The zodiacal structure of his texts enables Gurdjieff to incorporate the myths
and symbols connected to the signs and their ruling planets and to the sets of corre-
spondences in astrology and other occult traditions. Here Gurdjieff was in accord with
modernist literary interests in Theosophical astrology and in the archaic epic
expressed as a solar journey; as well as becoming part of a long tradition of the
numerological and astrological structuring of texts.
Interpretation of
Gurdjieff’s Texts and Astrological Interpretation
Gurdjieff warns that his ideas should not to be taken literally and speaks of the
necessity for the multivalence of symbols. Symbols taken in one meaning only
become fixed and dead. Gurdjieff favored indirect methods of teaching so that his
pupils would make their own efforts to understand. In addition to his use of symbol-
ism, he arouses questioning in his reader by the use of anomaly, metaphor, paradox,
and contradictions in the narrative.
The use of astrological correspondences and number symbolism enables Gurd-
jieff to suggest virtually inexhaustible variant readings of his texts in relation to other
occult astrological systems, from the Sumerian, Greek, Roman, Renaissance, and
nineteenth-century occult revival in which the zodiac is encoded. Thus, although
Gurdjieff ’s writings demand interpretation, they defy any attempt at a fixed or closed
reading and are also in tune with the contemporary interest in the integration of
astrology and psychology.
Gurdjieff’s Influence
Gurdjieff ’s teaching continues and its occult cosmological/astrological influ-
ence can be seen in popular astrology, popular occult-archaeology in the occult, and
in twentieth-century literature.
—Sophia WellbelovedSources:
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Gurdjieff, Georges Ivanovitch. All and Everything,Ten Books in Three Series: First Series:
Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man.Lon-
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Am.”London: Viking Arkana, 1991.
———. The Herald of Coming Good.Paris, 1933. Reprint, New York: S. Weiser, 1971.
———.Views from the Real World.London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976.
Ouspensky P. D. In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching.New York: Har-
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Palmer, Helen, The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life.New York:
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Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch