The Jag and the Pie
At the recent Babalon Rising festival I saw the usual assortment of cars, trucks, and SUVs in the parking areas. Many were old and rather beat up, being held together with bumper stickers such as “Freedom of Religion Means ALL Religions.” But a surprising (to me) new entry was a bright and very shiny Jaguar. It was newer and obviously quite expensive. Someone had enough money to spend on that car.
This Jaguar was at a car show in England
Why is it that so many people who profess to be able to do magick
are constantly in poor financial condition?
Yes, I know the world’s economy is in the dumpster, but there are still lots of people making lots of money. Shouldn’t magicians be part of that? Some say you should only use magick for spiritual things such as healing, helping others, or enhancing spirituality and one’s links to the Divine. I say:
It’s hard to be spiritual when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from or whether you’ll have a house over your head!
Some point to the mystics in India who wander around with no possessions other than an extra robe and a bowl to use for begging. I would point out that the culture in India is used to such mystics and people support them with food and shelter. We don’t do that in the West.
So what’s the real reason for poverty? I contend it’s poverty thinking. People think it’s spiritual, moral, ecological and/or ethical to be poor so they manifest poverty. In fact, many “spiritual” people work overtime at being poor. But why should people think they need to be poor? I relate it to what I call, The Pie Model.
We’ve all see pies like the one above. If we imagine the sum of all the wealth of everyone in the world as being a pie, then each person gets his or her own slice as shown in the, uh, pie chart below:
Not everyone gets the same size slice. Some have bigger slices, some have smaller ones, indicated by the width of the slice at the circumference of the pie. If you were to increase the size of your slice of the pie—increase your wealth—since there is only so much to go around, someone else would get a smaller slice. While most magickal people who are not in the best financial situation will tell you they would like to have a bigger slice of the pie, they don’t want to do it at the expense of another. I don’t want a little more if it means that my neighbor is going to have less. I don’t want to buy a house if it means some family is going to lose their home. I think many people believe this and it provides a reason for not having more.
Another word for “reason” is “excuse.”
Hidden in this example is an assumption I believe to be false. it assumes that the size of the pie, the total wealth of the world, remains constant. I don’t believe that’s true. While there may come a time when it will be impossible to increase the size of the pie, we haven’t reached that level yet. Below is a more accurate picture of what can happen:
When you grow your piece of the pie it doesn’t grow to the sides, making other pieces smaller, it grows out at the edge, increasing the overall size of the pie and making all pieces bigger. As you become wealthier, you help everyone around you become wealthier.
Being a magician does not mean you have to suffer by manifesting poverty nor hurt others when attracting wealth. Nor by “wealth” do I mean that you must be so far ahead of others that it would be embarrassing. Wealth means enough finances for yourself. I also believe it means wealth of being loved and giving love, wealth of friendship, wealth of knowledge and wisdom, and wealth of spirituality. Without the latter forms of wealth you may find that the financial forms of wealth are cold and meaningless.
I invite you to create wealth and share it. Oh, and it is not true that the Bible says “money is the root of all evil.” The Bible says that it is the desire for money is the root of evil. If you have enough there is no need to desire more.
It’s okay to think positively and attract wealth. Poverty thinking is not necessary.
What do you think is keeping you from wealth? What do you hold on to that?
Very interesting and totally agree with you. How would you go about attracting more money magically?
[Note: Capitals merely for emphasis, not shouting]
Again you hit the proverbial nail on the head, Don. It’s easy for the Armchair Theorist to sit in his/her Mom & Dad’s basement on the PC & preach against using Sorcery & Magic for profit or gain.
What most seem to forget is that the guys like those from the old Golden Dawn were well off financially BEFORE they got involved in Magic. And for those who were not, they could have easily used the Art to help themselves financially. It was their choice NOT to do so.
Crowley should have used his knowledge to bring him wealth instead of sponging off others! He could have summoned some Spirits to help him make good business decisions regarding his wealth but chose to squander it.
I have read—unfortunately, I don’t remember where—that Crowley kept a talisman for money on his person until he died. Perhaps someone more familiar with Crowley’s history can confirm, clarify, or debunk this. While it’s true than many of the early GD members were wealthy, some, including one of the founders, MacGregor Mathers, were not.
I cannot say that I agree with the pie example, that when one gets more, others get less, or that there is only so much to go around, but…why not use magick to enhance every part of ones life? And as you point out, wealth is not just about money. Having enough to pay the bills and some left over is great, the other forms of wealth you mentioned are just as or more important than the money.
I would have to say that most poverty is not how much a person makes, but how much that person spends trying to keep up with the proverbial ‘American way’ of life or trying to maintain a ‘green’ life.
I know I read somewhere of a witch who worked with the waning moon to banish poverty, thereby helping his financial situation.
Working spells to meet daily needs is not the same as working magick just to become a millionaire.
Nice article, mayhap it will make some folks think twice about the way they handle their financiances and magick.
I have puzzled over this for years myself. I agree that to some extent it is what you have written of above, but it is also other things. My internal teacher says that affluent-thinking and -workings are based on how much genuine ‘brightness’ a person can allow themselves to participate in, and that if we look at a yin-yang symbol for a moment, people generally stand in the small bright dot, wondering how to expand it – – – which you can only do by expanding the big dark tear-drop, which you can only do by expanding the big bright teardrop and the entire thing. For a while I tried to write a book “How to be a rich witch”, while cab driving. I ran across a ‘sales’ technique where you decide how much you are going to get in a short period, write it down, and go on with your life. Deciding that I would get $20 and hour, each hour, worked wonders. At one point I was in desperate need for $860, so I wrote that as my goal and did all the magickal and manifesting works that I could remember on it, and released it. Within 3 hours a drunk lady with casino chips spilling out of her purse got in my cab, and spilled $850 in my cab before I got her safely into her house. That and the fare totalled $860. But then I felt guilty about it for about three weeks, I’m not sure why.
Brian, I would start by simply asking for it and then really agreeing that this would be a positive thing. Second, I would put a $100 dollar bill in my wallet at all times and not spend it except in case of emergency. Third, I would figure out how I could work harder or add more value at work and then make it happen.
Excellent article Donald Michael! I love your example of making the entire pie bigger by stretching it over the edges, helping everyone – awesome! I wrote an article on this topic with a different take for the 2011 Witches’ Companion entitled “Pagans and Prosperity Consciousness.” I mention that often, non-Pagan types can more easily manifest because Pagans can have a different ethic of what is acceptable to them. As an example, many Pagan types wish to find work in fields that are life-affirming and more on the creative than the destructive side. So a career in (as an example) biological warfare may not be appealing in the least, regardless of how in-demand and lucrative it could be, and regardless of the economy. So the seemingly “easy ways” to manifest money may not fulfill the soul’s need to be in harmony with nature, rather than fighting it with technology – and in doing so, there is often a “curve” of difficulty to arrive at that creative life purpose to where it can manifest prosperity (i.e. living within means while learning to expand them), and each person’s journey toward this end will be different. But it can start with the same process, and I think you start to cover that here – we need to change our concept to realize there is indeed no limitation, and just because others believe there is doesn’t mean we have to! But then, there can be deep conditioning that blocks us from the ability to RECEIVE, and that happens when we realize our own value and the subsequent contribution to the world, creating equal energy exchange. Some of it is programming in this lifetime (by family as well as peers, bosses, schools, governments, corporations, etc.), some of it could be past-life related (especially those who took vows of poverty to do spiritual work but even then, they were obviously supported by the church), and some of it can even be an ancestral imprint in the DNA to where even if you don’t believe something, this imprint could operate in the background and discovering it (and then of course healing it) is a necessary step toward prosperity consciousness in the natural balance. Since so much of this is in our emotional realms, I just LOVE Flower Essences to address these issues, since they can bypass our mental misunderstandings that are in our ego (which can go into a survival mode). They then reeducate these areas pretty effortlessly, since the issues come in a way that a person can have an “Aha!” moment! And while all of this is really due to a lack of love or a lack of connection to the All that Is (in whatever form you see that), each of us need to hear a different message to arrive at that space – and the cool part is that the language of flowers can customize the message(s) we need! Thanks once again for this timely post, and Happy Solstice! 🙂
Thanks for you comments and solstice greetings. As you may know, the brain is composed of zillions of cells called neurons. To communicate with each other, the neurons send information from one to another using a chemical called a neurotransmitter. Well, the neurotransmitter fluid bathes all of our cells, not just the brain’s neurons, and then can affect the DNA of the cells. This implies that what you think can actually change the way you are. Focus on illness and poverty, and you get it. No, this is not a LoA pie in the sky wish it and get it philosophy. Everything you think and do feeds through the neurotransmitters to the cells. You can’t just think about what you want…you need to do something!
[…] A few years ago, a publishing administrator asked me why so many occultists were short on money. I told him that some occultists, magicians, and Pagans view wealth in terms other than money. They value having time and being able to study, learn, be with friends, etc. “But,” he said, “it seems like many don’t have enough to live in decent housing, have a vehicle, or buy healthy food. As magicians, shouldn’t they be able to do magick that would bring them enough money to meet their basic needs?” I explained that some are mired in “poverty thinking.” I discussed this type of thinking in a recent blog post. […]
Nice blog post, Don. The movie “What the Bleep do We Know?” explains nicely what you are saying about neurons, and how what we think becomes a physical part of our make-up. Enjoyed the post!
[…] Michael Kraig, who has addressed the issue of poverty-based thinking already, has an excellent post on a common question by skeptics: why are so many occultists short […]