- 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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Nine arrows
The distinctive irregular pattern of the arrows within the outer circle has been the biggest mystery of the enneagram – and some authors have shied away from it for precisely that reason.
A list of nine types seems logical enough – especially when grouped as three sets of three under the headings of head and heart and gut. But with head and heart and gut viewed as three interchangeable alternatives, the diagram has three phases of rotational symmetry – and there is no justification for the pattern of nine arrows taking anything other than a rotationally symmetrical form.
Some writers reject the pattern of the arrows entirely on this basis. Others speak guardedly of ‘the general direction of the arrows’ – by which they mean the alternative pattern of three equilateral triangles that others have more explicitly proposed. Only two small changes are required: you replace the arrows FOUR-TWO and FIVE-SEVEN with FOUR-SEVEN and FIVE-TWO; the other seven arrows can be left unchanged.
And yet those irregular two – FOUR-TWO and FIVE-SEVEN – seem to describe real human lives with all the same insight and value as the other seven ‘more regular’ lines across the board – and the two proposed alternative lines do not. So how can the pattern be justified? Why is it the way that it is?
Uncovering the logic of the pattern of the arrows went hand in hand with ‘undoing’ the rotational symmetry of head and heart and gut – recognizing instead the left-right symmetry of head and heart and the vertical scale from ‘gut’ to ‘inner life’.
As well as emphasizing the stark separation of head and heart, the irregular horseshoe shape of the hexagon encourages the idea that the gut zone is both generally more accessible and somehow central to the whole project – which indeed it is. The gut zone represents direct interaction with the world around – and ‘interaction with the world around’ is precisely what the nine strategies are all about.
The circle and the triangle, meanwhile, keep the faith with the simultaneous alternative reading whereby there are indeed three influences interacting as interchangeable alternatives.
This general ‘justification by overview’ was eventually supplemented by a detailed explanation of how each arrow works – in each direction: eighteen potential ‘moves’ in all – described in full in the main text as ‘Moves across the board,’ with additional material in Appendix 1 above.