WHILE THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT the date of Gurdjieff's bodily death—October 29, 1949—the date of his birth remains in question. More logical than 1866, the date usually given, is 1872. Both Olga de Hartmann—the woman Gurdjieff called "the first friend of my inner life"—and Louise Goepfert March, Gurdjieff's secretary in the early thirties, believed that Gurdjieff was born in 1872. For a discussion of the dates and why 1872 is the most reasonable, see William Patrick Patterson's Struggle of the Magicians, pp. 273-74.