When I first heard of Gurdjieff, it was in the context of learning the Enneagram of personality- he's the one who discovered it hidden away in some dusty [to us] esoteric tradition, brushed it off, and introduced it to modern-day Western society. He is often called the Grandfather of the modern Enneagram because he was trying to work with it in a psycho-spiritual way instead of an energetic way. So because I was so grateful to have learned the Enneagram, my gratitude was extended to Gurdjieff as well. In fact, when I went through a name change a few years ago, I added in a middle name that was a play on his name, just as a nod to him. However, the more I read his actual works, the more I became curious about his life.
Gurdjieff was a spiritual teacher from Georgia with controversial methods and a mysterious background. Born to a Greek father and either a Greek or Armenian mother, Gurdjieff travelled extensively throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East as a young man to learn about various spiritual traditions. He was driven by the question, "Why am I here?" and he wanted to collect truths from as many traditions as he could find along his path and coalesce what he was learning into a teachable system about our place in the universe, and the work we have to do to escape fate and employ free will on our lives.
During the Bolshevik Revolution, he led a group of his followers through the Caucasus mountains and they eventually set up a school in France. At this school, he taught his students hundreds of dances that he learned from the monasteries he visited along his travels, especially at a particular monastery near Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In fact, Gurdjieff was an master archeologist in much the same way that Carl Jung was- he collected a massive spiritual, cultural, and historical database of Eastern European and Middle Eastern dances, wisdom and rituals in his head, much of which would be lost during the World Wars had he not gone to such extensive lengths to preserve them and teach them diligently to his students.
Ultimately, Gurdjieff taught his followers that spirituality can be practiced in the everyday lives of normal people going about their day instead of having to leave society to join a monastery. He made spirituality more about our self-awareness than our god-awareness. His focal point was the body, and a lot of his teachings are about working to balance the head, heart, and body to function at our highest capacity as humans. He emphasized discipline, especially around our self-remembrance practice.
As much as I disagree with some things he did in his personal life, he was [mostly] dearly beloved by his students, and today, by their students, and I balance a great affection for him with some anger at how he conducted himself around his students, but lately I have been gravitating toward him in a personal way more than I do other spiritual teachers (although I do love/respect other spiritual teachers as well.)
Because Gurdjieff was so cagey about his actual birthday- he was born sometime between 1866 and 1877- we will probably never know 100% what his birth chart looks like, but I do have an affinity for the January 13, 1877 chart which is posted on astro.com's website. I'll admit, I like it partially because it's got some interesting similarities to my chart.
So the 1877 chart doesn't line up with a couple historical stories he told about his childhood, but his moniker is "the Rascal Saint" for good reason- we don't really know how much of Gurdjieff's life to believe. 1877 was the year his sister insisted that he was born, and she wouldn't have had any motive for changing his birth year. So who knows. There are good arguments for 1866 and 1872 as well.
The 1877 chart is a dynamite chart that mirrors the enormous amount of energy that Gurdjieff harnessed and expended over the course of his life, with Pluto opposite Mars, in an explosive T-square with Uranus at the apex. Moreover, this chart makes his Ascendant lord Venus, and Venus is within one degree of the Galactic Centre, which would explain, among other things, his vast teachings about how the universe is constructed that he wouldn't otherwise know. The Galactic Centre is a supermassive black hole that was discovered in the late 1970's, and astrologers have connected it to knowledge and intuition that comes to us through otherworldly means.
In this chart, his North Node would be at 11 degrees Pisces, and it's right next to Saturn. When you have the North Node next to Saturn (as I do), it makes you obsessed in some way with discipline (as with him) or judgement (as with me). The North Node is like a vaccuum and when it's next to Saturn, it vaccuums up as much harshness and discipline as it can find, even imagining it or calling it towards oneself when it is not called for, as the Nodes are deceivers. It can also make said discipline or judgement drag on and on, which well, his students may have complained about, but he did actually teach that we needed to use "super-efforts" (Saturn) to escape our fate (North Node). To oversimplify his teaching on super-efforts, it's pushing ourselves beyond what we think we're capable of. Upon hearing this, one might assume he only disciplined his students, but it appears he may have applied much the same discipline to himself as well. Because he's an Enneagram type 8, a type that is naturally fairly disciplined, it's hard for me to tell which discipline came naturally, and which was developed through spiritual means.
Not only does he have such a hungry Saturn to reckon with, but it's made more tense by the square to Mars, which I also have. Mars wants to move forward, and a square to Saturn can frustrate those efforts and cause anger, and Gurdjieff is known to have outbursts of anger and to have publically berated his students when they messed up.
Now the mysterious part. On March 4, 2026, I was going through an exact nodal reversal, which is when the nodes of the moon reverse position to your natal nodes; this happens about every 18-19 years. My nodes are at almost 9' along the Virgo-Pisces axis. On March 3, 2026, we had a full lunar eclipse at 12' Virgo, which was on my Saturn and North Node. It was around this week that I developed an interest in the Akashic records, and I don't know much about them, and it could have totally been my imagination, but I seem to have some sort of experience with Gurdjieff in the Records.
This prompted me to look his [astro.com] chart, and in it, his nodes are almost exactly opposite my Saturn-NN conjunction; his South Node is at 11' Virgo whereas my North Node is at 8' Virgo and my Saturn is at 11'. So his North Node is on my Saturn, and his South Node is on my IC.
Added to the fact that his North Node is conjunct my South Node, and his South Node is conjunct my North Node, I was intrigued, and I mean, around that first week of March, I certainly had a feeling that Gurdjieff was with me in my house somehow. I then looked at his astrocartography, and if we were using the astro.com birth date, I was born half-way between his North Node MC line and his Saturn MC line in Canada.
Moreover, his birthplace in my astrocartological chart is where my Venus IC, Chiron AC, Uranus DC, Pluto DC, and Sun IC lines collect.
So who knows what it all means, I'm not claiming this HAS to be his chart. In fact, if Gurdjieff was indeed an Enneagram type 8, I would change some of his planetary placements. But I just thought it was interesting to see the chart associated with someone I felt a connection to and wonder at what we were doing in past lives. I might have studied under him or been a relative, I'm not sure. All I can say is lately when I've meditated on him, I've felt a lot of love.
Ways you can get to know Gurdjieff's life and teachings
Film
"Meetings with Remarkable Men" is a terrific movie that outlines some of the stories Gurdjieff told about his growing-up days, and the journeys he went on in the near and middle Orient to find answers to his burning question, "Why are we here?" A beautiful and sparse film that provokes reflection.
Books
Every Gurdjieff student has their own favorites so these recommendations aren't gospel, but they're accessible portals to further study.
Music
Gurdjieff had a Russian concert pianist with him at the Prieuré to accompany his sacred dances, Thomas de Hartmann. The two worked very intimately to compose and transcribe hundreds of pieces on the piano. Gurdjieff would pick tunes out of the air or his incredible memory of Near Eastern folk songs and would hum them or whistle their melodies until de Hartmann picked up on them and put them to music. Here are some of them.
Research
Those who are on the hunt for Gurdjieff's birthdate will appreciate all the research that Australian Gurdjieffian Michael Benham did into Gurdjieff's life to find his correct birthday, validating it against local birth, marriage and citizenship records. The depth of the research is just phenomenal- he even took a couple family tree research trips to Armenia.
(I happen to agree with Benham on the birth year of 1877, although I think he was born on January 13; whereas Benham believes it was at the end of the year on December 28. It could very well be! Still lots of astrological confirmation needed in terms of Solar year charts and transits.)
https://www.academia.edu/129644525/G_I_GURDJIEFFS_YEAR_OF_BIRTH_1877_
For example, here are the Solar years charts for July 30, 1910- the year Gurdjieff and Julia got married in St. Petersburg. (According to Benham, he lived in Saint Petersburg all year, so it can be assumed that he was in the city for his birthday, whenever it was.)
The chart on the left is for 1910 if he was born on January 13, 1877 at 12:39 AM. If this is correct, he would have been 33 when he got married, which would have given him a 10th house profection year.
The chart of the right is for 1910 if he was born on December 28 at 12:39 AM. If this is correct, he would have been 32 when he got married, which would have given him a 9th house profection year.
(for the 12:39 AM birth time, please see discussion on his birth time at astro.com: https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Gurdjieff,_Georges
This was a rectification done by renowned astrologer Ronald Davison and the write-up is in a September, 1965 issue of Astrology magazine, a copy of which I myself own. That doesn't mean that the time is correct! It could still be wrong, but I respect Davison enough to work with it for now.)
