September – Enneagram archetype 268 and the benelovence of Apple trees
Moon:Harvest Moon
Tree:Apple
Enneagram Archetype 268 – the benevolent communitarian.
Holy Ideas: Holy will, holy faith, holy love.
“ It is the month of ripeness – a golden, crimson and russet month” – Clare Leighton – The Farmers Year
Illustration of an apple, with apple blossom
'A is for Apple' are the words and image on the first page of a book teaching us to read in English, and apples themselves are plentiful and resplendently iconic, this time of harvest and seasonal turning. Holding both of these thoughts close at heart as I write, apple tree offers its generous life-affirming presence as the first tree in this series. Here enneagram wisdom teachings will meet with our correspondence with the natural world around us, and in particular our personal square miles of home. Correspondence is a term coined by Tim Ingold – to describe a relational and reciprocal kind of ongoing open-ended communication with an 'other' that we are attending too. That other can be, by all means a plant, or a rock or a creature or a building, or a tree, just as much an another human. My ethos here is one of exploring the quality of our inhabitation of our landscapes, that we might deeper our sense of belonging to place. This sensibility of correspondence with our local treescape in particular, is one that will allow its details and particularities to resource us, and offer us opportunities to receive from it and to pay it our attention and greater custodianship in return.
Photograph of two girls running in an apple orchard by Mieke Campbell @ Unsplash
P is for portals. You might not think of a tree as a portal, but it really can be an opening into a completely different way of experiencing life. So don’t be surprised if your correspondences with trees open you up into new spaces in your being. This was my experience when I began to walk with more and more awareness of them in my mind, possibly because, during the heightened state of vigilance afforded by covid lock-down times, walking became a way to connect me with a calmer place within myself. The trees gradually revealed themselves as the calm and stoic witnesses they have surely always been, living up close to our human thrashing about, and they helped me to drop into a place where I experienced their energetic character imprinting itself on me.
Image: Book in apple tree, Samantha Taroni
P is also for precious times. I was highly aware that while I was able to slow my life down for a while, there were others who were demanded upon in unexpected unprecedented ways that they had definitely not signed up for. Parents were bumbling their way through home-schooling, unhappy couples were suddenly thrust into intense togetherness, and those living alone were isolated from their wider community. With this stroke of personal good fortune amidst a lot of human suffering, came the sense that I was being given a task: to pass on the gifts that the trees were sharing with curious me. The walking with trees Facebook group project, that had began at the beginning of 2020, unfolded into my book, 'Take it to the Trees' by the end of 2022. This explored 9 of trees as mirroring and illuminating the 9 archetypal energetic patterns of the enneagram symbol , and in particular, the essence qualities and holy ideas of the personality types: Trees as our teachers.
The enneagram of personality
E is for every tree at the beginning of my journey of openings into treescapes, pointing to a point on the enneagram. For Apple it was point two - the helper. The abundant life giving nature of an apple tree pointed to the high point of two where love has ceased to be grasping and self-serving and has learnt to include love of self along with love of others, so that there is a flow of grace that this personality type at the later stages of a healing journey, has discovered. But this lesson will have likely come through many life lessons, and not all of us learn those lessons easily. In the thick of the distortions of their learnt survival strategy, where they have to be the most loving person in the room, an enneagram point two is suffering deeply from the core wound of pride, so that their blind spot is in not realising that their giving is strategic – even manipulative - and involves self-abandonment and neglect and a compulsive focus on the perceived need of the other. My hunch was that spending time with an apple tree might be especially healing for a human using the point two strategy, but also for others needing to experience the holy idea of point two, that true love is generative, not grasping, and has its own karmic intelligence. The essence quality of point two, is therefore, Humility.
Book Cover of 'The Giving Tree'
'T is for 'The Giving Tree', by Shel Silverstein. In this beautiful heart-breaking story, he speaks to this joy in true giving, and its unconditionality, and also towards how difficult that is for us as humans. It is not only the person using a type two strategy that is suffering with this. We have all been raised in an overculture where grasping and seizing and claiming ownership over all we survey, is a life skill, and yet of course this takes us to a spiritually barren landscape. Lying under the dappled light in an apple orchard, or making its fruit into a pie or chutney, or following the journey of a bee beneath an apple tree in this time of late summer eating its fermenting fruit, might offer us some sense of the fruitful abundance of the generosity of the apple tree.
Photograph of an apple orchard by Samantha Taroni
R is for reading the Apple chapter in Take it to the Trees. This is a gift to you from me. It will give you a flavour of the book and of this practice of Deep-Mapping with the trees in your own square mile. Each chapter contains a physical practice you can try with a tree nearby, a grid of Tree inspiration of different kinds, chosen to connect to your opening heart and your curious mind, and a further grid and page for you to fill with your own thoughts, gleanings, sketchings, musings and reflections. Test it out, and if you like it, the whole book is available on Amazon as a paperback, and free on Kindle Unlimited.
E is for entering the fourth year of this ongoing corresponding with the trees, and deepening in my own study of the enneagram wisdom teachings. In the time that has passed, this projec has taken a further deepening into the tritype archetypes. In this branch of enneagram, teaching, a human adopts a strategy in each of the three centres; mind, heart and body. For me the apple tree is 268 as a tritype. This type has perhaps the quintessential two journey into the challenges of living with an open benevolent heart. All of these three types can be overbearing in relationship as a strategy. 2 and 6 want to help and fix. 2 and 8 to nurture and protect and 6 and 8 are both loyal and focused on those they have ‘adopted’ as the targets of their love, and can become bossy and controlling, and angry and rejecting if thwarted. The holy idea of surrendering to holy will, embodied in the signature of the apple tree, is truly balm for the 268 personality structure. If you would like to explore your enneagram map, your tritype and the ways you might journey with trees in a deep-mapping inner journey, please do set up an exploratory call and we can set up a series of sessions together. This is a gentle trauma-informed approach to the enneagram as a powerful tool for self-discovery.
E is also for each time you encounter the domain of Apple tree this time of equinox and harvest. Whether by spending time with a tree, or eating an apple. Here are some questions you might like to reflect on.
How balanced are you feeling in the giving and receiving in your relationships?
What is your response to the idea of being lovable, loving, and beloved?
An apple can symbolise both pure unconditional love, and the poisoned love of resentments and possessiveness. What are the qualities of your loving at this time? Can you find some adjectives to describe?
How does it feel to be in the presence of an apple tree. Is there something you need to let go of, that you are holding too close, or some one you could ask it to take care of that you are over protecting?
With the appreciation of the benevolence of apple tree and its habitat and its fruits, are there ways you can engage creatively with this tree as part of your community?
And some further invitations! Make a SoulCollage® card for your apple tree and dialogue with it. Sketch or paint an apple tree in your square mile, read ‘The Giving tree’, make some apple chutney, or simply sit beneath an apple tree with a good book and enjoy its atmosphere of love and generosity.
I look forward to creating with you again soon! See you next month for Octobers Enneagram Tree-tritype.