Still Running Off at the Keyboard

WAS GURDJIEFF A RUSSIAN SPY ?

James Webb seemed to think so. Part I of THE HARMONIOUS CIRCLE recounts G's travels in the Orient prior to forming his first study group in Russia. It's not entirely clear what he was doing in those travels, but he made himself persona non grata in at least one country. Webb wrote:

A possibility which provides a more convincing explanation of his early mobility is that from an early age he was an agent of the Russian secret service.

This possibility has been responsible for certain portrayals of Gurdjieff as a Black Magician straight from the pages of Dennis Wheatley. Louis Pauwels, editor of the anthology MONSIEUR GURDJIEFF, mixes the occult and politics into an impossible conspiracy involving both Hitler and Stalin. Stalin and Gurdjieff, says Pauwels, "were at school together," and J. G. Bennett claims to have heard Gurdjieff endorse this tale himself. It is certainly true that the young Joseph Dzhugashvili--who became Joseph Stalin--was a lodger with the Gurdjieff family at some time during his career at Tiflis Theological Seminary from 1894 to 1899; and that he left owing them a substantial sum of money. ...

A story about Gurdjieff which used to circulate in London emigre circles was that he had been imprisoned for evading military service. The source was Prince Mikail Sumbatov, who in the early 1890s was Commissioner for Special Duties attached to the Governor of Kars; and it is totally in keeping with our knowledge of Gurdjieff that he should have tried to dodge the draft. There is not a shred of evidence to support the speculation, but it is tempting to wonder whether he was offered the sort of choice which the authorities held out to others. Even if this possibility is discounted, some sort of government backing best explains Gurdjieff's confusing statement in HERALD OF COMING GOOD about the great advantages his "peculiar conditions" of life gave him over ordinary men. The pronouncement otherwise reads like a symptom of paranoia, and it does not have the same ring as the deliberately boastful passage about its author's endowment with "the highest degrees of comprehension attainable by man." which precedes it.

I had, in accordance with the peculiar conditions of my life, the possibility of gaining access to the so-called "holy-of-holies" of nearly all hermetic organizations such as religious, philosophical, occult, political and mystic societies, congregations, parties, unions, etc. which were inaccessible to the ordinary man...

There is only one sort of job which secures rapid entrance into all organizations, whether political, religious, or intellectual, and that is the task of the agent who can rely on the contacts built up by his organization to establish his good faith.

The quote appears on pp 44 to 45 of THE HARMONIOUS CIRCLE, and it is not the only passage that suggests a connection with Russian intelligence services.

The occult associations of Hitler are well known, and now it appears that Gurdjieff, master occultist, had associations with Hitler's orbit. The Hitler orbit comes even closer in researching Rosicrucianism, which subscribes to the same theories that Gurdjieff's student Lord Pentland embraces judging by the activities associated with Rosslyn Chapel, specifically the marriage of Christ to Mary Magdalene. That theme runs through Rosslyn Chapel advocates, chief of whom are the Sinclair family, of which Lord Pentland is a member, and Rosslyn Chapel draws Freemasonry like a light draws mosquitoes.

Having the Gurdjieff Enneagram turn up in Catholic circles of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue would seem to indicate that an element of Gurdjieffian spirituality has invaded Roman Catholicism like smoke seeping through cracks. Its use in neo-Cathar New Age circles such as James Twyman's appears to descend from the activities of Rosicrucian Antonin Gadal and his partner in discovery Otto Rahn, also a Rosicrucian and member of Hitler's brigade. But more on that later.