An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #6

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #6

(New readers will want to start with the first installment.) We ended the last installment by discussing the esoteric nature of the injunction.  We continue this exploration, and bring this series to a close. LoF p. 81 In the command "let the crossing be to the state indicated by the token" we at once make the token doubly meaningful, first...

Continue reading →

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #5

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #5

(New readers will want to start with the first installment.) We ended the last installment with a recognition that the Laws of Form naturally led GSB to an understanding of both the necessity and importance of the realm of imaginary numbers.  We will continue this elaboration. You are likely familiar with the paradoxical sentence: "This sentence is...

Continue reading →

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #4

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #4

(New readers will want to start with the first installment.) We ended the last installment having come to realize something of the esoteric significance of the taijitu, or yin-yang, form, in something of an extended tangent. We return now to the text. GSB himself seemed to understand the importance of the Laws of Form, even if there...

Continue reading →

Identity

Identity

Metaphor: The unknown attempts to know itself. It marks itself. Space arises in no space. Identity marks itself in time. Time transforms identity. Identity dissolves in time. Space yields no space. The mark unmarks itself. The known is newly unknown. Time for a new metaphor.

Continue reading →

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #3

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #3

(New readers will want to start with the first installment.) We ended the last installment noting that the first distinction must be of distinction, but this must be considered as a complex, recursive creation and simultaneous crossing of a boundary that is just precisely the boundary between that very activity of its creation and the fact...

Continue reading →

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #2

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #2

(New readers will want to start with the first installment.) Let us continue our beginning: LoF p. 1 We take as given the idea of distinction and the idea of indication, and that we cannot make an indication without drawing a distinction. We take, therefore, the form of distinction for the form. If this doesn't strike you as having a "mystical"...

Continue reading →

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #1

An Esoteric Guide to Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form #1

(A full PDF of this article can be had here.) George Spencer Brown (in his spirit, I would like to say: "Let George Spencer Brown = GSB"), a logician, engineer, and teacher, wrote a curious little book called Laws of Form, that inspired countless interesting people of widely varying backgrounds.  The book is not a...

Continue reading →