Sarmoung Brotherhood

The Sarmoung Brotherhood was an alleged esoteric Sufi brotherhood based in Asia. The reputed existence of the brotherhood was brought to light in the writings of George Gurdjieff, a Greek-Armenian spiritual teacher. Some contemporary Sufi-related sources also claim to have made contact with the group although the earliest and primary source is Gurdjieff himself, leading some scholars to conclude the group was merely a fictional teaching device.

The word sarmoung uses the Armenian pronunciation of the Persian term sarman, which may mean either "he who preserves the doctrine of Zoroaster" or "bee".

Regarding the meaning, the author John G. Bennett, a student and aide of Georges Gurdjieff writes:

"The word can be interpreted in three ways. It is the word for bee, which has always been a symbol of those who collect the precious 'honey' of traditional wisdom and preserve it for further generations. A collection of legends, well known in Armenian and Syrian circles with the title of The Bees, was revised by Mar Salamon, a Nestorian Archimandrite in the thirteenth century. The Bees refers to a mysterious power transmitted from the time of Zoroaster and made manifest in the time of Christ.... Man is Persian meaning as the quality transmitted by heredity and hence a distinguished family or race. It can be the repository of an heirloom or tradition. The word sar means head, both literally and in the sense of principal or chief. The combination sarman would thus mean the chief repository of the tradition." Yet another possibility was "those whose heads have been purified", in other words: the enlightened.

The Brotherhood was also sought by Georges Gurdjieff on his journeys (pre-1912) through Southwest and Central Asia. Describing the contents of an old letter written by a monk which he had obtained, Gurdjieff writes:-

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