development of the Enneagram: a nine-stage process, embedded in ritual practice dating as far back as ancient Rome. It strongly suggests that documentary evidence may already exist in the Vatican archives for an Enneagram-based system that predates both Gurdjieff and Ichazo by centuries.

Part2: The next part of this article explores The Vatican’s Enneagram Paradox.

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Sources:

Vatican News: www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2025-04/novendiales-the-schedule-for-the-nine-days-of-mourning

Catholicus.eu: catholicus.eu/en/novemdiales-nine-days-of-hope-mourning-and-renewal-in-the-catholic-church/

Pray More Novenas: www.praymorenovenas.com/novemdiales-novena-for-the-pope

NBC News: www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-francis-dead-what-happens-next-rcna128745

Fr. R. Vierling on X: x.com/father_rmv/status/1916487179313836231

Susan Rhodes, An Enneagram-based Theory of Transformation
www.integralworld.net/pdf/AnEnneagram-basedTheoryofTransformation.pdf

A. G. E. Blake, The Intelligent Enneagram

Ma’at is a central message in Pesedjet Ninefold Wisdom. A deceptively simple concept, balance sits at the heart of every system and every wisdom tradition, yet its importance has been largely forgotten in modern times. Reconnecting with balance as a guiding principle will, I believe, be a key lesson in the years ahead.

Temporarily pushing our mind-body system out of balance can be necessary, helping us rise to challenges or surmount unexpected circumstances, but equilibrium must ultimately be restored. When imbalance persists, our bodies become dis-eased and our minds dis-stressed, resulting in many health conditions that are endemic in today’s world. Instead of pushing the mind-body system further away from equilibrium, the wise course of action is to move from imbalance towards balance. All holistic healing is based on this logic.

Balance as the Heart of Governance

The foundational need for balance applies equally to society, whether in communities, businesses, or systems of governance. Ideally, such systems would seek steady-state stability because the opposite is chaos, injustice, violence, and disorder – exactly the problems we see today, as environmental, political, and economic systems destabilise worldwide.

A key translation of Ma’at is the word ‘justice’, which might at first feel out of place alongside terms like balance and harmony. When you hear the word ‘justice’, what comes to mind? Like most people, you may be thinking of crime and punishment, injury and retribution. This in itself reveals just how deeply our ideas of justice have been shaped by the imbalanced system we live in.

Dictionary definitions of justice include terms such as fairness, egalitarianism, impartiality, honour, integrity, ethics, trustworthiness, and incorruptibility. It is these virtues that were central to the Egyptian worldview, embodied in the principle of Ma’at, harmonic balance. In fact, the divine principle of Ma’at later evolved into the Greek goddess Themis who is still visible today in statues of Lady Justice that stand atop many law courts, including London’s Old Bailey.

Plato’s Republic offers a useful perspective to help us better understand the concept of justice symbolised by Ma’at. In his theory of justice Plato taught that a just individual and a just society mirror each other through harmony among their constituent parts with each part fulfilling its designated role in order to maintain internal balance. Within individuals, justice meant harmony among reason, spirit, and appetite. In society, it meant harmony among clearly defined archetypes:

• Philosophers, driven by knowledge and intellect, whose virtue is wisdom.

• Soldiers, guided by spirit and emotion, whose virtue is courage.

• Traders and producers, guided by desire and practicality, whose virtue is temperance.

Plato envisioned governance by Philosopher-Kings in the form of individuals in whom intellect, courage, and a love of wisdom were fully integrated. When inner balance is achieved, the person — and by extension, the society — becomes a just and harmonious whole.

Contrast that with today, where governance is commonly driven by polarisation, short-term thinking, ego and personal gain, not integrity or wisdom. We live in an increasingly imbalanced corporate world, in which merchants and traders run the show with few, if any, checks and balances. Plato would hardly recognise our current situation as anything close to his ‘ideal state’ governed by justice.

Let’s also remember that Plato wrote about Egyptian philosophy which he studied in ancient Egypt1; his theory of justice as explained in the Republic was not new or original in essence. Personal and societal justice in the form of Ma’at had already been practised for thousands of years in ancient Egypt, and was also reflected in concepts like Dharma in Hinduism and Buddhism, and the Dao in Taoism. What Plato did was to articulate the Law of Balance clearly and rationally, in accessible language we can readily understand today.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise how far away from Ma’at our current systems have drifted, and how damaging the consequences have become. There is now an urgent imperative to restore balance, order, and genuine justice as guiding principles of philosophic leadership that is rooted in a concern for peace, harmony and true respect for people.

Placing the wisdom of balance and stability at the heart of personal conduct and collective leadership is now the most practical and urgently needed response to our mounting global challenges.

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Ecological Wisdom: Sustainability as Sacred Law

French symbologist René Schwaller de Lubicz defines harmony as “the ‘method’ of Nature”2, while Gurdjieff speaks of our duty as human beings to “that Nature to which, strictly speaking, they owe their very existence.”3

The natural world is a masterclass in equilibrium, constantly recalibrating towards sustainable harmony. Ecosystems operate through delicate balances in the form of predator-prey relationships, seasonal cycles, ocean tides, and planetary orbits, always seeking dynamic stability. If any part in the system becomes imbalanced, Nature will rebalance the system through a process of self-regulation. Every ecosystem within the biosphere seeks balance, and the biosphere itself seeks balance.

Gurdjieff observed that “each complete whole, each cosmos, each organism, each plant, is an enneagram”.4 In other words, everything is an interconnected system seeking equilibrium. Needless to say, this inviolable law applies to us too. As we continue to destabilise global ecosystems, Nature will inevitably act to restore balance — with or without our cooperation.

The ancient Egyptians, like many other civilisations, understood that their existence was deeply embedded in nature, certainly not above it. Sustainability wasn’t a topic for debate; it was recognised as Nature's foundational operating system. No animal ever takes more than it needs. Indigenous peoples have long lived in ways that honoured the land, taking only what was needed and guided by a view of the Earth as a relative to be lived with in reciprocity. For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings trod lightly on the Earth and thrived in ways we might now struggle to comprehend.

Today, our culture is driven by an ideology of relentless expansion and endless growth, based on dangerous notions such as ‘conquering nature’: the very definition of hubris. Infinite growth on a finite planet is, quite obviously, a logical impossibility. (Spoiler alert: No amount of ‘tech’ will ever alter this fact.) We’ve already overshot planet Earth’s capacity to sustain life, now requiring 1.75 planets to maintain current levels of consumption5. Earth Overshoot Day, marking the day in the year when humanity exceeds Earth’s regenerative capacity, falls on the 20th May in 2025.6

Wiser humans before us understood that intergenerational security comes from living within a well-balanced system, with stability as their guiding principle. We, on the other hand, have lost sight of this simple truth, along with the deeper reality that Nature is always in charge. When balance is lost, Nature will certainly restore it — in her own timescale and on her own terms.

Our survival depends on recognising this reality, and choosing to align with Nature, rather than foolishly trying to conquer her.

A Modern Living Wisdom

Our modern obsession with endless growth in the name of ‘progress’ has led us away from the reality of life on Earth. True progress in the 21st century will be to understand once again our absolute reliance on Nature’s laws, and to let go of the wild fantasy that we can escape them. The Law of Balance, in the form of Ma’at, powerfully reminds us of a fundamental truth: we belong here, within Earth’s equilibrium.

Now more than ever, a proper understanding the wisdom of Ma’at is exactly what’s needed to restore balance to our polarised, imbalanced world. Ma’at is no simplistic or ‘primitive’ belief, it is in fact a timeless, living wisdom.

Were ancient societies perfect? No they certainly were not, and we should avoid seeing them through rose-tinted glasses. However, aspiring to live by Ma’at helped build ancient Egypt to be the longest-lasting civilisation we know about.

Ma’at teaches us that the cost of imbalance is incalculable; sustainability is much more than a lifestyle choice, it is a necessity. It’s time we faced what wiser civilisations once understood: living in harmony with Nature is not optional, it’s the only way to guarantee longterm survival.

Collectively we can and must do better. UN Secretary-General António Guterres urges us to take note when he says we are at “code red for humanity”7. Our future is in imminent danger.

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Well, plenty, because this is not how Nature actually works on a macro level. There is great wisdom in the ways of Nature that world events are compelling us to remember.

The fundamental problem is that our society tells us that humanity is in competition with nature. We consider nature as something to be ‘conquered’ rather than what it really is: our only life-support system in outer space.

So how else could we look to Nature for guidance on how we could live better lives collectively and as individuals on planet Earth?

Truth Unites Opposites

Through Pesedjet Ninefold Wisdom we’re using ancient Egyptian wisdom as a catalyst to provide better answers for how to live today. And so it is with the Law of Balance, which was central to the ancient Egyptian worldview in the form of Ma’at (it’s pronounced with a glottal stop between the two ‘a’s).

Ma’at simply means truth in the form of balance, harmony, order, justice, integrity, or law. As such, ma'at was seen as central to Egyptian philosophy because it was considered the foundational principle of the Universe and of every system within it. The ultimate role of the Pharaoh was to uphold ma’at in the form of environmental and social stability.

Many civilisations, more intelligent than ours, understood the essential need to respect the natural order to maintain a stable system in which to live. By contrast, our own economic system, which has destabilised six out of nine planetary boundaries1 required for the healthy functioning of planet Earth, is dangerously foolhardy.

We could rightly call ma’at ancient Egyptian systems theory. Ma’at represents a Universal truth: that every system seeks dynamic equilibrium within a larger unified whole. Balance was understood as the fundamental organising principle of Nature; it is the law that holds the universe together.

As Egyptologist Lucie Lamy puts it, balance in the form of ma’at is the very medium we live in:

“Divine entities and human beings alike live 'by Ma'at, in Ma'at and for Ma'at'“.2

Ma’at can also be interpreted as ‘equation’. In fact there’s a strong probability that ma’at is the origin of the Greek word máthēma3, the origin of our word ‘mathematics’ – or ma’athematics – the balancing of equations.

So the Law of Balance is an unalterable law of the Universe. Nature seeks balance. Our body seeks homeostasis, and our psyche seeks equilibrium. The mind-body system seeks balance in the form of ethical and integrated self-expression, and so it is that positive emotions are connected to a state of ma’at. Feelings of anger, fear and shame arise when something within us is out of alignment and seeking balance.

Through the concept of ma’at the Egyptians offer us a universal truth that is just as relevant now as it ever was.

Balance and the Enneagram Law of Three

Ma’at, or balance, was such a central concept in ancient Egypt that the hieroglyphic spelling was often shortened to just one or two signs. It’s only when we look at the long-form spelling4 that we discover something revealing: the three vertical strokes, representing the number three, show that the Egyptian concept of ma’at was threefold in nature.

Once again, it’s by returning to the original Egyptian that we uncover the depth of their philosophical brilliance in the form of wisdom that remains deeply practical even today. The image of weighing scales, so often seen in Egyptian scenes of the Weighing of the Heart ceremony, perfectly symbolises the Law of Balance. In this ritual, the heart of the deceased was weighed against the feather of Ma’at to determine how true, just, or uncorrupted a person had been in their life. Imagine the benefits of living in a society that placed such a taboo on corruption.

Pythagoras, who studied in the Egyptian mystery schools, taught that ‘all things consist of three’. As Manly P. Hall recounts, Pythagoras believed that everything in Nature could be divided into three parts, and that no one could become truly wise without learning to see every problem as triangular. ‘Establish the triangle,’ Pythagoras said, ‘and the problem is two-thirds solved.’5

The symbolism of the scales and the triangle reflect what Gurdjieff later described as the Law of Three, another expression of the Law of Balance. It states that every phenomenon arises from the interaction of three forces:

• Affirming - the initiating force which sets things in motion or brings the impulse to act.

• Denying - the resisting force which meets the impulse with friction, limits, or opposition.

• Reconciling - the unifying force which mediates the tension between opposites and serves as the locus of power within the system.

While we are usually aware of the Affirming and Denying forces, the Reconciling force often remains invisible. Yet it is this third force that holds the central power within the system.

While we have two eyes to see, it is when we combine the images of both sides together that we gain the power of perspective. When we can lift ourselves out of the trenches of polarised thinking, we begin to ‘rise above’, gaining power over challenges by seeing problems for what they really are. (And intriguingly, the Egyptian word ma’a means ‘to see’.)

Bonus Practice:
Whenever you’re feeling stuck or facing a problem, ‘establish the triangle’ and ask yourself:
“What’s the invisible third force I’m not seeing?”
Then reflect, and notice how your perspective begins to shift.

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The Enneagram of Balance

If the guiding principle of any system is balance, then this must also apply to the Enneagram, and of course it does. To seek equilibrium is the whole message of the enneagram symbol, with Point 9 as the balance point, the very reason for being of the system. Vertically, Point 9 is the highest point; on the horizontal plane, it’s the only point that is placed centrally. It is the locus from which all other points ‘hang’.

Point 9’s symbolic position is matched by its meaning in Enneagram theory, where it is associated with harmony, balance, unification, stability, diplomacy, and, crucially, power.6 But the power at Point 9 is not power over, it’s power with – this is an enabling concept of power that runs counter to the values of Western society. Notice how the French symbolist René Schwaller de Lubicz combines the ideas of power and mystical invisibility when he writes:

Harmony is the a priori law written in all of Nature; it imposes itself on our intelligence, yet it is in itself incomprehensible.7

So ma’at sits at Point 9 of the Enneagram, defining the purpose of the whole system. Fittingly, Faulkner also translates ma’at as ‘right-doing’8, which corresponds to the higher personality quality of Right Action assigned to the Type 9 pattern. Whatever our dominant personality pattern, the enneagram is ultimately asking: Are we balanced in mind, body and soul? And if not, what action do we need to take to rebalance our system in this moment?

From the ancient Egyptians we learn that the goal of life is to live a life of balance, to maintain ma'at. And the way to do this is through ma’athematics – by consciously solving the equations that life presents us with, in a way that restores harmony and inner resonance.

This is the first of two posts. The next one, Out of Balance, Out of Time, explores how the Law of Balance applies in today’s world.

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In particular, we found that Pesedjet, the name of this publication, refers to an interconnected group of nine; an Ennead of divine universal principles and an important metaphorical concept called The Nine Bows.

In The Nature of Nine, we found that the number nine is associated with:

• The circle, universal symbol of unity, non-duality, and completeness.

• The bisected circle, representing duality, polarity, and the cycles of light and dark.

Next, in The Shining Nine, we discovered further associations:

• The shining light of the Sun, symbolising conscious illumination.

• The Akh, the highest spiritual state of shining, enlightened awareness.

And lastly, in Stretching The Nine Bows, we connected nine with this ancient concept:

• The Nine Bows, representing the ‘nine enemies’ and the principle of polarity or duality as the fundamental driving force of life and personality.

At this point, we can also recall these foundational words from Joseph Campbell:

“The old teachers knew what they were saying. Once we have learned to read again their symbolic language, it requires no more than the talent of an anthologist to let their teaching be heard.”1

And this is exactly what this publication Pesedjet is all about. Pesedjet is a project to recover the symbolic language Joseph Campbell described; a language that still speaks, once we know how to read it. Gurdjieff called the enneagram “the hieroglyph of a universal language”2, and that’s how I’ll be using it here: as a tool to help decode the symbolic meaning concealed in Egyptian hieroglyphs and other sacred systems. My aim is to breathe life again into the symbolic language in order to release long-forgotten wisdom to help us make better choices, individually and collectively, in response to the very real challenges of our time.

I love this work, and my sincere hope is that it finds people who will love it too.

Several readers have asked how I came to this work and why I’m doing it. It’s a journey in several acts, let me explain…

Act 1 - The Harmony of Art and Science

I’ve always been comfortable - in fact, feel most alive - operating at the interplay between art and science. At Ilkley Grammar school in Yorkshire I studied A-Levels3 in Physics, Maths and Music, before going on to take a joint degree Physics and Music at Cardiff University.

At university, whenever I told people I was studying physics and music, if I’d had a pound for every time someone said, “That’s an unusual combination!” I’d have graduated a wealthy man. But what I didn’t know at the time was that by studying physics and music, I was studying the very subjects that made up what was once called the quadrivium. In the ancient world, the quadrivium was a stage in formal education that focused on the four mathematical arts: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy – seen as essential for understanding the order and harmony of the universe.

Far from being an ‘unusual combination’, the inclusion of musical theory and practice within the mathematical arts was at the heart of classical education. These disciplines were taught in the mystery schools of Ancient Egypt4, and continued to be taught well into the Middle Ages. What appears to be an ‘unusual combination’ to us today, would, for thousands of years, have seemed perfectly logical. Contemporary education is hopelessly disconnected - like so much else these days - from a fully rounded and unified approach that is critical to ensuring balance between head, heart, and body.

Leonardo da Vinci, an accomplished musician, performer and composer in his own right, understood this when he said:

“To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else.”5

What I now realise is that by studying physics and music, I was training in the art of music and the mathematics of harmonic science. I was, in effect, learning two advanced symbolic languages: the language of physics equations and the language of musical notation. This, I believe, is why the symbolist view of metaphysical cosmology speaks so clearly and definitely to me – and why it’s a joy for me to decode the ancient symbolic language.

Life rarely progresses in straight lines (more on this vital Egyptian concept in a future post), and so it was with my career, which took me into the world of broadcast television. I worked at the BBC, Channel 4, and the Discovery Channel. But even in television, we were working primarily with the visual image, alongside the spoken word.

Act 2 - Three Knocks at the Door

The second part of my career brought me into the world of authenticity coaching, through my coaching and consulting practice, Authentic Life. I was driven by a fascination with how people come to understand themselves, and the personality patterns that help or hinder them. It’s also important to say: I’d reached a point in my own life journey that called me to do some deep personal work. As a coach and guide, I believe it’s essential to commit to ongoing personal inquiry.

Alongside this, I’ve always had a deep curiosity about ancient civilisations, ancient Egypt in particular. As my personal and professional development progressed, I found myself more and more drawn to what the non-Western wisdom traditions were teaching me about how to live a Good Life6. The organicistic, relational worldviews of Eastern religions and indigenous traditions resonated strongly with my own sense of cosmic order and human experience.

Then along came the Enneagram, which interestingly knocked on my door three times during the 2010s. The third time, I finally engaged seriously with it. What I found was an integrated system describing nine interconnected personality patterns that transformed my own personal development and the professional work I was doing with clients. The precision and power of working with the enneagram was unlike anything I had come across in personal therapy, professional training, or in any formal religion.

From that point on, I took a deep dive into the enneagram. I was fascinated not only by its use as a tool for understanding personality, but also by its wider application as a symbolic system that reveals the laws and patterns of the universe. The enneagram shows us how growth unfolds in an integrated process of seven steps within a nine-pointed structure.

Act 3 - The Symbol That Spoke My Language

Imagine my astonishment when I realised that the Enneagram goes far beyond being a powerful tool for personal development. It also described the structure of the musical scale, the metaphysical process of genesis, and had roots reaching back to ancient Egypt. The main interests in my life – physics and music, psychology and Egyptian wisdom – were all directly connected through the universal symbol of the Enneagram!

It is a truly universal symbol. As Gurdjieff puts it:

“All knowledge can be included in the enneagram and with the help of the enneagram it can be interpreted… A man may be quite alone in the desert and he can trace the enneagram in the sand and in it read the eternal laws of the universe.”7

The personality typology of the Enneagram described my life experiences, strengths, and challenges with uncanny accuracy. At the same time, the metaphysical cosmology of ancient Egypt, interpreted through the universal symbol of the enneagram, described the nature of the universe and my place in it in a way no established religion was able to do.

Technically, I was raised in the Christian tradition, but it never really spoke to me. There were many reasons for this, including an overtly patriarchal structure and institutionalised homophobia. But also, the symbology of the Judaeo-Christian Bible is primarily communicated through word-based allegory, and that’s simply not how I’m wired.

My mind-body system is more attuned to visual symbolism. As an Enneagram Type Nine, one of the Body Types of the enneagram, I often experience a visceral, instinctive knowing that can’t always be adequately expressed using words.

What I’ve come to realise is that the universal language of the ancients, expressed through visual symbology, speaks to me with more clarity and depth than the word-based sacred texts of the last few millennia. Ultimately, the different spiritual traditions are pointing to the same truths, but the symbolist method achieves this by a more direct route.

If you’re not familiar with the Enneagram - or you are and you want to deepen your understanding - consider booking a consultation with me:

BOOK ENNEAGRAM CONSULT

Act 4 - Learning the Language of Nature

At this point in my journey, doing a deep dive into the study of ancient Egyptian metaphysical wisdom, I was becoming increasingly frustrated that most of the Egyptian words, names, and concepts were, in fact, poorly rendered Greek translations. I often say it’s like using German to describe French haute cuisine. Why would you do that?!

On the rare occasions when the original Egyptian was used, ideally showing the hieroglyphs with proper explanation, I caught glimpses of a vastly sophisticated worldview that expressed a profound cosmological understanding of reality.

A good example is medu neter8, the ancient Egyptian term for what we call ‘hieroglyphs’.

In English, we use the Greek term ‘hieroglyphs’ which translates from Greek to English as ‘sacred carvings’. But there is so much lost in translation from Egyptian to Greek to English. As I mentioned, why use German to describe French haute cuisine?

The original Egyptian term medu neter means ‘Speech of the Divine’, or more poetically, ‘the language of Nature’. When we begin to understand hieroglyphs as symbolic expressions of the language of Nature itself, we discover a deeper dimension: Egyptian hieroglyphs are more than writing as we know it, they are symbolic representations of the underlying principles, the guiding Nature of the Universe.

In 2020, Covid arrived and like many others, I suddenly found myself with spare time on my hands. This gave me an opportunity to return to my study of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and what I discovered astounded me. I found that when properly translated, the visual precision and symbolic subtlety of the original language came alive.

Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is, arguably, one of the most complex and sophisticated writing systems ever created.9 Far from being a simplistic image-based writing system, Egyptian hieroglyphs reveal a complex representation of an integrated cosmology. This is a language that combines art and science, the spiritual and the material, the celestial and the terrestrial, yet few people today are able to decipher its deeper, esoteric meanings.

Importantly, I began to see how Egyptian philosophy might offer relevant and practical guidance on how we might live better as human beings, especially in an age when we have become disconnected from ourselves, each other and the natural world without which we can’t survive. Does this mean we should recreate some Disneyland version of ancient Egypt for modern times? Certainly not. Ancient Egypt has gone forever, but the ancient wisdom-keepers of that civilisation have left us a legacy that we would be foolish to ignore today.

The Gift of the Glyphs

Working with non-Western wisdom traditions has been hugely beneficial for both my personal development and my professional coaching practice by taking me out of a dualistic Western mindset. My experience working with Egyptian hieroglyphs is that they rewire the brain. The only way I can describe this is like a dramatic coming alive of the whole mind-body system. I experience the world differently when I see it through the eyes of the Egyptian scribes. What’s more, I now understand the physical universe and the harmonic science of music better than I ever did when studying them at university.

Understanding the enneagram helps me filter out the nonsense about mystical Egyptology (and there’s plenty of nonsense around!) from what’s spiritually grounded, serious, and real. And at the same time, understanding Egyptian philosophical thinking helps me to better understand the depth and subtleties of the enneagram. For me, this is a mutually beneficial, symbiotic and beautiful relationship.

Pesedjet is a platform for sharing the insights and discoveries I’ve made, and for opening up complex symbolic ideas in a way that’s accessible to anyone. Breathing life back into the sacred language of symbology is an honour and a gift, and I’m deeply grateful to have you with me on this expedition.

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Bonus Practice

Meditate or journal using the hieroglyphs for medu neter (the ancient Egyptian phrase for ‘hieroglyphs’) as a prompt:

A reminder that the phrase medu neter literally means ‘speech of the Divine’, or the ‘language of Nature’. For this practice, it’s not necessary to know the exact spelling of the hieroglyphs, simply reflect on the symbolic images, reading from left to right:

• The flag is the sign for neter, often mistranslated into the European concept of ‘god(s)’. In Pharaonic thought, it more accurately refers to a function or process in Nature – something that could be considered divine, but not in the way we typically understand gods in the West.

• The staff carries three symbolic associations:
  1. A staff is used as a support
  2. A staff can be used to point to things, a reminder that the word is not the thing itself.
  3. A talking stick, traditionally used in many African cultures, grants speaking rights only to the person holding it, as a protocol for respectful dialogue.

• The hand is the part of the body associated with doing or making.

• The chick evokes the emergence of new life or coming into being.

• The seated man pointing to his mouth emphasises the primacy of the spoken word.

Explore what the medu neter symbols mean to you, in your own experience.

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In a recent series of posts, we’ve been exploring the symbolic meaning hidden within Egyptian hieroglyphs related to the ancient Egyptian word for the number nine, pesedj. Previously, in The Nature of Nine and The Shining Nine, we discovered how Egyptian hieroglyphs symbolically associate the number nine with:

• The circle, universal symbol of unity, non-duality, and completeness.

• The bisected circle, representing duality, polarity, and the cycles of light and dark.

• The shining light of the Sun, symbolising conscious illumination.

• The Akh, the highest spiritual state of shining enlightened awareness.

In this post, we’ll explore another significant interpretation of the word pesedjet: its alternative meaning as the ‘Nine Bows’1, an ancient Egyptian concept rich in symbolism around the powerful forces generated by polarity and tension.

Pesedjet – Symbolism of the Nine Bows

In ancient Egypt, pesedjet, meaning the Nine Bows, represented the foreign nations who were Egypt’s traditional enemies. At a deeper symbolic level, the Nine Bows also signified the universal forces of chaos and disorder, and this important symbolism of the Nine Bows is frequently depicted in Egyptian art. The Pharaoh, whose sacred role was to uphold stability and harmony, is often portrayed with the Nine Bows placed beneath his feet in a clear symbolic statement of mastery over chaotic forces. The Nine Bows imagery appears regularly on statue bases and footstools, and it can also be seen on a pair of Tutankhamun’s sandals, signifying that the Pharaoh had subdued and controlled the disruptive forces.

By placing the Nine Bows underfoot, the Pharaoh symbolically compels these forces of disorder to submit, demonstrating his ability to maintain cosmic balance and uphold order as an embodiment of royal power.

Polarity and the Creative Force of Tension

Egyptian symbolism always invites us to look beyond the obvious. When we move from the function of what the bow is used for to the nature of the bow itself, a different layer of meaning is revealed. This shifts our focus from outer conflict to the power of inner tension. In typical Egyptian fashion, form and function are united in symbol.

The Egyptian word pesedjet (Nine Bows) is phonetically similar to pedj, a verb meaning ‘to stretch’ or ‘draw a bow’. This phonetic connection highlights tension as an important aspect of the metaphor. The two opposing ends of the bow form a polarity, between which the bowstring is stretched to create the essential tension needed to power the arrow. French Egyptologist René Schwaller de Lubicz beautifully captures the full esoteric meaning of this idea when we writes:

“The bow is the symbol of ‘power’ that in every case manifests as tension. It is this tension in sap that causes germination in the springtime, and in general the thrust towards life.”2

Schwaller is describing an elemental truth: tension between opposing forces is the engine of life itself. This polarised tension is the third force fuelling the creative impulse, growth, and transformation. Life itself emerges through a creative friction between opposing forces.

We gain a further understanding of the Egyptian concept of duality through the Hermetic principle of polarity:

“Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”3

We live in a material world shaped by opposites: light and dark, good and evil, creation and destruction, masculine and feminine. But these are not isolated entities, one cannot exist without the other, and each is defined by its relationship to its counterpart. Joy is only meaningful in contrast to sadness, just as day has meaning only in relation to night. These apparent opposites are, in fact, complementary aspects of a unified whole. At a higher philosophical level, what we call duality is really Unity in disguise.

A classic example is the thermometer. Where does hot end and cold begin? The boundary is arbitrary. Hot and cold are not separate entities, they are different degrees of the same phenomenon: temperature. This principle applies to countless other polarities, including energy and matter, order and chaos, spirit and body. What appears to be opposition is, in truth, variation within a greater continuum.

This Egyptian understanding of polarity invites us to release the culturally ingrained belief that opposites must be in conflict. Polarity is not a flaw in the system; it is the system. When we stop trying to eliminate one pole in favour of the other, we begin to recognise the full spectrum of relational tension that underpins reality itself.

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Pesedjet in Modern Personal Development

So how can the analogy of the bow inform our personal development today?

Let’s consider a couple of examples. Love and hate aren’t true opposites, they’re both intense expressions of passionate engagement. Their real opposite is indifference. Similarly, courage isn’t the absence of fear, but the capacity to act in the face of fear. In each case, what looks like polarity is actually a dynamic relationship that drives energetic flow.

In Enneagram theory, each of the nine personality types contains an over-expressed polarity between its higher virtue and lower vice. It is an imbalance in this tension that sits at the core of our dominant personality pattern. A symbolic reading of the Nine Bows reminds us that we each contain all nine personality patterns within us, creating an internal landscape of competing forces. One of these patterns dominates, amplifying the particular polarity that drives the structure of our type. However, as we have seen, this internal tension is not something to be eliminated, but something to recognise, manage, and eventually harness as a creative force for growth.

Western culture, steeped in moral dualism, encourages us to conquer our ‘bad’ parts or personality ‘vices’, setting us up for disillusionment and shame when we inevitably fall short of an impossible ideal. The idea that we should become purely virtuous by purging all trace of our lower tendencies is neither psychologically realistic nor spiritually intelligent.

From the Egyptian perspective, within the symbolic framework of the Nine Bows, this just isn’t how personality works. Virtue is not achieved by defeating vice. Instead, personal growth arises through conscious engagement with the tension between the two polarities. Counterintuitively, our virtue cannot exist without our vice, and it is the polarity between them that generates the energy driving our personality.

Through conscious awareness and inner work, we can learn to harness this energetic tension, recognising it correctly as the fuel of transformation, rather than being pulled unconsciously from one extreme to the other. The true work of integration is turning polarity into power.

Embracing the Gift of Tension

Through pesedjet, the Nine Bows, the ancient Egyptians reveal to us that personal transformation doesn’t come from eliminating tension, but from consciously mastering it. Our inner polarities are not flaws to be fixed but sources of dynamic energy. When managed with awareness, inner tension becomes a powerful generative force; it is our fuel for generation and renewal.

Instead of seeing inner conflict as a battle between irreconcilable forces, we might recognise it as tension within a unified system seeking new balance. Rather than categorising people and ideas into rigid opposing camps, we might appreciate a wider spectrum of perspectives that approach truth from different angles.

This more sophisticated view, that polarity does not represent a battle to be won, but is in fact a vital part of existence, is precisely what Egyptian wisdom invites us to understand. It also offers practical guidance for navigating the complexities of modern life.

• When facing seemingly impossible choices between opposing options, we might discover a middle way that incorporates elements of both.

• In conflict, instead of demonising the ‘other side’, we might begin to recognise how each perspective contains partial truths that together approach a more complete understanding.

• In personal development, rather than rejecting qualities we dislike in ourselves, we might learn to accept and integrate them consciously, transforming potential weaknesses into mature strengths.

• In social and political discourse, we might begin to move beyond the polarisation that passes for so much contemporary ‘debate’. We can learn to seek clarity through synthesis, instead of dominance.

It is by embracing this more integrated perspective that we can liberate ourselves from the limitations of binary thinking. Instead of being overwhelmed by the chaos and complexity of modern life, we can begin to recognise it as a reflection of the same nine polarities the Egyptians symbolised in the Nine Bows. These are not forces to suppress, but dynamic tensions to work with consciously. In doing so, we become more capable of responding to the challenges of our time with clarity, balance and genuine wisdom.

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We discovered some striking associations: a circle symbolising unity, wholeness and completion, and a half-moon symbolising the duality of light and dark. We also established a new origin for the numeral 9 as used around the world today, by discovering a direct link between the Greek letter theta and the half-moon hieroglyph found in pesedjet, the Egyptian word for an interconnected group of nine.

But this is only the beginning. Egyptian symbolism is impressively broad and deep, with layers of meaning that continually reveal more. It’s extremely common in ancient Egyptian for the same word to have several different meanings, creating a rich and complex matrix of suggestive associations. Their language was remarkably poetic and multi-dimensional, combining the spoken word, images, and inferences, which Egyptologist René Schwaller de Lubicz defined as symbolique2. Only in poetry in English might we get close to appreciating the eloquent symbology that was built-in to ancient Egyptian.

A wonderful example of this is an alternative meaning for the word pesedj, which is ‘to shine’3. The hieroglyphs used to write pesedj – ‘to shine’ – are written with an image of the midday sun, creating a symbolic association between nine, the Sun, light, and vision.

In The Nature of Nine, we also saw that the hieroglyphs for pesedjet include the pupil of an eye, explicitly linking a group of nine with the eye as the detector of light. The precision of Egyptian symbology is extraordinary; we can know that nothing is coincidental as symbolic connections are always built-in by design. This is the beauty of symbolic communication: its precision is intentional, and its meaning is inevitable. It is so because it can only be so.

This precision is exactly why ancient Egyptian symbology continues to speak to us so powerfully through time, and why the Egyptian wisdom-keepers can still teach us so much today.

Pesedj – To Shine

Building on the ancient Egyptian association of nine with unity, a complete set, wholeness, and the pupil of an eye, we have now uncovered an additional link: the shining light of the Sun. This connection becomes even more meaningful through Ra, the Egyptian embodiment of the solar principle.

Forget any simplistic notions of Ra as a ‘Sun god’; Egyptian metaphysical cosmology was far more sophisticated than that. In reality, Ra symbolised the unity of spirit and consciousness, the life-giving force at the heart of all existence. Revered as the ‘shining one’, the ‘lord of light’, and the ‘forefather of illumination’, Ra represented the solar principle – the universal source of light and life itself.

On a personal level, Ra represents the solar principle expressed within each of us: a radiant centre illuminating our lifelong journey towards wholeness, in the form of:

1. Inner Illumination: Ra symbolises our inner spiritual sun, the spark of universal consciousness within us, illuminating our path to greater personal awareness and spiritual development.

2. Creative Life Force: Ra embodies the primal solar energy that animates all of creation, an essential life force that initiates existence, radiates vitality, and energises our spiritual evolution.

The Sun, as a sphere, is represented visually by a circle, a shape we have already definitively associated with the number nine. Furthermore, in the hieroglyphs above, the midday Sun is depicted as a circle with an emanation of three rays of light symbolising the triple nature of Unity and the trifold nature of the universe.

Drawing on the significance of nine, it becomes clear that full illumination requires completeness. Without the wholeness represented by a set of nine, understanding remains partial, incomplete, and unable to transmit true clarity.

Parallels with the Enneagram are unmistakable: the circular form, the significance of nine, and the trifold structure of the inner triangle are all reflected in Egyptian symbology related to nine. I’m not suggesting ancient Egyptians knew the modern Enneagram as we know it today. Rather, I am proposing something different.

Bringing Egyptian metaphysics, expressed through their precise symbology, into dialogue with the modern Enneagram, helps move us beyond purely intellectual theory towards a more embodied and intuitive understanding of its true meaning.

Nine as The Light of Consciousness

In the Western tradition, the idea that numbers possess esoteric qualities can be a difficult concept for us to grasp. Yet, for wisdom-keepers in many traditions, numbers were seen as having qualities as well as quantities. From the Pythagoreans to the Gothic stonemasons of the Middle Ages, the qualitative aspect of numbers was clearly understood. For the Egyptians, the number nine, pesedj, as we’ve seen, represented the qualities of completeness and shining light.

Taking this symbolism further and revealing a significant new connection, the Egyptians described the body and soul as a complex system of nine interconnected components, encompassing different aspects of the physical body, life force, and spiritual essence. At the highest level was an aspect called the Akh, which, according to Egyptologist Lucie Lamy, “expresses all notions of light, both literally and figuratively, from the Light which comes forth from Darkness to the transcendental light of transfiguration.”4 The Akh represents the highest expression of conscious illumination, without which “the personality and the mind cannot function.”5

Crucially, the word Akh also means “to shine”6 and “the shining one”.7 It symbolises the immortal self in the form of the Divine Spark which is, in essence, the light of consciousness itself.

Although there is no evidence that the Egyptians explicitly numbered these nine aspects of the body and soul, the association with light and shining makes a connection between the Akh and the number nine undeniable.

By recognising the Akh as the ninth and highest aspect of the soul, its symbolic association with nine as the expression of spiritual wholeness and conscious awakening is compelling. The number nine symbolises the culmination of the soul’s journey towards enlightenment, perfectly captured in the concept of the Akh as the ultimate state of enlightened awareness.

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Shining Beings Across Cultures

The ancient Egyptians were not alone in associating shining light with universal consciousness. Similar symbolism appears across many cultures, suggesting a shared symbolic language pointing towards conscious transformation and spiritual illumination. The following examples demonstrate how the Egyptian concept of ‘shining’ as a metaphor for conscious transformation was reflected in iconography throughout the ancient world:

• Ancient Egypt: Images of Heru (Horus) in the form of a falcon and the solar principle Ra are often combined as a representation of conscious awakening of the higher self.

  

• Buddhism: Images of the Buddha, often haloed by light, symbolise his spiritual awakening and enlightened consciousness.

  

• Christianity: Jesus of Nazareth is consistently depicted with a halo, signifying divine illumination, spiritual wisdom, and enlightenment.

  

• Hinduism: The Sanskrit word deva, meaning ‘shining being’, refers to divine entities that symbolise pure consciousness.

  

The Shining Nine

Modern thinking, with its fixation on control, disconnection, and misguided notions such as 'conquering nature', has led us away from a wisdom informed by the harmony of the natural order. In contrast, ancient Egyptian symbolism offers a path back to an integrated worldview, eloquently expressed through the sacred symbolism of nine and the shining Akh.

The Egyptians’ symbolic language allows us to access a holistic vision of reality that unites the material and spiritual realms. The number nine — pesedj — emerges as a powerful symbol of completeness, illumination, and conscious awakening. Its association with Ra, the solar principle, and the Akh, the divine spark of consciousness, reveals a deeply integrated understanding of existence itself.

The Enneagram, with its focus on nine, reflects this ancient pattern of understanding. The parallels between Egyptian metaphysics and the Enneagram are too striking to be dismissed as mere coincidence. While few will study Egyptian hieroglyphs, the modern Enneagram acts as a universal hieroglyph8 in its own right – a tool we can use to reinterpret coded ancient knowledge.

In practical terms, this opens a portal to rebuilding our relationship with Nature, reconnecting us with a stream of wisdom that recognises the interconnectedness of all things and guides us towards a grander, holistic vision of reality.

As we navigate the complexities of the 21st century, it becomes increasingly clear that valuing life, Nature and our planet is our primary duty. Our True Nature is not separate from the natural world; it is embedded within its magnificent web of life. In the shining nine and enlightened Akh, we find an evergreen reminder: the more we honour our True Nature, the more we can shine brightly – as individuals and as a collective humanity.

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The word ‘Enneagram’ comes from the Greek ennéa (nine) and gram (drawing), which is straightforward enough—it does what it says on the tin, describing a nine-pointed diagram. But when written in English or Greek alphabetic script, the word itself cannot convey the deeper symbolic significance of the Enneagram or its ability to reveal the underlying structure of reality.

George Gurdjieff, originator of both the word and symbol of the Enneagram, leaves no doubt about its significance, calling it “the fundamental hieroglyph of a universal language.”1

Intrigued by the reference to an Egyptian hieroglyph, I wondered whether there might be a word in the Egyptian language that could help us better understand a universal system of nine.

Remarkably, such a word exists—and what’s more, it can be found in the first and most obvious place you'd think to look.

The Word Nine in Ancient Egyptian

The ancient Egyptian word for nine is formed from the letters p-s-dj2 (we can say pesedj for ease of pronunciation), and a related word p-s-dj-t3 (pronounced pesedjet) refers specifically to an interconnected group of nine. The specificity of the term Pesedjet suggests that groups of nine held inherent importance within Egyptian philosophy.

This is most clearly demonstrated by the Great Ennead—a grouping of nine Egyptian deities that represented nine fundamental principles of genesis—the origins of creation, the structuring of the cosmos, and the emergence of duality, order, and life. The ancient Egyptian word for the Great Ennead was also Pesedjet.

In English, we use the Greek word Ennead to describe this group of nine Egyptian deities, which makes little sense for a concept so central to Egyptian philosophy. It’s a bit like using a German word to describe French haute cuisine—why would you do that, instead of using the original French?

So, let’s explore what insights the original Egyptian can offer us.

Hieroglyphic Symbolism Reveals More

To better understand ancient Egyptian symbology at this point, we need to explore some hieroglyphs. One of the main aims of the Pesedjet project is to refer to the original Egyptian hieroglyphs wherever possible, because so much of their elegance and precision is hopelessly lost in translation.

Don’t worry—I’ll guide you through the hieroglyphs step by step, making it easy for you to follow. Plus, reading hieroglyphs can be a lot of fun as you’ll see!

Pesedjet - An Interconnected Group of Nine

The hieroglyphs that spell p-s-dj-t (pesedjet) reveal an intriguing story, so let’s take a look at them:

The hieroglyphs for pesedjet - meaning an interconnected group of nine - include a symbol representing the pupil of an eye. If you look closely, can you see how the snake forms an elegant eyebrow shape around the eye? This is a wonderful example of artistic virtuosity built into the Egyptian writing system, which offers us three intriguing associations:

1. The Circle – The word pesedjet links a group of nine with a circle, just as the Enneagram does. The presence of a circle in the hieroglyphs for pesedjet suggests a symbolic link between the two.

2. Unity – The circle is a universal symbol of unity in the form of an unbroken whole. In the ancient Egyptian and later Pythagorean philosophy of numbers, nine was considered as a complete set because in the base ten counting system there can never be more than nine individual numbers, and nine is the largest single number. In the Enneagram symbol, the patterns of straight lines formed by the Law of Three and the Law of Seven are seen as functions of Unity as represented by the circle.

3. The Pupil – The pupil of an eye is an opening that relates to light, seeing and vision. Symbolically, this links a group of nine to insight and enlightenment which are key themes in both ancient Egyptian and Enneagram philosophy. (We’ll explore the connection with light in more detail in Part 2 of this article.)

Interestingly, the number nine is visually represented as three groups of three strokes, whether read vertically or horizontally. While it’s obvious that nine is three times three, representing nine visually in this way highlights its nature as a square number. (We’ll be exploring the nature of numbers in future posts.)

As you can see, words written in the English or Greek alphabet are simply not able to convey the rich symbolism of a word written in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Isn’t it fascinating how many additional associations can be packed into a single word written in hieroglyphs?

Pesedjet - The Great Ennead of Nine Deities

Next, let’s look at Pesedjet, meaning the Great Ennead of nine deities, which is written differently, as shown here:

Here, the letters p-s-dj have been compressed into a single hieroglyph in the form of a circle bisected by a horizontal line, which is the symbol for a half-moon. The hieroglyph for the letter t has been placed beneath it. In this formulation, the half-moon hieroglyph represents all of the letters of p-s-dj combined, which, as we recall, is the Egyptian word for nine. This detail will be crucial later, so pay close attention.

After the first two hieroglyphs, the rest define the word through symbolic associations—just as we might add a smile emoji after ‘happy’ in a text message to visually reinforce the word’s meaning.

The defining hieroglyphs in Pesedjet include three flag-like symbols representing the concept of deity, followed by a seated deity which signifies the archetype of a deity, followed by the number three written as three strokes. Once again, the idea of three groups of three is clearly communicated but this time in a different way.

To complete this section, let’s clearly summarise the differences between the two ways of writing pesedjet in Egyptian:

1. Non-duality - Represented by an unbroken circle, this version signifies an interconnected set of nine forming a unified whole, complete and without separation.

2. Duality - Represented by a bisected circle, this version depicts the Great Ennead of Egyptian deities, embodying universal principles and explicitly incorporating duality.

The non-dual version of pesedjet symbolises unity of being, while the dualised version acknowledges the duality that naturally arises when unity manifests in creation.

Thus, the Egyptian word pesedjet, written in these two distinct ways, captures both the wholeness symbolised by the number nine and the duality inherent in the nine-fold nature of existence.

If you’ve made it this far, well done! You’ve navigated the tricky part and now things are about to get truly fascinating from a historical perspective.

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Theta and the Greek Alphanumeric System

At this stage, I couldn’t help but notice the striking similarity between the half-moon hieroglyph and the Greek letter theta (ϴ). I also knew that the ancient Greeks used an alphanumeric system in which a numeric value was assigned to the letters of the Greek alphabet. I wondered whether theta might have a numerical value, so imagine my astonishment when I found that theta was assigned the number 9!4

This is a 100% perfect match in context and meaning between the ancient Egyptian and Greek symbols. I propose that the half-moon hieroglyph and the letter theta, with its numerical value of 9, are one and the same.

As a final link between these ancient symbols and modern writing, theta in cursive Greek script was written exactly like the numeral 9 we use today.

Could it be that every time we write the number ‘9’ we are actually reproducing the half-moon Egyptian hieroglyph associated with nine?

A New Origin for the Numeral 9

The origins of the numeral 9 are traditionally traced to the Indian subcontinent, where it appeared in the Brahmi numeral system approximately 2,300 years ago. The widely accepted view holds that the Hindu-Arabic numeral system originated in India before spreading through the Arabic world and eventually reaching Europe.5 However, the evidence above suggests that the numeral 9 may have originated much earlier from an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph.

This claim may be controversial in academic circles, where there is a persistent reluctance to acknowledge any significant cultural transfer from ancient Egypt to Greece—often leading to mental gymnastics such as this:

“The sometimes rather striking graphic similarity [numerical symbols] have with the hieratic and demotic Egyptian numerals, while suggestive, is not prima facie evidence of an historical connection, as many cultures have independently recorded numbers as collections of strokes.”6

Yet, in the case of the numeral 9, there is now clear prima facie evidence of a direct link. Rather than “collections of strokes”, an exact symbolic connection has been established with the half-moon hieroglyph for p-s-dj, the ancient Egyptian word for nine.

While debates continue about the extent of Egypt’s influence on Mediterranean civilisations, its impact on ancient Greece from the second millennium BCE is well established7. The graphic and numerical parallels between the Egyptian half-moon hieroglyph (p-s-dj), the Greek letter theta (ϴ) linked to nine, theta written in cursive script (ϑ), and the later Hindu-Arabic numeral provide compelling prima facie evidence of continuity. This connection could push the origins of the numeral 9 back to the very beginnings of hieroglyphic writing, around 5,000 years ago.

Conclusion: Rethinking Nine Through Egyptian Symbology

The ancient Egyptians, masters of encoding meaning in symbols, embedded within their hieroglyphs an understanding of the number nine that goes far beyond simple counting. In fact, when written in hieroglyphs, the word pesedjet reveals more about the number nine and the Enneagram than the word enneagram itself.

In this article, we have uncovered a new theory about the origin for the numeral 9, strengthening the thread of connection and influence between ancient Egypt and ancient Greece.

We have also explored deeper qualities of nine beyond its numerical value:

• Nine symbolises wholeness and unity – A set of nine is needed to be whole and complete.

• The dual and non-dual nature of nine – Nine embodies both unity and polarity.

• A link between nine, light, and sight – Suggesting a connection between perception and enlightenment.

In Part 2 of this article, The Shining Nine, we’ll explore how the ancient connection between nine, light, and sight can shape our understanding of perception, knowledge, and insight today.

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Post-script

The Greek letter theta (ϴ) shares connections with the Phoenician letter tet (𐤈) and the Hebrew letter teth (ט), both of which are notably the ninth letters in their respective alphabets, although theta is the eighth letter in the Greek alphabet. It’s intriguing to consider a potential phonetic link between theta, tet, teth, and the Egyptian word pesedjet. Perhaps an etymologist out there could explore this further.

Hello, I’m Robert Hutchinson and welcome to Pesedjet!

I’m starting this Substack with the intention of sharing my research, writing and passion for what some call ‘ancient wisdom’.

The fact is that there is no ancient wisdom, there is only perennial wisdom, a language of cosmic genesis, once clearly understood by cultures and societies around the world from the most earthly (it would be wrong to say ‘primitive’) to the most technological (it would be wrong to say ‘advanced’).

In contrast, modern humanity has self-evidently got itself into an almighty pickle. The multiple global crises we face have come about precisely because we’ve forgotten this perennial wisdom. At its heart, wisdom can be understood as the integration of tradition, balance and connection.

We have lost touch with:

• collective discernment in the form of inter-generational traditions that reflect the accumulated wisdom of trial and error, distilled into guiding principles, stories, rituals, and practices.

• the cosmic Law of Balance also known as the Law of Three, which is the foundational law without which the universe would descend into chaos.

• the fact that from birth to death we remain interconnected; within ourselves, with each other, within the matrix of life on Earth, and within a vast universal cosmic consciousness.

Humanity has taken a wrong turn; right now we’re heading straight for a dead end. We’ve cast aside the wisdom of generations and severed our connection to Nature’s intelligence, chasing a human-centred chimera that glorifies speed, noise, and distraction over stability, presence, and connection. It’s time to wake up, to remember who we are and why we’re here.

Of the nine planetary boundaries essential for Earth’s stability, six had already been breached by 20231. As our increasingly degraded biosphere forces an urgent course correction, we don’t have the luxury of time to construct a new, all-encompassing human story for living well on planet Earth—nor do we need to. Why reinvent the wheel when the great sages of the past left us a legacy of wisdom containing all the solutions we need? And these wisdom-keepers weren’t just wise; they were strategic. Knowing their teachings might one day be lost, they hid their knowledge in plain sight, waiting to be rediscovered when the time was right.

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This is the premise of Pesedjet.

In this Substack, I’ll share my own discoveries and perspectives on how we might rebuild more intelligent relationships with each other and planet Earth, by reinterpreting ancient Egyptian and other world wisdom traditions, using the Enneagram as a key tool for understanding.

We’ll explore the universal language of perennial wisdom through three lenses:

1. Egyptian Symbology - The philosophy of ancient Egypt provides us with the most advanced and complete wisdom tradition to have survived from the ancient world. I don’t consider it as a relic of the past, but as a living system of meaning, whose symbols, mythology, and philosophy have never been more relevant.

2. The Enneagram - Described as “the fundamental hieroglyph of a universal language”2, the Enneagram is the cipher that helps us decode esoteric meanings in Egyptian and other world wisdom traditions.

3. The Earth - Pesedjet is not an academic exercise. Its purpose is to explore practical insights that speak directly to global challenges, allowing us to reconnect with the Laws of Nature and the Earth’s Intelligence.

Why ‘Pesedjet’?

In ancient Egyptian, the word ‘Pesedjet’ referred to a complete set of nine - nine foundational cosmic principles forming a sacred assembly that symbolises cosmic order and metamorphosis. This Substack is built on that idea: nine as a number of structure, growth, and harmony. It is also informed by the Enneagram, which reveals a universal nine-pointed process of transformation and nine perspectives on human nature. Together, Ancient Egyptian philosophy and the Enneagram help us understand how life actually works.

Pesedjet asks the question: How can we live better lives and protect our planet?

I write this because I believe we need to return—to a natural intelligence, to more Earth-centred ways of living, to guiding principles that balance and stabilise rather than disrupt and destabilise. In recent centuries, we have been seduced by novelty, yet the most essential truths are anything but new. The ancient wisdom-keepers understood these eternal truths well, embedding their wisdom in symbols, myths, art and architecture that still speak to those who know how to read them. In the words of Joseph Campbell:

“The old teachers knew what they were saying. Once we have learned to read again their symbolic language, it requires no more than the talent of an anthologist to let their teaching be heard.”3

So - let’s start hearing the symbolic language once again!

Supporting the Pesedjet Project

Some of the content I share here will be drawn from the book I am writing. Some will be reflections on where we are as a civilisation and where we go from here. You can expect a mix of perennial wisdom and real-world application, the sacred and the secular, the art and the science of sacred geometry, and an ongoing conversation about what it means to be awake, alive, and aligned with higher consciousness.

If this speaks to you, welcome! Pesedjet is a journey of self-remembering—both individually and collectively.

My wish is that you’ll join me on this expedition, enjoy my writing, and support my research.