In Which Year Was G.I. Gurdjieff Born?

Abstract

Gurdjieff’s date of birth is usually given as 28 December; but there is no agreement as to the year. The two most common conjectures are the widely disparate 1866 and 1877. The question is significant for its ramifications: if, as shall be suggested, Gurdjieff was indeed born in 1877, then his development into the founder of a significant current of Western Esotericism could fairly be described as prodigious, as by 1915 he was confidently presenting a fully developed mystic system uniting psychology and cosmology, with practical methods for working towards the mystic goal of what we might call transcendent unity.