Money Magic
What is money magic? Well, first off you might be asking yourself what magic is at all. The simple (and not quite complete) answer is it's the manipulation of energy. Those who aren't so spiritually inclined think of it as the law of attraction - we train our brains to attract the things we want to see in our lives. Magic takes it a step further, because it incorporates working with our ancestors, spirit guides, highest self, and the divine in order to create a new reality we want to see for ourselves. Magic also has to be support by things we do in our physical lives, and many magical people do things very differently than I do - there's definitely no one right answer when it comes to working with the spirit realm. I could write a lot more on my thoughts on magic, but we'll leave it there for now! Let's focus on the money part.
I've always had an interesting relationship to money throughout my life. I started working when I was 17 in the laundry room of a hotel, which lasted one summer until I started school again in the fall. I couldn't tell you what I spent that money on, but getting a job as an older teenager always felt like an inevitability - it was just something you did. At 18 I found myself working multiple jobs, taking a year off before college, and helping my parents with their expenses as they went through a rough patch financially.
For all the I was financially responsible, I also knew indulgence (and knew it quite well!). My first credit card had a limit of $300 and I almost never used it - just charged it every once and a while so that I could pay it off and build my credit card. My second credit card was a store card for J.Crew, and it was all too easy to spend over $1,000 on clothes before I even fully realized what was happening.
This push and pull of frugality and extravagance shaped my life for several years, and it's a dance I still partake in sometimes. I grew up without any money, so I've always known the value in saving - but because I grew up with no money I've always felt like I deserved to have nice things, which is something I don't deny myself very often.
As I began my spiritual journey, I started to hate money. My spiritual journey and my the journey of my political radicalization follow the same track - so as a young anti-capitalist and budding spiritualist I really hated money and wanted nothing to do with it. I started to think of it as this evil thing I was forced to interact with against my will, resentful of work, resentful of any monetary transaction I had to engage with. And because I hated it so much, it was so easy to not keep track of it. I spent it like it didn't matter to me - because it didn't.
Then a teacher told me to worship my money. Put your money on your altar, take it out on a date. Treat it with respect, because it represents your labor, your time, your energy. Money is inherently neutral, and because we live in an oppressive capitalist system our relationship to our own time, labor, energy, money, is all warped. Since we can't really opt-out of these systems to a large extent, I was shown that I needed to rethink the relationship I had with my money, because what I had wasn't serving me very well.
Money represents an exchange, at it's core. We can exchange it for time, services, goods, sex, or even emotional connection. The key element to the relationship with money is to recognize when we're holding on too tightly or not holding on enough. That is to say - the difference between greedily hoarding money and treating it with so little value that we constantly lose it and are falling into deep debt.
To me, money has a divine masculine energy to it. It's associated with the pentacles in the tarot, it is something that gives. It goes out from us, it has a power that I perceive as very active, and that I associate with the Emperor card of the tarot. This has nothing to do with the human gender of our current incarnations - I don't think women or non-men are bad with money, or that men are inherently better suited to understand finances. That would be ridiculous. What I mean is that when I'm trying to tap into a spirit of financial abundance, I call on my own divine masculine, and my masculine ancestors. As a person who comes from a family with historically very little money, when I ask for wealth I call on my ancestors, because my wealth is their wealth. Below are some ways I ritualize my practices around money, and do money magic! Hopefully some resonate with you, and I would love to hear what your money magic practices are.
1. Practice Generosity. Whenever I'm asking the universe (my ancestors, God, whoever you're asking) to bring abundance into my life, I always make sure to have an active practice of generosity with others. Magic is all about reciprocity, and if I want to receive then I also need to give. Plus, it helps me constantly be aware and practice gratitude for all that I do have, because even when I feel like I have nothing I have more than others, and I have enough to give away to help someone else.
2. Know What You're Asking For. Try and be specific with what you're looking for and asking the universe to bring into your life. Abundance can be a pretty general word, so if you need help paying for rent, ask for that. If you want more clients/business opportunities to come into your life, ask for that. Be able to clearly visualize what your life would look like with that thing.
3. Keep Your Heart Open. Even as we should be specific when we're asking the universe to bring something into our lives, we should also keep an open heart and mind because the abundance we seek often comes to us in ways we didn't expect. So if you were trying to materialize $10,000 into your life but a job opportunity comes along (rather than you winning the money or someone unexpectedly leaving you 10 grand in their will) understand that this might be the universe's way of bringing you what you need, even if it's not exactly what you thought you wanted.
4. Materialize Your Ask. Whenever I do money magic, I buy a lotto ticket, because my grandfather loved to play and do scratch-offs. Even though I don't ever expect to win anything, I buy the ticket to put on my altar to materialize my ask and my prayer. I leave it on my altar for as long as I need! I also put out offerings - for my grandfathers, for the Earth, and for god. Offerings are a way of offering reciprocity to spirit in a way that shows our trust in the universe to bring the gifts back to us.
5. Know Who You're Asking For Help. Who or what figure represents abundance to you? For me it's my grandfathers. It could be a tree spirit, god, your higher self, a nameless higher power, a deity you like to work with. But knowing who you're asking for help and being specific with it will not only shape your offering and the way you materialize this ask, but is part of establishing relationships with these forces in our lives.
6. Put Your Ask Into Practice. If you're asking for a job but aren't filling out any job applications, you probably won't find one! Even if the 'thing' or abundance you end up getting isn't tied to your direct actions, it's about the reciprocity and you're willingness to make materials steps for your life to change that will really invite the magic into your life. If you're asking for abundance but are a chronic over-spender, perhaps it's time to create a budget or cut back. (For me, one of those practices was putting away all my credit cards and getting a debt consolidation loan to lower the interest) It's all about a balance of asking the universe for what you need and being willing to put in the work to get it as well.
May you all be abundant!