- Home
- Preface
- Introduction
- Three Zones and Nine Sectors
- Wings and Moves and other functions
- Biblical Journeys
- Prayer
- The Enneagram
- From the Enneagram to the Strategy Board
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The enneagram of heat and cold
A fairly neutral example for illustration would be an enneagram of the effects of heat and cold.
This quick analysis considers heat and cold as human experiences, rather than points on a precise scale of Celsius or Fahrenheit.
The domestic freezer and the domestic oven can be placed on the diagram as the ‘energy points,’ being common and distinctive human experiences of the two contrasting concepts – heat and cold.
Room temperature can be the central, neutral, ‘temperate’ place.
The rare extremes are added at the foot of the diagram, at FIVE and FOUR: the extreme cold of dry ice and the extreme heat of a furnace.
At EIGHT and SEVEN on the cold side, between room temperature and the freezer, are the refrigerator – cool but not freezing – and freezing point itself.
At ONE and TWO on the hot side, between room temperature and the oven, are a hot dinner, and boiling point.
We can now ‘read off’ some of the observations from this simple analysis.
In their effects on the human being, heat and cold do indeed meet at the extremes: they are both highly destructive – they both produce ‘burns’ – so FOUR and FIVE are indeed natural if contrasting neighbors. Moving up the diagram, SIX and THREE can both be painful, but they are safe enough to insulate and keep in the kitchen. For eating and drinking, our outer limits would be ice cream at SEVEN and hot tea at TWO. Less extreme are cool salads at EIGHT and hot dinners at ONE – completing a top-to-bottom scale which has a left-right symmetry of contrasts.
The arrows could then represent actions that we take. The THREE-SIX-NINE triangle represents a simple domestic arrangement, while modern industrial-scale catering uses the other lines on the diagram. The rapid cook-chill system takes ONE – a hot meal – very precisely to SEVEN – freezing point – and not beyond. This produces something like a supermarket microwave ready-meal. In the distribution system this drifts toward EIGHT – ordinary refrigeration temperature. A deliberate shift directly from EIGHT to TWO – ‘piping hot’ – then makes it safe and ready for consumption. On the industrial scale, this process of moves on the hexagon is controlled by extremes beyond domestic norms: it is controlled, in effect, by FIVE and FOUR.
This quick analysis shows how the system works: now to some more significant examples.