… I cannot change your archetype, my beloved. Nobody can do that. It is manifest and will in its own way determine your life. It is manifest and if you allow yourself to be guarded by it, you will be in heaven. And if you resist, in hell. Not sometime in the future. In this life. That is the law. I did not make it.
I cannot change your archetype but can only unveil it, as others with their own agenda will try to conceal it from you. I cannot change your archetype but I can give it life. I can take care of it, nourish it and accommodate it so that what you are now - in contrast what you will be - will appear impoverished. And you, my beloved, would do the same for me. Not out of a sense of duty but because that is what you are made of. What greater conviction than this can any human being have?
Please notice that I do not try to tell you what your archetype is; nobody can do that. You are always the queen of your own domain. It is up to you to to serve your archetype or to betray it, do as you like.
It is true that love allows us all to enforce that what we really are, and to overthrow the limitations and restrictions of our education and upbringing. Either your strength becomes real now or you will never achieve greatness. You cannot fool the world. Nobody can do that. If you decide for less than you really are the world will disparage you.
All creative people experience difficulty with their family. A family never accommodates the fact that one of their members might be outside their reach. I love my family but I never follow their advice.
Can you see that this letter is not an imposition? I only say what you taught me to say. I only do what you taught me to do. I only love what you taught me to love.
George Spencer-Brown, ‘Only two can play this game’, 1971 (excerpt)
George Spencer-Brown (1923-2016), mathematician, consulting engineer, psychologist, consulting psychotherapist, author, and poet.
He also held world records as a glider pilot, taught at the universities of London, Cambridge and Oxford, where he was successor of Einstein. Perhaps most famously he was the author of a book of mathematical logic and metaphysics entitled ‘Laws of Form’, first published in 1969, praised by Bertrand Russel (“Not since Euclid’s ‘Elements’ have we seen anything like it.”). He defended astrology against its detractors.