Keep Your Mind on Your Money and Your Money on Your Mind.

On the 28th, RO Posted a post titled "Money: Getting it out of the Way". I have been meaning to post a response to that post for a while now, but haven't had the chance.

I agree with almost everything that RO suggests people do in that post. The thing that I wanted to respond to was the title itself. "Money: Getting it Out of the Way".  Folks I am here to tell you that you NEVER get money out of the way. That shouldnt even be the goal. The goal should be to have your money managed and working for you without it taking over your life. That requires eternal vigilance. It never gets out of the way. 

Now after talking with RO on the phone it was clear that he meant getting debt and crushing money problems out of the way, but thats not quite how it reads. Unfortunately, the way it reads is exactly how a great many people involved in any kind of money magic want their money magic to work. They want the whole issue out of the way and never have to think about it again. This scanario takes two main forms:

1. Winning the Lottery: Two of the first ten people in the course I asked to pick goals to work towards said their goal was to win the Lottery and never worry about money again. I have written about why this is a bad idea many times and it STILL gets turned in as homework. In fact I have to deal with the request for people to win the Lottery so often that I have the following saved amongst my form e-mails that I send out:

Sorcery can shift probability in your favor, and open opportunities where there were none, but some probabilities are just to long on the odds to be managed.


Just to give you an idea, while it varies state to state, on average your chance of winning the big pot in a Lottery is one in 18 million. Your chance of being struck by Lightning is one in 2,650,000. About 45 times more likely than you winning the lottery. If you drive 10 miles to buy a lottery ticket, its about 30 times more likely for you to die in a car accident on the way than it is for you to win the Lottery.


Now, magic does indeed make your probability of winning greater than the norm, as it does for everyone else using magick to win the lottery. Perhaps it reduces your chance from one in 18 million to one in 9 million or even one in 1 million. Not great odds. 


Of course since so many people would like to use magick to win the lottery, its pretty safe to assume that there are thousands of people aiming their magic at any given lotterypot. Most of this magic cancels each other out. 


Now here is the greatest rub. Lets say you win! 75% of people that win the lottery end up flat broke just seven years later. This is because they never took the time to understand money or how it works. If they did, they wouldn't have pinned their hopes and dreams on willing lottery.


2. Patron/Benefactor: A number of occultists have pined for the days of rich benefactors and patrons of the arts that would supply them with enough money to carry on their magic without the burden of earning a living.

The problem here is that the life they envisioned never really existed for anyone. Yes, there were people with rich benefactors. There still are. The problem is that the effort it takes to keep these benefactors is often more stressful than a regular job. One of my favorite books that all would-be-Sorcerers should read is Baltasar Gracian's "Art of Worldly Wisdom". Gracian was a Jesuit, but this book is filled with pithy Machiavellian tidbits aimed at keeping yourself in the company of the powerful and wealthy.

A great deal of care and conniving is often required when dealing with a patron. Sometimes the price is the integrity of your work. There are a lot of scholars who feel that the stories about Hoodoo initiations in New Orleans that fill the last few pages of Zor Neal Hurston's Mules and Men were fiction written primarily to titillate her rich white benefactor in New York who was essentially paying her to travel and report back with wild stories about what savage activities black people got up to down South. I myself have seen how the son of an important Patron can get recognized as a Tulku in exchange for some land in Mexico. Do you think Dee and Kelley wanted to travel around central Europe during the most of the 1580's putting on hokey alchemical experiments trying to get backing for their work? Nah

My advice is simple: Get your shit together and take care of business. How you do that is a subject for other posts. The thing that I want you to take home is that once you get your shit together, you need to keep your shit together and take care of business. At no point will it be ok to not keep your shit together and take care of business.  There are no exceptions.

Rich people may not have the stress of debt, but they have to tend their wealth throughout their life. Rich people who do not keep track of their finances get it all taken away from them. Think that Leonard Cohen wanted to be touring at 76 years of age? Nah, his manager ripped him off cuz he did not have his shit together and did not take care of business. Think Annie Leibovitz wanted to put up the rights to her photos as collateral for a loan? Of course not. MC Hammer? Nicholas Cage? Ed Mc Mann? Don Johnson? The list of rich and famous who lost or nearly lost everything is long and all of them have one thing in common. Can you guess what it is? Thats right. They didn't keep their shit together and take care of business.

I can almost hear some of you whining internally as you read this: "But Jason, I am a magician, an artist, a mystic. I have no interest in finance and economics. I just want it to be out of the way!". I know some of you are thinking this because these exact words were spoken to me after a class in financial magic. I will tell you what I told that young man. "To bad. Your a fucking adult. Time to nut-up and handle your business. I am not telling you to become Ben Bernanke. Just figure out how to best make money for yourself and keep your head above water."

Or as Snoop Dogg so wisely does "Keep my on my money and my money on my mind".





Speaking of Snoop. This is the greatest cover of any song ever.