What is this?
Thanks for coming to read . Tthis article. It’s incomplete right now. This is slowing being written as a course designed to make Thelemites think about money from a more Thelemic point of view and thereby be better with money.
I’m hoping eventually it will be a full course that anyone can take and use in their local OTO body or Thelemic reading groups to deliver weekly session to coach each other to be better with money. I mean wouldn’t it be nice if the ruling class was Thelemites and not some Old Aeon right-wing nut jobs?
It really is designed to work from Thelemic mindset and some of it is based on the Book of the Law and some Thelemic Rituals. Mostly it’s an indepth psychological work, which encourages coaching each other, listening to each other, discovering some of the things we have been programmed to think about money which make us poor, so we can uproot them.
Some of it is going to be incredibly practical for example “how to feed a family of 4 for less than £5 a day” or “how to get a better paid career”, some will be quite theoretical “what does the Book of the Law say about money?” and some will be deeply psychological and spiritual “evoking and binding the self-sabotaging impostor syndrome”. By attacking this issue on all 3 fronts of Mind, Body and Spirit any difficulties with money can be uprooted and a person can start to be more successful financially.
More than anything I’m looking to intertwine coaching skills throughout the course so the participants in the course learn to be able to coach each other as the course goes on. If you’re the sort of person who is earning above average wages (£36k in the UK), you have good savings for retirement and generally you can afford what you want then maybe you might not learn a lot from this course, but it could still give you the tools to coach other people to benefit from a good relationship with money like you have. It might turn things which you though were so obvious you didn’t think they needed saying into phrases you commonly use because they help so many people.
Session 1
Do what thou Wilt Shall be the whole of the Law
Big question… do you know a Thelemite who is good with money? I’m not great with money, are you? Does money flow in your life? Do you have a plan for retirement? Why are so many occultists I know verging on broke? Why was I verging on bankrupcy for a time? My religion is essentially that I am supposed to be some kind of sorcerer or something, so don’t I just summon money and be rich? I hope to look at solving some of these very basic things.
Disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser. I am looking at the psychology of making better decision with regards to money, spending and saving. Even if I mention a particular financial plan, investment opportunity or anything it is up to you to make the decision as to whether it is suitable for you. Sincerely, I recommend taking advice from a licensed certified financial adviser, but naturally that’s not available to everyone. If you can’t afford that, get to your local library use the computer or use a computer at home to get online and go to www.moneysavingexpert.com and read what financial journalist, Martin Lewis says about opportunities. But still remember, no journalist is unbiased. It is up to you to make the decision. Nothing is more Thelemic. In whom do we place our trust? In Martin Lewis? In God? In stock investments? You are required to see what is available and determine for yourself whether it is a good fit for you and your unique financial situation. One size does not fit all and there is no perfect investment. With the crashing of the economy as we went into Coronavirus lock-down my investments in my retirement just lost at least £1000 that I am currently aware of. They were correctly invested for someone of my age and my eggs were spread between different baskets, but no-one was predicting the closure and halt of most of western civilisation. The different financial advisors and investment bankers with my money were betting differently to how things turned out. There is no such thing as a safe bet. Also remember we live in a world that makes climbing the ladder a nightmare and so many opportunities are red-herrings designed to keep us in debt, keep us slaves to the commercial system and our financial overlords, so it’s important to scrutinise. A wonderful opportunity rarely ever is. I get bombarded with invest in canabis and invest in bitcoin every day and I’ve come to the conclusion that if youre being harassed with advertising then you’re probably coming to the party a little bit late.
Why did I write this?
This is an article that is the result of about 5 years of turning around my life financially. When I was in debt it crushed me. I felt like a failure and I couldn’t bare it. I had more going out than coming in. When I did spend money, I was spending it on things that didn’t make me happy. When I imagined the future I could only envision it getting worse. My money was going down, my costs were going up and my wages were not. I don’t want anyone to be in that position! It was a dark road and it got darker the further I went. So I want to help everyone around me. I want to spread some of this life changing wisdom.
Last week, I was thinking about how it would make a good series of articles, when suddenly someone said being “Christian” made you better with money. I fervently disagreed. Both on their definition of “Christian” and on whether Christianity really helped one handle money. Most of the people who had made it very rich were not good examples of Christians and hadn’t really followed Christian teaching to get there. I noticed the content of this article had already begun to form in my mind. I bounced a few interpretations of the Book of the Law off friends to see their responses and a skeleton began to form. I put it aside because it was just too much to write and I was busy. Then in a matter of days one the TV shows I watched featured the faustian pact and I thought about it as a parody for getting in so much debt that you couldn’t get out of it. I was brought back to think of this article again. The following night Lakshmi appeared to me in a dream. I shook it off. Later that day I met a friend and we talked about our plans with money and what was the best thing we could do to help other people help themselves… a conversation she initiated without my inspiration. I knew the universe was pushing me here, but while I’m sat in a park wearing a face mask and keeping social distance was not the time to start writing. That was yesterday. This morning I put on one of my secular podcasts, what did they decide to focus on today? The importance of managing money. Okay universe… okay… I will write it now.
My focus here is Thelemic morality, first and foremost. It is often from this morality at its core that we make the right decisions anyway and I hope for it to run through this course at its core. Then I hope to take you on the journey I went through. Going from being in debt to financially balancing and then from balancing to having an investment in retirement, and then to getting myself on the property ladder. Going from working for my money to making my money work for me. It was about taking advantage of the financial options available to me and learning about psychology that affects how we handle money. That’s really the focus here: the psychology and how we act psychologically is often a reflection on our core values. So let’s look first at some Thelemic core values.
What does the Book of the Law say about kings (rich men)?
The Book of the Law is the holy text of the religion Thelema. It is most commonly called Liber Al vel Legis to distinguish it from other books. It is claimed that the book was channelled from three entities Nuit, Hadit and Rahoorkhuit, through the Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass who spoke the words to Aleister Crowley, the prophet of the religion Thelema in 1904 over three days in April. If there is a text that tells people more about Thelema than any other, it is this book. But it’s kind of in code. It does not read like an Agatha Christie novel. You need interpret it.
There’s 101 interpretations of each verse of the BoL and while I push people to read the interpretations written by the prophet, sometimes they’re not helpful. Sometimes you get the most by looking at the most gross typical meanings of the words. Can you just look at the most basic meaning of the English words used to construct the text? I have watched people turn the words in to disembodied qabalistical concepts and then asked them “so what does it mean with regards to your life?” and they can’t come up with an answer. They have some symbols to ponder in their dreams / visionary states, but no principles to live by. So for the purpose of this article I want to ask you to consider the basic words.
This is by no means the only interpretation of this text and it might not even be the only most consistent with the writings of the prophet, but it is an interpretation based on simple English that the writer and speaker(s) of the Book knew you would be able to understand easily.
Fundamentally, the Book of the Law can be interpreted as dividing people of the new Aeon into two categories. The first lot it chooses the 2 words to describe them: kings and hermits. The second lot it calls: the wretched, the weak, slaves, low-men and beggars. First before we look at what the Book of the Law actually says about these people take some time to determine your meaning behind these words. (Note: while some would associate poverty with hermits, the Book of the Law describes them as kings in one passage. When the Book of the Law refers to queens it is easiest to understand “goddess” by this term and so I assume by term king, it means people on earth of both genders, so please don’t get hung on the idea kings only means male).
Question: What did the following terms mean in the 1900s to the layman? At the time the book was written what did these words mean specifically to a spiritual audience that was ready to receive the book? Has the view of any of these things changed since 1900s? If so, how?
- King,
- Beggar,
- Slave,
- Wretched,
- Weak,
- Hermit, and
- Low-Man
Let’s start to look at these things in context. The first reference to an indefinite “king” in the Book of the Law uses what I call the English vocative particle “O”. “Think not O King upon that lie that you must die…”. Some people mix this up with the interjection “Oh”, but it’s a different word. This “O” is an old English particle to indicate who you are speaking to. It’s a bit like writing “Dear” at the beginning of a letter, but used in speech instead. A Christian prayer often began “O Lord” addressing their words to God, whom the slaves of the Old Aeon religion call Lord, just like slaves in Ancient Greece would address their owner. In Alice in Wonderland Alice says “O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool?” She is speaking to the mouse. So the speaker of the Book of the Law is addressing those that read it as “king”. So we have this idea to be a king (or hermit) is to be a reader of the Book of the Law. Therefore on the assumption that someone claims to be a Thelemite actually reads the Book of the Law, then they could be considered to be a “king”.
The book continues to advise the reader calling them kings and the kings act often in triumphant ways over others who are called a variety of ways including slaves, low-men, beggars and the wretched and the weak. Someone who reads the Book of the Law is the person who will act. They are the performer of actions, not the recipient. Other people (slaves) are people who are acted upon. So a king is someone that takes action rather than waiting to be acted upon.
My dad (who was a Christians Against Poverty Counsellor) used to work for HSBC bank said he often had customers who ignored their financial situation and didn’t act. He noticed there was a huge tendency for people to bury their heads in the sand. They would act as though they couldn’t think about money. This path is not for the Thelemite, but it so easily calls to us because of the slave brain programming that we get from out banks that train our brains to act badly with money or to take no action at all. It is when we do this that the banks can most easily act upon us and we become their cash slave. This is not acting in accordance with our Will and so we will look at this later. This is our programming from the world we live in which is still trying to keep alive its slave aeon thinking. Our focus on this starts in session 2.
Question: What was one time you buried your head in the sand and didn’t face a financial problem? What was the effect of doing so? How did you resolve it or if you didn’t how might you resolve it later?
When we think about the meaning of the word king. A king is someone who has power to act. They have a realm over which they rule and they have subjects. Be careful however while you might view someone as your subject the book tells us that a king can dress up like a beggar so not everyone who appears to be of the latter group necessarily is of that group. This suggests that although we should own our own realm, but we should also respect the people around us as they too maybe kings concealed in some way or another with their own realm. We are expected to make money from the crop of people that are around us. This is not something wrong. Some of those people are beggars who won’t even use their own energy to act in the interest of their own freedom. They will just wait to be stepped on. Some are kings who want to be trampled on. However we are not to misuse the people around us.
Question: How does a company with employees farm people? A slave costs money to feed it and give it a place to sleep is it so different from an employee? How can you use other people to make yourself rich without preventing other actors from getting rich? Is it okay to step on someone to make yourself rich? Are there ways you don’t mind being passed over for a “higher” position? Are there ways you don’t mind being farmed for other people to make a profit? Are there ways you don’t mind being stepped on for someone to get a leg up?
Kings of the world are often associated with riches of various amounts and beggars are often associated with poverty in fact one line in the Book of the Law says “a beggar cannot hide his poverty” so the speakers of the Book of the Law indicated that they associated beggars with some kind of poverty. The two are often put side-by-side. On one hand we have kings and on the other we have beggars. So are we, as readers of the Book of the Law, the kings meant to be rich in some way or another? If so how do we make it so? This is something we are going to look at through the rest of these sessions.
Question: A person who is rich, but can’t buy what they really want. Are they really rich? Can you think of an example? A person who is poor, but wants for nothing, are they truly poor? Can you think of an example?
Sometimes “King” is put aside the word “slave” instead of beggar. “Kings of the earth shall be kings forever, the slaves shall serve.” When these words are put next to each other we notice something different. It might not be about the money in their pocket, maybe instead it’s about the power and freedom they experience. A king has power over his realm, and a slave does not even have power over himself. A king has freedom to choose what action he takes (some actions are limited like invading other lands that belong to other kings, but for the most part he is free to do what he likes). A slave rarely has any time to himself and can hardly choose how he spends his own energy. As Thelemites, we choose to be kings, some of us might enjoy dressing up as slaves from time to time, but in reality that is simply accessing the freedom we have as kings. This is what makes our beliefs unique.
Those who choose a religion where they live in perpetual service to a deity choose to be slaves. The more devoted they get, the more of their energy they devote to service. The Christian bible has no worries about this in its original text, but this gets omitted in modern translations. From the Book of Romans.
“But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” (modern translation is servants to righteousness, but that’s not what the original says.)
Christ even said “whoever wants to be first should be the slave of all.” These are the beliefs of the Old Aeon. They think, “you can be a slave of something bad or a slave of something good.” I don’t know about you, but I would love to the give them the opportunity to be a slave for my own benefit.
We, thelemites, however are better. We don’t choose between one slavehood and another. A slave unfortunately is waiting to be stepped on. The Book of the Law actually advises us to trample them. What if they were just sitting there waiting to be trampled and if we don’t do it someone else will so we won’t spare them that if it is their destiny as slaves.
We, Thelemites, choose to be kings. We choose to experience the riches of freedom. Unfortunately much of our banking system and commerical entities are still trying to enslave others. They are trying to “trample the wretched” so they put ideas in our heads that try to take our freedom away. For example thoughts like “your life is not ‘complete’ without a 32-inch flat screen”, “you can put it on credit card and worry about it later”, “you ‘NEED’ an upgrade of your gaming PC, the current one is ‘slowing down’”, “you won’t be beautiful unless you cover up your ‘blemishes’”, “you’re not really parting with money just tapping some plastic together” and “you ‘deserve’ this £50 moisturiser”. All these things are there to make you spend your money on things that might not necessarily be consistent with your Will. They are there to implant distractions in you.
You only have so much money. The more you spend on what other people tell you that you need, the less money you have to commit to things you need to achieve your Will. We need to release this programming on our minds. We need to take back our monarchy before we find ourselves living as the slaves and beggars of the New Aeon.
Sadly we can’t experience much freedom when we are broke. That’s why we must choose to use the means around us to free ourselves. Only when we are truly free can we free others. We must do this to fulfil the dream the gods (or speakers of the Book of the Law). The dream they had for us when they spoke the Book of the Law. They wrote the book to free us of the Old Aeon to tear it up.
Christians have Christians Against Poverty. They have system in place to help each other get out of debt and make better decision with money. They want slaves with slave mentality in control of wealth. Would you rather that the people in control of the wealth of the UK, be the Tories with their history of oppression, slavery and conformity or Thelemites with their fervency for freedom in themselves and those around them?
You owe it to yourself to free yourself, you owe it to your gods to free yourself and you owe it to the world around to free yourself from financial bondage, financial slave programming and unplanned circumstances. Free yourself from financial slavery and lift yourself up to be the king you were always meant to be.
What does the Book of the Law say about money?
What does the Book of the Law say about money? Here are a few comments from the Book of the Law that seem to look at concepts which could be related to money. So much of the Book of the Law is symbolic so naturally these could mean different things all together, but there is at least one interpretation for each one that could be about wealth.
- “Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in spendour & pride”
- “Let her be covered with jewels, and rich garments”
- “Eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam!”
- “Wear to me jewels!”
- “My altar is of open brass work, burn there on in gold and silver”
- “Money fear not”
- “There are four gates to one palace… the floor is made of gold and silver… let him stand on the floor.”
The first few verses I’ve pulled up here, I think, are about casting off our oppressive obsession with modesty that form so much of our Christian culture at the time the book was written. I’ll just explain here what I mean.
So when Thelema started it was a massive push back against the strange, unnatural morals of the Christian religion. The human being desired sex as part of its natural animal instinct to perpetuate the species. We evolved to enjoy sex as our bodies rewarded us for continuing the species. Christianity demonised it. It was rendered a sin except in very specific circumstances. We needed to control every aspect of sex until it finally came to that act and those urges had been so pacified they no longer functioned well. Christianity curtailed our freedom, turned us against ourselves and made us spend so much of our energy fighting who we are. We burnt through our energy until we did not have energy to commit to our own Will. Just so we could appear to be what a Christian calls “modest”. This is the not the path for the Thelemite. The Thelemite accepts and recognises their natural desires and is not bothered by how they appear to others to explore them.
Wealth is the same in the slave world. The state of having wealth essentially is fundamentally at its most basic level having “stored energy”, in a system where we are all fighting for the free energy of the system. That wealth was a stored energy with potential to produce food, drinks, shelter, medicine, education, entertainment, etc. You can buy all those things with wealth. It has that great potential and offers us safety and security. However what did Christianity do? It demonised it again. There is the famous story of the wealthy man getting into the kingdom of heaven which is interpreted differently it is said it like getting a camel through the eye of the needle. Which has a number of interpretations, one where the eye of the needle is a special small gate where the camel must be unloaded or where the word camel is a mistranslation of the word “gamel” actually means rope. Either way the Christian view is wealth is related to something needing to be stripped away. So for the sake of appearing modest we end up fighting against ourselves and removing our own security, our energy stored as money and our potential for freedom. All to appear “modest”. Often in parables it is the poor person who is venerated and the rich person who is chastised. This is possibly because Christianity was it’s own revolution, which has to refute a prior religious obsession with wealth. But once again we have a religion telling us to do what is not naturally good for us and restricting our freedoms.
What is Thelema’s reaction to all this? Well I turn once again to the Book of the Law with one of my favourite lines. “There is a veil: that veil is black. It is the veil of the modest woman; it is the veil of sorrow, & the pall of death: this is none of me. Tear down that lying spectre of the centuries: veil not your vices in virtuous words: these vices are my service; ye do well, & I will reward you here and hereafter.” So we have this idea of veiling something, a covering up. This is like hiding our nature. The veil is associated with modesty which is where we underestimate ourselves and try to cultivate a facade for others to see… a fake self… a lying spectre. The veil is us trying to appear consistent with an external morality such as modesty, which oppresses and limits our freedom. Let’s try to think about what we are trying to say to the world about ourselves.
Question: For each item of clothing, jewellery or make up that you have on. What does wearing such an item communicate to people around you? Do you have colourful socks and ties to make yourself look interesting? Do you have a revealing top that shows you in acceptance of and rejoicing in your sexuality? Does your corduroy jacket say “hey I’m an intellectual”? Do you wear a leather jacket to communicate your wealth or to associate yourself with a particular brand of music? What is every item of clothing trying to say about you? Work top of your head, to shoulders to chest, down the arms and then down your front and back, to your socks and shoes and bags / accessories.
How many people found themselves trying to say something to the world about themselves in what they were wearing? I do. Liber Had interprets many of these lines saying:
Let the Aspirant live the life of a strong and beautiful being, proud and exalted…
Are we dressing with pride? Are we afraid of what people might think of us? It is the Bohemian who dresses up unafraid of what other people think of us. It is the wealthy oppressor who worries about whether it will look “tacky” or “unmodest”. Now I’m not saying go out and dress more provocatively. No! I am telling you not to listen to what I say about how you should dress, but also stop listening to others too. Don’t listen to brands. Don’t try to keep up with the Jones’es. Don’t let your concerns about what other people would say about you dictate how you present to the world. In fact the world currently rejoices in people who present their most authentic selves. The world is currently celebrating more than ever before people to present their wealth, but especially people who had to earn it. Less so in people who have never known a financial struggle, but it does sometimes venerate them too.
The Book of the Law tells us to gather store. This could be interpreted as it telling us to have money. Don’t just spend it. Gather. I’m not sure about the store of women … let’s just glide over that problematic comment, which probably reflects Victorian misogynistic values. Instead let’s turn to Liber NV.
Let the Aspirant live the Life Beautiful and Pleasant. For this freedom hath he won. But let each act, especially of love, be devoted wholly to his true mistress, Nuit.
We are asked to use our freedom to paint a beautiful picture with our lives. Not live modestly like the slaves picking between one slavehood and another slavehood with modesty. Should I dress to please what my parents’ want or what my boss wants? Some people feel the Book of the Law says you need to dress slutty… isn’t that another master to be slave to, if you’re listening to a Thelemite saying slut it up? Are you not then choosing between being a slave to Christian modesty or a slave to Thelemite expectation of sexiness? Can’t people just dress how they want?
Question: What’s the most expensive for you to dress? What do those clothes/attire do better than other clothes? How do your clothes represent the wealth you have? How does your boss want you to dress? How do you parents want you to dress? How do your fellow Thelemites want you to dress? For any hobby you have, how do the other people whom you share the hobby with want you to dress?
The text tells us not to fear money. One of my favourite books about money is written by Ted and Brad Klontz and they talk about the story of a Christmas Carol. I really recommend this book. It is an easy short read and available as an audiobook.
The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge
This book looks briefly at two characters in the story of the Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge is very rich, but he has such a high regard for money and a fear for its loss that he doesn’t even pay to light and heat his house. As a result despite being rich, he experiences the cold and dark that the poor man experiences. Bob Cratchet on the other hand is so fearful of the limiting power of money that when it comes to buy Christmas dinner that he doesn’t even let the thought of money come in his mind because he is scared to face it. He overspends on a Turkey that is more food than that family needs and will result in waste and financial hardship to pay for it. There are some people who suggest that Timmy’s ailment was likely an acidic blood, something that there was a remedy for if Bob Cratchet hadn’t been spending it on other things.
Some people might like to buy things and not really care to check what their balance is. Not consider whether they can afford it. This is not being fearless of money. If you weren’t afraid of money then you wouldn’t be afraid of not being able to afford something. So this is something we need to cultivate. A fearless attitude to money means we are able to be conscious of money, but we can spend it with confidence when it is appropriate to do so and not being afraid to say I can’t afford that. It takes time to make this a good habit, but it is doable. We will consider this a lot more, as we work through the exercises.
Question: When was the last time you checked your balance? Can you remember how much it was (don’t say the amount)? How many times have you used your card since then? Can you guess what you have spent since then? Can you think of a time when you didn’t spend money because you were trying to be “good” with money and not spend? Did that money stay unspent for long? When you spent it did you spend it on something more consistent with your Will or less consistent with your Will?
The implements of worship are made of previous metals. Often when you attend OTO rites and read their scripts it becomes clear Crowley thought this was going to be huge and have more money than god. He often describes ritual implements that are made of solid gold, something they never were made of, but the intention was there. It is clear that this aeon is expected to go on for a few centuries and during that time he expected Thelemites to be full of riches enough we can afford solid golden ritual implements. The BoL says that the altar of of open brass work and something is meant to be burn on it in silver or gold. So this is the New Aeon we have the potential to take advantage of that especially while the rest of the world is mourning the old Aeon and toying with old sweetnesses. We have potential to be rich here.
Question: What would it take for the our ritual implements to be made of gold? If I remind you that Nuit says let my servants be few and secret does that change your previous answer? What can we do to make that happen?
What was Crowley like with money?
It is often said about Aleister Crowley, that he died “penniless” and he supposedly never had a lot of money to his own personal name. He died in a place called the Netherwood boarding house. A place that had 4 acres and a tennis court. During the war his asthma medication wasn’t available so he had partaken in heroin to surpress the pain as was totally normal for wealthy gentleman of the time. So I put to you that what Aleister Crowley experienced was a life of wealth and excess. He drank, he did drugs, he hired prostitutes, he rented and bought accomodation. Even if someone were able to show me Crowley had little or no money, I will always argue that the life he experienced was one of wealth.
Why then do people want to suggest he was penniless? It’s because there has always been a push to discredit Aleister Crowley. Often from individuals who are jealous of his magical success and who want followers to follow them rather than reading the incredible amount of Thelemic literature that formed the basis of much of the modern day occult practices.
So to be penniless is something that is considered discrediting. Money is often used by people as a status symbol of their success. The irony is that many spiritual people talk about money as if it is meaningless, but will then happily use money to discredit someone else, betraying that when it suits them money is meaningful and when their own failure is right in front of them they are so embarrassed they must pretend they never intended to have that anyway. But they can use it to judge someone else.
Question: Think of a time when you struggled with money. What words can you use to describe how you felt about money at the time? How did you feel about yourself? Can you think of people who are low paid and who might easily struggle with money who do not match the description you just gave? If you were to write a the number 10 on a piece of paper how is it different from a £10 note? Your bank balance is stored on a computer so how is it different to your friends mobile number stored on your phone?
Bills are bondage
Bills are bondage, silver is the slavers rod. So slavery never went away like many gods he renamed himself and continued to exist in a new form: debt. Go back 100 years and this would be more obvious. If you had debt that you could not pay you ended up incarcerated in a debtor’s prison, which was also called a “locked workhouse”. People in prison are required to work and paid very little to making paying off their debt difficult. While we have some insolvency laws to prevent this happening, bankrupcy only works for certain amounts of money and there are still approximately an estimated 8.1 million people forced work due to debt according to the International Labour Organisation in 2005 and the UN calls this “modern day slavery” in their Supplementary convention on the Abolition of Slavery. Even if you bankrupt yourself and write off your debts, your debtor has the right to go through your lives and take your property. It’s sickening. They essentially can leave you with nothing, but your bed and the tools your require to do your current job.
If you have debt you are required to work to pay it off. If you cannot get another job then you cannot leave your current job and you are essentially enslaved to remain working for your current employer and not receiving much of the current income, because some has to go to your creditor. If you have a lot of debt you can’t up and leave and go to a country with a very different currency rate as you might not have enough income to pay off your debts once the exchange rate is applied. A dear friend of mine was from the US and did an exchange to complete the last two years of her degree here in the UK, however she still had huge debts in the US. Eventually she stopped paying off her debts. She wasn’t in a jurisdiction where they could get to her, but she has not set foot on US soil since for fear she would be arrested for failure to pay.
Debt and bills are a form of bondage. They attempt to enslave us and stop us from achieving our potential.
Question: What has debt limited you from doing in the past? What would you do if you had no debt at the time? Is there anything you would want to do now, but which you don’t do because of debt or the potential of debt?
How does one measure wealth?
Every month you have income and outgoing. Sometimes you might not have one of them at all, but usually you have both. Often one is more than the other. If you have more incoming than outgoing you will accumulate wealth and/or pay off debt. If you have more outgoing than incoming you will lose wealth and/or increase debt. It is a bit like trying to lose weight. It is simply, but not always easy. Often it’s the same techniques used to achieve both financial growth and weightloss.
What is a the real definition of wealth? We really began to question what is wealth earlier when we looked at being rich of freedom rather than money. We looked at this when we considered the money that Aleister Crowley had where he didn’t experience poverty even if, as some people claim, he didn’t have much money to his name. So it is clear that wealth is definitely a measure of more than pounds or dollars.
Do we measure wealth by the life experiences a person has? If John has a Ford Focus and Maria has a bicycle. Is John richer? What if I told you
John’s Will was to buy Jaguar and Maria’s Will was to do the Tour de France. Is John richer still?
We are today focusing on wealth, but in the context of us living a life we are happy with. What if we measured wealth in terms of how many months you could survive on you current outgoing without anymore income?
Question: If there was one thing in your life that you loved going more than anything else… one thing that gave you an autistic focus… one thing that made you feel calm and mostly happy. What would it be? Are you rich enough to do it? If you were doing it how many month could you survive without income?
Living off the grid
Money is power… power corrupts. Money is playing a game with a market and politics which doesn’t care for wellbeing and overall happiness. Money destroys lives. It’s no wonder people want to give up and live of the grid, where they don’t need to deal with money.
This works for a time, but there are some dangers involved. If you’re living totally off the grid you need to sustain your need of food and water from the land. This means farming, possibly keeping animals, keeping food for the animals, having enough food you can survive through winter when your crops stop serving and preventing rot, mice etc from eating your store. This means purifying water and filtering it without buying filters.
Council tax. Sooner or later someone will realise you are there and try to either charge you rent or council tax. You may need to move on and find somewhere else. (Don’t for get to take your crops with you).
You spot a man being a dick and you stand up to him, oh shit he is a police office and arrests you for disturbing the peace. You can pay for a lawyer who will present your side of the story in a way that gets you off and gets the police officer reprimanded for doing a shitty job and pay for your hearing or you say, I can’t afford a lawyer or the hearing fee I will just plead guilty and be enslaved with community service work. Money is needed to buy innocence.
I used to work for the Court Service when magistrates hearing fees were introduced. I once went into the Mags Court and I heard a lawyer telling another lawyer. “I got this client… bit of a numpty… but innocent… but can’t afford to be innocent… he’s sat there phoning family to ask to borrow the hearing fees” and the other lawyer says “if I had a pound for every time that happens…”
At some point you might get sick. You go to a GP and the GP says here is your diagnosis take this prescription to the chemist and what’s the first question the chemist asks you when you hand them a prescription? “Do you pay for your prescriptions?” You see you need to part of a special class of people in order for your to get free prescriptions and if you don’t fit in the group you have to pay. Only a small amount, but you still need to pay it’s not free.
Also eventually you might find your body getting old. You can’t work the earth like you could do. How do you retire if you don’t have the money to keep food coming in?
What if you’re not exactly completely of the grid, but you’re not working? Hands up anyone who ever accepted a benefit at some point? I did. Not easy living on a benefit. It’s the Conservative policy to give people the absolute minimum they can live on, thinking this will “encourage” them to fund themselves. Like they think people are so lazy they need to be running on fumes to be motivated to get a job.
What makes it worse… they have been reducing the funding for social welfare, introducing delays and more in the name of austerity. This means people who use social welfare get less and less and less and they’re already at breaking point. So social welfare is not something you can rely on.
I used to work for an Oxfam bookshop. We used to have an old lady in there, who had a pension with a company called BHS. It was the only pension she had. Most her adult life, she had been taken care of by a man she never married. I put two and two together and realised she was the saucy mistress. She didn’t work for a lot of her life and didn’t pay national insurance, when she did work. She had jet setted and sat with Sheikhs, rich Americans and one member of what might have been a South American drug cartel. Her life was like a Mills and Boon novel, that or she read them a lot and had a vivid imagination. The company, BHS went bust and it turned out they had borrowed money from their staff’s pension budget to try and keep themselves afloat. The pensions were gone. A lot of money was missing and many people on certain schemes had their money stopped while people investigated what had happened. It wasn’t protected or honoured by the government at the time she stopped getting her payments. She switched onto a state pension which didn’t come through for a month and the government kept saying she might not get the state pension because she hadn’t paid national insurance. In fact it wasn’t under 2 years later that the government actually paid money in to help the BHS schemes and not until 5 years later in 2020 when the CEO NHS was required to pay a few million to make sure it was all sorted. But for a month she had no income at all. She had no money in savings and rent was due. We started all buying lunch and doing lunch shares in the Oxfam shop, but she was only in 3 times a week. Whenever there was something passed it’s “best before” date, one of us would make a 5p donation and give it to her. She would refuse twice, then we would say make it up to us when your pension gets sorted out and she would accept. Crisps, chocolate, crackers. Soon her pension came in. £60 a week, she said, it wasn’t even enough to pay her rent. Before she had a chance to spend it she went into hospital with complications because she had been trying to live on salad and did have enough salt in her diet. She was released from hospital, rested at home for a week… and then died. We don’t know exactly what happened, but it was clear that trying to run on fumes and the stress of money difficulties had most likely killed her. She was one of many people in the UK who died of poverty that week under austerity clauses. She had in her will that she wanted her books to go to the book shop that we worked in together and I was told by our David that when he went to collect the books there was a carrier bag labelled “Chocolate for Oxfam Team” where she had spend a whole £10 on biscuits and a few chocolates which she clearly had intended to bring in, when she was feeling better and when an old lady buys chocolate biscuits she knows what she is doing that bag was overflowing! Fig rolls, digestives, chocolate digestives, borbons, Nice biscuits, Rich Tea, Shortbread, Shortbread dipped in chocolate, chocolate fingers, cream crackers, jammie dodgers, you name it! There was even the wrappings of a small packet of hobknobs which we think David might have eaten before the carrier bag made it back to Oxfam. Unfortunately she died before she could spend her state pension, she died before the government helped add money to the pension scheme and she died before the Court ordered the CEO to pay back in the money he had taken. It was too little too late. There are three morals of this story:
- Don’t rely on state benefit or state pension.
- Money doesn’t care how authentic you are. It does no care how interesting you are. It doesn’t care how generous you are with your time or resources, if you don’t respect it, if you don’t plan for eventualities, it will end you!
- Trust old ladies with buying chocolate biscuits, they can get a bargain.
Question: You’re living off the grid. How do you go about building a full and complete bathroom out of stuff you might find in a forest?
Conclusion of Session 1
Okay this is is the end of session 1. We have set the playing field. We have looked at what it means to be good with money in general. That often its not about the amount you have, but how it fits with the lifestyle you have and the freedom it gives you. We looked at the importance of money and how under the current climate you just can’t live without it, not without extreme difficulty.
In future sessions we are going to try and breakdown the slave programming that we all have in us. Things like paying using contactless and cards so its very easy to forget how much you’re spending and slaves don’t need to know the consequences of their actions. They just do what they’ve been told to do, so often that gets us into slave mindsets. It’s only kings who have advisors standing around them telling them the consequences. Giving them all the advice they need to make informed decisions. The next session is pretty intense because we are looking very closely at your brain and breaking its patterns. The difficulty is many of those patterns are shackles that have been on us for so long we have almost begun to think of them as part of us like our hair and nails and it takes a lot of effort to break them. Often without them we don’t recognise ourselves. So it can be emotional.
Through this course it is really important to set accountancy partners. This is a person where you have to confess what you have done wrong or forgotten to do and they need to do it to you. This is the person who is happy to phone you and say have you done what you said you were going to do. A person who is happy to help you stay on track. If there is someone in the course that you don’t know well see if they can swap some kind of communication method and be your accountancy partner. You can swap social media, telegram, whatsapp, phone number or email. If you can find someone like this agree when you’re next going to contact them. Usually 2 days after the first session is the best. It’s usually at that point when everyone says “shit I wanted to do that but I didn’t get round to it”, but it’s not too late there’s still 5 days or whatever to go before the next session.
Homework: the best thing you can do this week is to avoid the fear of money, by looking at your balance every day and every time you use your card try and estimate what your new balance is. If you’re not sure anymore go look it up. This can be done with an app on your phone with most banks. If you have a phone that can handle apps but you don’t have it on your phone then install the app. Otherwise login on a computer or at an ATM.
Second either summon a spirit that helps people with money or make a servitor. Perform a summoning ritual and ask the spirit to help you change your mindset in relation to your money for the better. Note down the spirits response. This is important because we are going to use this spirit later.
How does one make a servitor. Write down your imagined named for the spirit. Mine was “FISCAL” because it means about money and ended in “AL” which so many angel names end in. Then you jumble up all the letters and make a symbol out of the letters and simplify, simplify, simplify. Then create a magic circle by drawing an imaginary circle or sphere around your working space, you can bring in the 4 elements by calls or pentagram, this working is mostly microcosmic so an Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram as recorded in Liber O vel Manus is perfect for this, especially using invoking pentagrams. Do something to excite the energy in the circle even more, spin it faster, interweave it with itself. Then you can draw the symbols you made and say something like “In the name of all I am, by the powers of IAO, come worth (FISCAL or whatever your spirit is called). I charge you to keep me on track with the changes I have committed myself to, until such a time as I inform you I no longer wish to commit to these changes.
Having this spirit on board helping you will make some of the future exercises easier because the spirit is going to accompany you as you sort of astral journey into your past and let me tell you having a spirit who lives in astral reality it is much easier than trying to just do it on your own. So this is quite important and there won’t be a lot of time to do it next week. If you try to put this off till later than the next couple of days most people will not do it at all. It becomes “oh that… man… I have to do that.” mentality which is slave mentality rather than “yeah I’m going to take charge of my finances!” which is king mentality.
So set your first accountancy partner catch up call for about 2 days time whatever works for you, but around then is usually the best time and say as follows:
- Have you checked your balance every day since we saw Hadron talking shit at us?
- Have you got round to summoning your spiritual financial helper?
No to both of them? Okay how about you do it now? You can’t? When do you want to do it, your majesty? (remember you’re talking to a king). If someone regularly says to you “no I didn’t do it” they might need a little more help. This is where a lot of guys start mansplaining to the other person like the other person is a slave. Don’t take over. Your job is to ask questions not tell, remember there’s a king there. The best thing you can do here is ask them leading questions, but let them led the conversation. Ask them “Does, your royal highness, no why you haven’t done the things you wanted to do with all the freedom that you have?” And just sit and listen to them. Do you know active listening techniques? We will cover them next week. Remember kings have advisors and not people who command them and a lot of kings behead their advisors when they get advice that they don’t want to hear. So questions is the best way to be. Remember the person you’re talking to knows their own life far better than you do and certainly knows their own mind far better than you do. The key to being a good accountancy partner is two things 1 question, 2 listen. Often people question things, but don’t listen to their partner who clearly wants the session to end. Don’t be a bad partner, but hey you will probably only have 2-3 quick sessions this week so it can’t go too wrong, can it?
Question: What did we learn in this session?
Section 1
Money Scripts
Things you tell yourself about money that make you poor. I always run out of money some point in the month, so if I want something I should buy it at the beginning of the month before I run out of money. Why do you think I run out of money? What things do you tell yourself about money? What does it mean to be rich? What does it mean to be poor? When and in what situation should money be spent and when should it not be spent?
Keeping the box of something that’s going to majorly devalue. Less space. Not heating ones home. Lying on plastic sheets over the couch. Hoarding. (More to come)
Love is the Law, Love under Will