How you manifest Wealth

In my business coaching practice, one of the topics that inevitably comes up is wealth and money. As I tell my clients its not enough to want money as an end goal, if you don't know what you'll do with it. You have to understand how you'll use money and how it will benefit you before you can really acquire it. That's the first step toward manifesting wealth. You recognize what allows you to attract wealth into your life and then you establish how you will use that given medium to attain and sustain that wealth.

Money is just one medium for acquiring wealth. But any medium you are going to use to manifest wealth can never be an end goal in and of itself. More importantly you clearly have to define what you will do with the wealth you attain. Wealth is movement. Just attaining it doesn't mean much if you aren't sure how you'll apply it to your life. In fact not knowing how you'll apply it will likely cause you to lose it because its an indication that you aren't ready for the wealth.

Manifesting wealth is a result of a process where you define what wealth is, as well as the means you'll use to get it, and what you'll do with it once you have it. Manifesting wealth is a continuous process by virtue of the fact that you are continually manifesting it and moving it in your life in order to create more. This can be a bit intimidating if you aren't sure how to continue to move wealth. This is one reason I recommend learning about finances. It teaches you a lot about what you consider to be wealth and helps you learn how to move with it, as well as how to change the direction of movement (i.e. spending).

If you want to manifest wealth, be prepared for it. It's only when you are ready for it, that you should seek to acquire it.

How do you define wealth?

One of the questions I'm asking and answering as I start work on the wealth magic book is how I define wealth. Do I define it as money? The answer is yes and no. I think money is an essential characteristic of wealth, but doesn't solely represent wealth. Actually I'd argue that money can represent wealth, but it can also represent poverty and a whole host of other meanings. Money as a symbol is...quite diverse in meaning.

Wealth, on the other hand, isn't necessarily so diverse, but certainly it can be illusive. What is wealth? What does it really mean to be wealthy? The definition of wealth is something that seems to tease people. And what one person defines as wealth another person disagrees with...not that it really matters. The real question is: Can I embody my definition of wealth in a way that is maintainable?

Speaking from experience, its taken me a while to embody wealth in my life, and maintain it. I'm still learning how to do it, although I seem to be getting better at it each day. Persistence is another ingredient of wealth. You have to be persistent and focused on it, in order to attain it. That's actually true of anything you want in life. If you really want it, you'll find a way (maybe even an A).

Magic is one means toward that end, and when you combine multiple means (like creating multiple income streams) it makes it much easier to achieve the desired result. My own quest toward wealth has focused on using multiple means to that end, and its a continual project, one I enjoy thoroughly. If you don't enjoy it, I advise not seeking it.

My definition of wealth is simple. I love to live by my own rules. Life on my terms is wealth. This isn't to say I'm in control of everything, but rather that I am doing what I love to do, at my leisure, and maintaining and improving it, while also being able to enjoy everything that brings pleasure to me, and allows me to continue to work on the projects I value most. That's my definition of wealth.

What's yours?

The key to wealth magic

The key to wealth magic is this: Its less about using magic, and a lot more about learning how to manage money, develop and strengthen relationships, and understand that money isn't the only currency you have access to. Now let me unpack that statement for you. I noticed there were a couple other posts about wealth magic recently, and as someone who's started my own business and has managed to keep it running for just over two years, as well as helping to run a small occult press (Immanion Press), I thought I'd offer my own perspectives on wealth magic.

Money Management: I've always been good at managing money for the short term, but I first really learned about managing money for long term life plans when I did a year of work with the element of Earth. Not surprisingly, money became a major theme of that year. The first lesson I learned about money management is that your attitude and beliefs about money affect your spending choices and how you approach money in general. If you have a negative attitude about money you'll be less likely to actually look at your financial situation and start managing it.

I ended up doing a fair amount of internal work with my beliefs about money that year and I've continued to do so since then. The result has been an increased awareness of how to manage my money for the long term, as well as a willingness to discuss financial issues with my family and with financial advisers.

Alongside with changing my internal beliefs, I also developed tracking tools that I used to stay on top of what I'm spending my money on as well as what I can save. It gives me an accurate picture of what my spending habits are, which can be eye-opening to say the least. If you want to learn more about money management, I highly recommend reading the Get Rich Slowly blog.

Social Capital: Money isn't the only form of capital in wealth magic. Social capital can sometimes go a lot further than monetary capital. As a business owner one of the skills I've had to learn is how to build relationships with a wide variety of people. In fact, people won't do business with you unless they either really need your product or service and can't find it anywhere else (rare that this happens), or what happens more often...if someone refers that person to you, because s/he trusts you to take care of that person. People do business with people they trust...so who trusts you?

Trust is hard to earn and easily lost, and not surprisingly you really have to get involved in a community and get to know people to truly be accepted and get business from those people. And even if you're not a business owner, this concept about relationship building still applies. Getting to know people really involves learning what those people need and then helping them out, regardless of what pay off you will or won't get. And guess what? If you get involved in a community and work to build relationships and are consistent in fulfilling your promises to that community, then that community will look out for you. I saw this in action at a chamber of commerce meeting where a member generously offered to donate one of his kidney's to another member's wife who needed the kidney. They had the same blood type...more importantly the member who offered to donate the kidney did so because he wanted to help his friend. You can't buy that kind of help...not with money anyway.

Go to your local chamber of commerce meeting and you'll see social capital at work...and let me tell you that social capital is a lot more powerful than any wealth magic spell.

Those are the keys to wealth magic: Financial management and social capital.

The Wealth Altar

Recently, Manifesting Prosperity: Wealth Magic Anthology, which I edited was released. Vince Stevens, one of the contributors, and I, presented a workshop at Pantheacon about wealth magic based off the different articles we wrote for the anthology. The workshop went well and I got a lot of ideas off of it myself, which I've already put to good use. And in one case, my wealth altar, I got a good reminder of the need to tend that particular shrine. When I got from Pantheacon, I looked at my shrine and realized it needed some cleaning. I have my altar placed on top of a file cabinet that my wife and I use to keep track of our paperwork. The shrine was dusty, had paper all over it, and wasn't exactly a model of what wealth meant to me. Also one of the paintings I use for wealth work wasn't placed over the shrine, which is where it really needs to be.

So over this last half week I started cleaning up the wealth magic altar. I got all the papers cleared off the top of the file cabinet, got the painting put into it's proper place over the altar, and put appropriate ritual items on the altar, such as my checkbook. On Saturday my wife and I cleaned out the cabinet and went through all the paperwork, getting rid of what we didn't need and filing everything else in the apropriate places.

When all of that was finished, I did a ritual to honor the wealth entity I'd created. And I decided every Thursday would involve some kind of ritual to said entity to show it appreciation of the wealth we do have.

Not too surprisingly, after all this effort, the energy in our home felt cleaner. But I also noticed how much more easily aspects of wealth seemed to flow tomorrow me. It shows me, once again, just how important it is to make a consistent effort when it comes to certain types of manifestations. Making time to really acknowledge the wealth I have always seems to call out for more wealth to come.