Sophia Wellbeloved was a member of the Gurdjieff Society in London from 1962-75 and completed her Ph.D. at King's College, London in 1999. The second revised edition of her thesis, Gurdjieff, Astrology & Beelzebub's Tales, with a foreword by Wallace Martin was published by Solar Bound Press in December 2002.
Author/Artist: Sophia Wellbeloved
ISBN: 0415248973
Publisher: Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis Books Ltd
Foreword by Paul Beekman Taylor
Synopsis
This title offers clear definitions of Gurdjieff's teaching terms, placing him within the political, geographical and cultural context of his time. Entries look at diverse aspects of his work, including: possible sources in religious, theosophical, occult, esoteric and literary traditions; the integral relationships between different aspects of the teaching; its internal contradictions and subversive aspects; the derivation of Gurdjieff's cosmological laws and Ennegram; and the receptive form of "new work" teaching introduced by Jeanne de Salzmann. An accessible and cross-referenced A-Z guidebook, this is a useful companion for both the newcomer and those more versed in Gurdjieff's thought and teachings.
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Reviews
The Key Concepts should not be confused with the index to Beelzebub made by The Traditional Studies Press (which is an excellent tool for studying All & Everything). Dr. Wellbeloved gives a few explanations for some of the important 'strange words' Gurdjieff used in Beelzebub, but almost all of the key concepts and all definitions are in English ('Conscience', 'Emanations', 'Money' etc.).
At the same time the book is a commentary on Gurdjieff's ideas and his writings, the Work organisations and the changes to the Work in his lifetime and after his death. These keen observations enable it to be read not only as an index and a reference work for study, but also as a 'book with many threads'.
Reijo Oksanen, Switzerland
http://www.arssacra.org
added 2002-10-22
For both seekers and academics, Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts is a valuable, even-handed, organized and thorough guide to the considerable and ever growing Gurdjieffian corpus. Since the publication of Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales and P.D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous fifty years ago, dozens of books by Gurdjieff’s students, students of his students, and independent thinkers have come into print making distillation of the Gurdjieff’s central ideas very difficult. Dr. Wellbeloved has not only distilled Gurdjieff’s ideas, she also presents them in their cultural and intellectual context shedding new light on Gurdjieff’s sources, the influence Gurdjieff had on the intellectuals and artists of his day, and the influence people and ideas may have had on Gurdjieff.
Dr. Wellbeloved’s book brings Gurdjieff’s ideas out of the shadows. By using the core Gurdjieffian literature as a basis for her research, Dr. Wellbeloved describes more than 300 Gurdjieffian concepts, organized A to Z. The entries include diverse definitions indicative of the evolution of Gurdjieff’s thought over time. Additionally, she highlights similarities between Gurdjieff’s ideas and those current in Theosophy, the Western occult traditions, and Western culture providing valuable material for determining sources of the various strands used in Gurdjieff’s synthesis. The entries are clearly written, consistently maintaining focus on central ideas. The tone and structure of the book is academic and its freedom from both the dogmatism and testimonials that tends to characterize works on Gurdjieff is refreshing. The humor is there too. Dr. Wellbeloved does not fail to note, for example, that Gurdjieff may have derived his name for our solar system, Ors, from the Greek word for buttocks.
Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts is extensively referenced and footnoted. Additionally, it includes appendices of biographies of Gurdjieff’s primary pupils, a list of Gurdjieff groups, and a sub list of “trickster teachers.” The bibliography is extensive and the book is indexed.
Sophia Wellbeloved’s Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts is an essential guide for students of Gurdjieff. It will also be of serious interest to students and scholars of all the Western transformational traditions. This book breaks new ground and further serious analysis of Gurdjieff’s contribution to the Western cultural trajectory cannot be far in the future.
Lynn Quirolo is a contributing editor to Stopinder - A Gurdjieff Journal for Our Time
Lynn Quirolo, United States
added 2002-09-29