Money Magic vs. Inequality

Perhaps one of the oldest types of sorcery in material-based magic is the body of spells and rituals for achieving some kind of economic increase, whether for modest and most needed fortunes or for massive windfalls. Money magic is as old as love spells and curses, and it is often predicated by chance and probability. Those who engage in such forms of magic are typically lower middle class or the poor, but even staunchly middle class folks find themselves working money magic. Usually, a magician seeking a modest monetary increase will focus on strategic changes, such as getting a new job with better pay, taking advantage of opportunities that arise or just trying to bend the probabilities for personal advantage.

These kinds of modest money magic have a greater chance of occurring because they are more probable than purchasing a winning lottery ticket or discovering a massive load of hidden treasure. A magician seeks to acquire the positive charms of good luck and good fortune and thereby eliminate blockages or the downward spiral of misfortune, which some call bad luck. This is what can be expected from successful money magic. It can also be said that self confident individuals are more prone to having good luck than those who lack self confidence. These are the typical victims who seem prone to having misfortune or bad luck, and money magic, properly applied, can greatly aid them.

However, for the middle class magicians or even poor practitioners, there is a limit to what money magic can do for one’s economic situation. Outside of the very rare windfall or “Black Swan” occurrence, nearly all money magic can be compared to fighting a life threatening disease like cancer; whatever successes occur do not reverse the ultimate condition of mortality. This is because the economic system to which we are all engaged is rigged against nearly all of us except for the very wealthy, and that Capitalism has a built-in bias towards oligarchies. That means that whatever good fortune comes to an individual, whether practicing magic to make it happen or not, over time the money will flow away from nearly everyone and accumulate for just a few individuals. The economic system of Capitalism is mathematically set against most of us, and in the end, succeeding generations will have far less opportunities than the previous generations.  Inheritances will diminish and dry up leaving only the oligarchist with any real wealth. That is the reality in today’s market economy, and unless something dramatically changes, it will be our economic fate. Magic cannot either address this situation or in any wise rectify it.

If you think that my pronouncement sounds defeatist and unrealistic then a recent article published in the magazine Scientific American might change your mind. This article was written by Bruce M. Boghosian, who is a noted mathematician. He has worked with the mathematical model called the ‘Extended Yard Sale Model of Asset Exchange’ and has shown that even a completely level playing field where individuals start with the same assets and the transactions that gain or lose money are determined purely by chance, ultimately one individual will acquire all of the assets originally held equally by the members of the experimental set in the beginning of the test. You can find his paper on this model here. Of course, a very simple version of this model is something that many gamers discover when playing Monopoly. Each potential transaction is guided by chance, although players can influence the outcome somewhat by using a form of shrewd judgment. Yet in the end of each game it is mostly chance that determines the winner and often it allows for a different winner each time the game is played, which is why it has been so popular over the decades. The winner ends up accumulating all of the money and assets in the game, unless the other players concede defeat, which has the same result.  

Of course, there is no level playing field, transactions of gain and loss are not based on pure chance, and we don’t start out with the same assets. So, the leverage of those who have massive wealth is even greater. This causes the financial model to skew or distort even more to such an extent that inequality accelerates. Where the ability for the masses to attain some degree of economic mobility dwindles as more individuals possess smaller shares of capital compared to the wealthy few. This is how this system works today, and it has worked in this manner ever since people began the economic game of bartering and selling. There are always winners and losers over time, and most of the players ultimately lose to a small group or even a single individual. Capitalism, unimpaired by any other mechanism for control and redistribution, will ultimately create oligarchies.

I won’t go into the details of Mr. Boghosian’s article, but his basic premise that economic inequality is inevitable, particularly if the economic system has built in biases that would give advantage to those who already have substantial wealth, with tax breaks, tax havens, credit opportunities, political contacts and laws that specifically favor them, is correct. It is interesting to note that the current inequality in our nation began to increase rapidly during the Reagan presidency and that despite certain attempts by Democratic presidents, such as Clinton and Obama, the pace of inequality has increased.

Republicans are probably mostly to blame for the legislation and tax breaks that have helped economic inequality explode over the past three decades, but they are not the only party that has done the bidding of the rich and powerful. This why we need the federal government to intervene in our current crisis of inequality and make some changes to our unequal system of taxation, and to put into place mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth. We also need to remove the advantages and influences that wealthy patrons have placed on the government, where the donor class is able to have undue influence on the politicians at all levels of the local, state and federal bureaucracy.

Perhaps the greatest magic that magicians could undertake would be to help nearly everyone who isn’t part of the 1% richest in the nation and project their magic into influencing politicians to roll back the laws aiding inequality by instituting a wealth tax, higher capital gains taxes, higher income taxes on the very upper strata of income, and to put into place a universal basic income commensurate with individual wealth and income.

Could you imagine what it would be like if most of the people in the country had a guaranteed basic income that would cover the basic needs of life? Having a job would be voluntary, and there could be many more artists, poets, community organizers, teachers, home healthcare providers and people just helping other people without having to worry about being financially self-sufficient. This nation would change dramatically overnight, and I believe this change would be positive, constructive, and it would alleviate the stresses of poverty and overwork. I could even imagine some people turning their hand to studying and practicing magic full time without ever having to perform money magic.

Since I have had to put my retirement on hold because I need the income and I am not yet ready to let those opportunities go, I have spent far more time working my day job than working magic, reading occult books, writing and researching. I do a lot more work that gives me less joy and happiness than having a well rounded life consisting of friends, family, a social life, and just plain having fun. Instead, I am working week after week and on many weekends, wistfully dreaming about what I could do with my time if I didn’t have to ceaselessly work in the corporate world to earn my bread and board.

So, if we want to work money magic and make a real change not only for ourselves but for all of the middle class and poor then lets work magic together to cause a class based economic revolution. There are more of us than the wealthy oligarchs, so all we need to do is to vote and to voice our demands in a powerful and peaceful manner. Like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, we can change our world if we unite in solidarity and demand a better and fairer out come to our lives. Because if we don’t unite and force the government to change the economic system imposed on us and give us a level playing field then we will become the new servant class, and no amount of magic will save any of us from that fate.

 
Frater Barrabbas

Thoughts on Wealth and Magical Power

Spring has finally come to the Great White North, and the leaves are starting to bud. It is looking a lot nicer since the browns and greys of winter after the snow-melt and rains have become green with the promise of warmer weather and a verdant rebirth. Still, there are cool days and a quite a lot of rain, but at least it’s rain and not snow. Despite the fact that the warmer days of summer are approaching us again, I find myself overloaded with work, so I can only gaze at the wondrous changes through my window.

Presently, I have begun the arduous task of transitioning from my old job and role to one that is new. I need to focus on mastering new skills, dusting off knowledge and techniques long stale and getting up to speed with a completely different technology. These are delightful things for me to do because I always love new challenges and learning to master new technologies. I am grateful that my company is giving me this opportunity to re-tool, but I can hardly blame them. Finding people with my business knowledge is quite difficult, since what I do isn’t just limited to knowing how to use fancy technological applications. The fact that I also know how to write is also somewhat unique to an IT professional, so I can see the practical reasons why my employers want to give me the opportunity to retool. It’s far cheaper and faster to allow me to extend my abilities than it is to hire someone with all of the abilities that they require.

Thus, my work related on-the-job training and the massive workload will keep me busy for quite some time. This is why I haven’t been writing articles for my blog lately and why I am not likely to write much in the future either. I am just too busy making certain that I can continue to function as I have done previously in my career, and so manage to continue getting a good paycheck to put a roof over my head and food on the table. I am not wealthy but I am also not poor. I have been quite fortunate and I am grateful for what I have been able to accomplish in my life so far.

I know all too well that things can and do change, and the fickle finger of fate can just as easily afflict one with misfortune as it can seemingly award one with good fortune. I would like to believe that my magical abilities have helped to shape my fortune over the extent of my lifetime, but it could have also been my ability to periodically reinvent myself and to be fairly practical minded when it came to money and career choices. I like to think of myself as a man of magical power and arcane ability, since I am a witch and a ritual magician. Yet when it comes to talking about magical power and how that mysterious quality can impact one’s temporal and material reality, then things can become murky or even a bit confused. Allow me to explain what I mean by this statement.

There are essentially two basic kinds of magical workings that most ritual and ceremonial magicians might perform, and these consist of the works of thaumaturgy and theurgy. Thaumaturgy can be defined as essentially making things happen in the material world based on a combination of magical and mundane steps. Thaumaturgy is therefore mainly concerned with producing material effects regardless of the medium (such as energy, spirits, psychology, etc.). Typically, a thaumaturgical operation will be able to “bend” probability so that something that has a distinct possibility of occurring can be “willed” into becoming manifest. Theurgy, on the other hand, is concerned with spiritual insights, wisdom, occult knowledge and conscious illumination. Therefore, when magicians talk about influencing events through the application of magical rituals, they are usually talking about thaumaturgy. When they talk about transformations and transcendence, they are talking about theurgy.

In my book “Disciples Guide to Ritual Magick” I have discussed the nature and quality of the concept of magical power. I have maintained that it is a subjective phenomenon that has more to do with the experience of magic and its apparent meaningfulness. A powerful magical ritual is one that has profound meaning and significance for the magician. Magical power is therefore a metaphor for the emotional experiences of meaningfulness, profound significance, and insightful synergy that accompanies a successful working.

Of course, a working that fails to produce the desired effects could also appear similarly ground-breaking, but magicians typically remember their successes and try to mitigate or even forget their failures. I often refer to a magician recounting his or her exploits and successful magical workings as “tales of power.” They have a tendency of magnifying over the years and with the many renditions. (I suppose that the failed workings and misadventures would be called the “tales of folly.”)

A powerful magician is one who can not only get the desired results that he or she is striving to achieve, but does so in an obvious and profound manner. This is to say that really good magic always produces far more than just the desired outcome. It teaches, instructs, guides and ultimately leads one to a greater level of being than what might have been otherwise. What I am implying here is that thaumaturgy can and does lead the magician to theurgy, although not always and certainly not immediately.

Even so, magical power should never be confused with real power in the material world. While it is possible that the archetypal magician should be materially successful, perhaps even wealthy and widely influential, this seldom ever occurs. Why is this so? Why are magicians to be found in mostly the middle or lower classes and not amongst the wealthy elite? Shouldn’t magical power be synonymous with material power?

Anton Lavey once drily stated that real occult masters and men of magical power should reside in a station of life commensurate with their magical prowess, that is amongst the elite, and if they didn’t, then they were just a bunch of deluded frauds. I read this bit of hyperbole in Anton’s monthly periodical “The Cloven Hoof” and I can see that some folks have taken it to heart over the years. This belies the fact that Anton himself passed away leaving a very modest and meager estate behind him. He was also something of a steadfast atheist and didn't believe in any "occult powers."

Needless to say, I have often sensed a bit of snobbery and a sneering quality of prejudice from the quips and comments made by middle class white male magicians who like to look down their noses at those who are materially below them, including those men or women of color who are not part of the supposed elite of middle class magicians. Of course, whatever material stability one has these days has been bought dearly for the price of actual material freedom, since the typical working stiff can’t afford not to have a job and a career in order to survive. There are some lucky few who make a living offering their occult services for a fee, but the rest of us have to work a mundane job in order to make a living, and that takes us away from what we would rather be doing with our time. However, those magicians who are doing well money-wise have managed to leverage their middle class roots and privileges into a stable material existence, but this could change at any time. Misfortune occurs every day and happens to everyone at some point, but those who are rich and powerful are less impacted by it.

Additionally, look at the general population of the U.S. and see who is most engaged with the practice of magic. The number of middle class magicians and their potential middle class clients is quite small compared to the rest of the population of middle class folk. This is not so in the lower classes, particular the ethnic minorities and non-white people living in urban areas. There are far more magicians operating in these communities and people who will engage them for a modest fee than in any other community or class. When you think about it, doesn’t that really make sense?

When upper class people seek retribution for a wrong that they experienced at the hands of someone else do they go see a magician or a root conjuror? No, they go see their lawyers and sue the crap out of their would-be perpetrators, or they pull some influential strings and cause all sorts of woe to those sorry bastards who have wronged them. They don’t need any magic because their money and influence is all the “magic” that they ever need, and it usually protects and empowers them quite well. They can afford to be rich assholes when we would never consider behaving in that way. The rest of us poor schmucks have to make do with intimidation, physical threats and perhaps even violence, and if that can’t be done, then we either have to lump it or perhaps engage in some magic either on our own or by hiring a magician, witch or root conjuror.

 

For this reason, the very powerful, well connected and wealthy elite have viewed the practice of magic, particularly thaumaturgy, as disdainfully irrelevant. To them the religious status quo has always been an integral part of their outer social image. They might be interested in oddities or attracted to novelties, but in most cases, when they indulge in such matters they are just considered harmless wealthy eccentrics. They actually don’t deviate too much from social norms because it’s bad for business. So for this reason magic has always been and always will be the proclivity of poor and powerless people because they don’t have the means of throwing their weight around, whether by material power or by the threat of violence. They are, in a word, the little people that the rich and powerful treat with indifference or scorn. I count myself as part of that faction of “little people” regardless of my paycheck, since misfortune could easily take away everything that I have materially achieved in my lifetime. There is little difference between the urban poor and myself, at least when compared to the mega-rich, so I should always consider my material interests when voting. You can bet that I don't vote for Republicans or Libertarians.

Do my words bother you? Do you feel the need to dispute what I am saying because you think magicians should be powerful in all areas of their lives? Well, then, here’s a little test. Compare your vaunted material power and swagger to that of the Koch brothers and see how it stands up. I am certain that you will handily lose that comparison. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to buy the supposed democracy that we live in, and they are gradually succeeding. For instance, instead of talking about what we need to do about climate change and how we should mitigate its dire effects, we are instead talking about whether or not it is real. The scientific consensus is that climate change is practically a fact, agreed to by over 97% of scientists. The global ice caps are melting at an unprecedented pace and it is obviously due to the high levels of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere. How did so much carbon-dioxide get into the atmosphere? Simple, from the massive burning of fossil fuels. Heavy mechanized farming has also greatly contributed to the green-house gas effect. Still, we have the majority of conservative politicians and media pundits denying that climate change is even happening, and all too many people are foolishly agreeing with them.

This is only one of several conservative themes that are completely absurd yet nevertheless are being seriously played out in our country, pitting lies and hyperbole against scientific fact. Modest gun control as a form of second amendment abrogation is one, Obamacare as a national disaster is another and voter fraud is still another. Not to mention the supposed fake scandals that are being acted out by the Republicans in Washington against an administration that is boringly bereft of scandal. Why is this happening? Does the fact that the Koch brothers own a major share of the fossil fuel industry have any bearing on why the conversation about climate change is stale-mated by those who outright deny its reality? As Bob Dylan sang: “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”

Progressive policies tend to assist the many for the sake of taxing the wealthy few, and so they are a method smoothing over social and economic inequalities. They don’t in any way discourage anyone from becoming wealthy, and in fact, they greatly assist in social and economic mobility. However, such policies have been demonized by those who wish to enlarge and expand economic inequality. Want to guess who is pushing such ideas into the political consensus? The Koch brothers and their mega-rich allies!

To humorously misquote Ronald Reagan, let me boldly tell my fellow Americans, “Rich people aren’t the solution to our problems, they are the problem!”

We magicians and witches are natural subversives working against the established order. Whatever you have is just waiting to be taken away by the .1%, so struggling against the system, whether clandestinely or openly, is the only way for us to survive. Thinking that we have powers to directly influence the world that we live in is a time honored illusion indulged in by middle class magicians. We can, in the end, only influence ourselves, and even then we are not immune to misfortune. So, don’t be fooled into thinking that you are safe from economic calamity, because you aren’t.

Even great magicians have their ordeals, difficulties and times of hardship. Misfortune has always been the true test of one’s character, personal strength and personal empowerment. Therefore, it is better to admire the magician who comes from a poor family and succeeds than to admire some arm-chair magician who has never had to struggle and fight for what he has.

Frater Barrabbas