What is Success in Wealth Magic?

Recently Stephanie Connolly Reisner made a post about success and magic. It was and excellent read and she made a point which I think is important: Having you're act together is an essential part of being successful. She has definite ideas of what success means and she is manifesting that success in her life (When it comes to Wealth Magic, IMO that is what tells you that you are successful). she's aiming for what she wants to manifest and she's not letting anything stop her. I respect that, a lot, because I think too many people have been taught to aim low and consequently get far too comfortable with circumstances that aren't conducive to success. They rationalize away these circumstances, but settle for less than what they could do, if they just pushed themselves to aim higher. From my own experiences of being poor and from knowing other people in such circumstances, I can say that being poor sucks and while you can still enjoy life, there's something to be said for having your life be more stable, because it allows you to have more of the experiences that make life worth living. Jason makes the point that while money isn't the main point of doing magic, having stability in your finances can be quite helpful in improving your quality of life and having time to do what you want to do. Again, I agree with what he's mentioned.

In Manifesting Wealth, I admit that I occasionally wondered if I should really be writing a book on wealth magic, because my financial circumstances aren't the best (though they are continually getting better each year). However, I decided to write the book because while money is a significant topic in the book so is health, love, career, and business, and when I look at my life, I feel that as I'm continuing to get my act together I am also continuing to manifest the physical circumstances that support the life I choose to live. I also wrote it because I've always believed in living life on my terms instead of someone else's and I think that attitude is essential toward really achieving whatever success is to you. So when I think about success in wealth magic, I think there are some foundational components: Finance, Love, Health, doing what you love, and living life by your rules (Those are my standards, so feel free to come up with your own if you don't agree with mine).

Finance: Finance is knowing how to budget, how balance your checkbook, how to pay your bills, and how to plan for your future. It's also knowing what you want to do with the money you've got. In my experience, a lot of people don't seem to know what they want to use money for. They pay bills and live paycheck to paycheck, but they don't have a plan for it beyond that. Or perhaps they know they want to be out of debt, but after that? My plan does involve having as little debt as possible (I think most people, even ones with their acts together, have some debt), but it also involves retirement accounts, emergency savings, and knowing what's important enough for me to justify spending money on (For example I can tell you that buying  board or video game for me is an investment as opposed to a cost, because of the amount of time and enjoyment I get from aforementioned purchase).

Love: A stable relationship (or relationships if that's your preference) is a must. A stable relationship, imo, involves lots of communication between you and your SO. And the communication needs to happen in regards to everything that is shared in your relationship. You have to be able to communicate about finances, sex, spirituality, what you want to do for fun, etc., because if you don't communicate (or if you fight all the time) than you don't have a stable foundation. A stable relationship makes life much easier for everyone and makes it possible to do a lot of things that would be harder to do otherwise. From my own experience, I can say that being in a stable relationship has done a lot to help me in every other area of my life.

Health:  You can have lots of money, but if you don't have health that money will go right back into keeping you alive. Health means eating right, eating the right portions, exercising, meditating, and otherwise taking care of yourself physically and mentally. I've found that since I started exercising regularly again that I'm much happier and more focused. Changing my eating habits has also helped immensely. Your health, imo, is your first source of wealth and the one you have to take care of the most, because the older you get, the more you feel the changes. I know, for example, that how I felt ten years ago is different than how I feel now and even though I do exercise regularly, I can still tell the difference.

Doing what you love: Doing what you love means you are following your calling, in some capacity or another. It might not be your full time career (though hopefully you like that) but you should still be pursuing what you love to do in some fashion. I'll admit that in my case, I greatly prefer not to work for other people and find that doing what I love necessitates being self-employed. Being self-employed makes me happy because I can work with who I want, in the capacity I want. It's a lot of work and effort, but if you keep at it, the results will incrementally improve. I'll admit having someone who believes in you when you do the self-employed route makes it much easier.

Living Life by Your Own Rules: Living life by your own rules is similar to doing what you love, but is distinct in that you recognize what's really important to you and you live it. You live life on your terms and you don't compromise unless that compromise is something you can accept and live with because it still honors you living life by your rules (and yes this is possible).

Those are my standards of success and while I am not completely satisfied with a couple of those areas, I am consistently working toward them and I'm seeing results. That's what matters, imo. If you know what you want and don't have it, keep working toward it. Develop a plan, do some magic and keep implementing until you get it. Doing that will bring you success in wealth magic and your life.

Money and its relationship to value and experience

I recently read a post on pagansquare where the author discussed whether or not it was ethical to charge money for magical services. He didn't really seem to take one side or another in his post and his response to my comment was equally muddled, but it did get me thinking about barter vs money. As readers of this blog know I'm writing a book on wealth magic and as such I've been doing a lot of work and thinking around money as one component of wealth. I've also done a lot of thinking about bartering, especially because, in one of my businesses, I've engaged in bartering. Here's what I've discovered about bartering: You rarely get the value you were hoping to get from the barter. I certainly haven't in my bartering situations and its because bartering isn't attached to a fixed value in the way that money is. So its much easier to be disappointed with bartering and its why I no longer barter for services or products.

Here's the magic behind money: With money you have a fixed, artificial value attached to a service or product. I say artificial because the truth is that the money you pay for anything is actually the smallest value, if the service or product is done right, but what makes money effective is that value is established to a number and that number provides reassurance on both sides of the transaction that value is being exchanged. But like I said if its done right the money paid is the least value you get from a service or product. What a service or product should do is provide an experience where the value easily exceeds the amount of money you've paid. For example when I buy a video game I'm not just buying the software. I'm also buying the enjoyment I get from the game, the hours I spend playing it and the experiences I have. As such the money I pay is a small price, if I enjoy the game. Personally I feel cheated if I haven't replayed a game at least twice before returning it...that's the least amount of value I want to get for a given game.

In my businesses, which are more service oriented, I need to continually provide value that shows my clients why investing money is worth their while. If I can't clearly establish the value of what I offer continually they'll eventually move on. So with the Process of Magic class for example, you don't just get 24 lessons, or a free pdf, but a chance to talk with via a teleconference every other month, plus a dedicated forum to interact with me and the other students. And you better believe that I make it a point to respond to emails regularly when I receive them. I want my students to feel acknowledged, taken care of and appreciated. I want to give them real value because I know that the price of the class should be the furthest thing from their mind if I'm doing it right.

See how this relates to wealth magic? If you want to do wealth magic for your business then one of the first factors you need to consider is how much wealth (value) you are bringing into the lives of your clients. After all, if you want them to bring wealth into your life, you need to be willing to give wealth (value) that justifies their choice to spend money on you. And part of giving that value involves establishing a relationship with your client where s/he feels valued and acknowledged. To do that you've got to think of ways to provide a return on investment that exceeds the artificial value of what you've been paid. You need to give in order to get. Money is the lowest value of what you get and give, but it sets up the initial value and challenges you to improve on it.

A Wealth Magic Entity Experiment

In February I decided to create a wealth magic entity, specifically a sales magic entity. I was feeling frustrated with my lack of sales for my day business and I felt that what I needed was some help getting those sales. I realized I was too close to the situation so I created the sales entity (picture above) in order to help me improve my sales. The entity was supposed to help me find my ideal prospects and then help me close sales. I fueled him initially with the stress, frustration, and anger I was feeling about not having enough sales, and then tied it also to any sales activities I did. I finished the creation of him at the end of February. I have since done a variety of sales activities including cold calling, offering classes, and offering free coaching sessions. It's now mid April and since the creation of this entity there has been more activity in my business. From mid March to Mid April I've seen a rise in prospects with me having meetings with 3-5 new prospects each week. These prospects have come from classes I've offered, but have also been referrals and in one case even a person who wanted to connect via Linkedin. The prospects ranged from being solopreneurs to having employees, and some of them are very successful while others are struggling. All of them have needed an outside consultant. Thus far I've had one yes and quite a few no's (which often means not right now).

I'm not ready to rule out that this entity is a success because if you read enough sales books one of the realizations you quickly have is that you hear no quite a lot. In fact, one of my favorite sales books is titled Go for No, which posits that you will hear no a lot more often than you will hear yes. Also this entity has only been in existence for a short while and I recognize that all of my activity is teaching it how it can help me. However, I also see the need to tweak the entity in order to improve its performance. I'm going to focus on improving its prospect finding.

When you create an entity like this one, you can learn a lot from its early performance and use that as an indicator of what to work on or help it improve.  If you expect the entity to be perfect from the get go, you will be disappointed. There is always room for improvement, and if you recognize this, then you can examine the initial actions of the entity and refine what it does so that it produces better results. So that's what I'll do, based off what I've learned so far. It works, but it needs improvement.

A couple examples of Wealth Magic in my life

I ask each week for questions people have about magic. I received two questions this week, but they are both good ones. Here's the first one: Since you're working on a new book on the subject of Wealth Magic, do you have any examples of works of wealth magic you've done in the past that have returned positive results?

I'm going to share two examples, both of which will appear in the forthcoming book. The first example is a recent working I participated in. I was asked to create a sigil for a sigil game on a Facebook group. I actually created five sigils and linked them together. The people involved in the experiment agreed to charge and fire the sigils in their own unique way. I chose to let them do the charging, though I also saved the original sigils to do a firing of my own. The actual sigil game got extended an extra month which told me the sigils were already working, because one of my desires was for the game to be extended long enough to get enough people to charge it and fire the sigils.

The sigils were designed to provide benefits to the people charging and firing them, most notably in areas of their lives where they needed changes in identity or needed to do internal work. And for me the focus of the sigils was on bringing some wealth to my life in terms of income and in providing information that would suggest a way to help me grow my business more effectively than had occurred to date. There was also one other purpose, which I'm not going to reveal at this time, but I'll know in the near future if matters have turned in my favor and I'll share it then. I fired the sigils a couple weeks ago.

People who participated in the game reported working on aspects of their identity where they needed to work on them, and noted that they felt a push to change those aspects of themselves. On my end, several speaking gigs were lined up, which turned into some extra work, but also provided me the information I needed to tweak my business model. I have a much better idea of my target clientele as a result and I'm already starting to network at meetings which will connect me to those people.

The second example involves the creation of a series of drawings that have been used to evoke planetary energy into my life for the purposes of wealth. I worked with the planetary energies and received a personalized symbol for each planet. I then created drawings for each symbol and used the drawings to evoke the energy of the planets. I actually switch the drawings on different days, to create a specific current of planetary energy for a day or a period of time that influences the business activities I'm doing. I've noticed that the character of a given day and the interactions I have seem to be impacted by the switching of one planetary energy for another. It's an on-going experiment. Those are a couple examples, but there's more in the book and you can also find an example of two in Manifesting Prosperity.

The second question was: What are the practical differences between NLP, Scientology, and Magick?

I can't speak in regards to Scientology, having never read or gotten into that particular system ( and with no desire to either). As for practical differences between NLP and magic...What I understand of NLP indicates to me a system that is used to alter behavior in people, specifically to get other people to alter their behavior as a result of NLP techniques you use to induce specific changes. A lot of it is linguistic and body language based, with some psychology applied. Magic, while it can focus on behavioral change, also involves working with spirits and other forces to induce practical changes in a person and his/her environment. I see magic as an activity that is more focused on inducing changes with a person and a person's relationship to others and the world, as opposed to inducing behavioral changes as occurs with NLP.

Book Review: The Complete Book of Demonolatry by S. Connolly

In this book, the author presents the foundations of demonolatry and explains how the magical system/religion works as well as how to work with the demons. The book covers a variety of topics including holidays, funerals, weddings, and other rituals. I found this book useful as a reference guide, particularly if you want to work in the demonolatric tradition. Some lessons are also included which can be helpful for learning the practices involved. At the same time, this is a book, and while its useful as an introduction to demonolatry, practitioners who want to learn more about this tradition will need to find other demonolaters to work with. I do recommend reading this book. It will provide a firm foundation for learning about demonolatry.

A Wealth Magic Myth

I'm reading Draja Mickaharic's A Spiritual Worker's Spellbook. He offers an interesting explanation called the sphere of availability:

This principle relates directly to the amount of economic support that the universe is willing to provide any particular individual at any given time in their life. The sphere of availability for each person is variable, in that it may either expand or contract by the thoughts, actions, and beliefs of the person themselves. The more sincerely grateful that a person is, and the more truly charitable they are, the greater this sphere of availability becomes. On the other hand, the more greedy that a person is for material things, and the more they turn from properly relating to their fellow man in a charitable way, the more their sphere of availability contracts.

He goes onto argue that anonymously giving out small sums is more spiritually productive than giving out large sums to charities. It's a nice sentiment, but I'm not convinced of it, much as I'm not convinced of the new age law of attraction, which is a similar derivative of what's mentioned above. Speaking as a business owner I can say that the majority of people I've met who are financially successful are very focused on making money. They have developed a relationship to money that makes them very comfortable with asking for what they feel is their due. At the same time, I can't say that these people are charitable in the way Draja suggests a person should be. They are willing to make donations to charitable causes, partially because they believe in the charitable cause and partially because they know they can get a tax deduction and being financially aware entrepreneurs they plan accordingly. Anonymous donations aren't really what they do, and they'd likely argue that however spiritually productive it might be to donate the way Draja does, it wouldn't be as beneficial in their minds to society or to themselves.

The majority of magicians I know aren't wealthy. Most of them don't care to be wealthy and that's fine, but if you are serious about being wealthy you've got to be willing to devote time to learning about money and wealth and this includes learning how money works in the system it exists in. Money, in and of itself isn't bad and neither is learning how money works. I tend to think of concepts such as the sphere of availability and law of attraction as wishful thinking for the most part. It's nice to wishfully think of what it would feel like if you had more money, but if you aren't willing to earn it or work the system you are in, that wishful thinking won't get you far.

Of course it is important to be aware of your attitude about money. The truth is that people are adept at sabotaging themselves with limiting beliefs about money. And working on those limiting beliefs can be very helpful because it allows you to approach your relationship with money with a perspective that is unburdened by limiting beliefs learned from your family and environment, or at least to be aware of those beliefs. But truly working with money on a practical and/or spiritual level involves understanding how money works, the way it moves and prefers to move, as well as how people who are successful with money work with it and use it.

Draja's principle of the sphere of availability is an interesting principle and he rightly notes that people who have an entitled perspective that money should just come to them won't get very far, and will in fact find themselves in hard circumstances fairly quickly, but giving all your money away anonymously doesn't suddenly make you more receptive to money. Donating it to a charitable cause allows you to take a deduction, while working the system that money operates in. And I'd argue that there is spiritual productivity in choosing a charity and making a donation to support a cause you genuinely believe in. You are helping to advance that cause by giving of your own efforts to support it. Granted there are people who choose to donate money mainly for the tax break, and in that case, I think it isn't spiritually productive, but the majority of people who choose to donate are likely doing it because they genuinely believe in the cause they are supporting. They know they'll get a tax deduction, but the deduction isn't the motivating factor. The motivating factor is to contribute something of their effort to a cause that is believed in, while letting their money move, which is ultimately what money as a force prefers.

How I came to Wealth Magic

Jason wrote a recent post about how he got involved in Financial Sorcery. I'm getting his new book (called Financial Sorcery) soon, and looking forward to it, but it got me thinking about how I got involved in wealth magic as well. It happened shortly after my birthday in 2006. I had shifted my elemental focus to the element of Earth and one day while at a bookstore I was prompted by my spirit guide to pick up rich dad, poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Up until that time I'd had a mediocre relationship with money. I knew how to handle it and make it work for me, but I had no long term plans and no idea what to do with it, beyond using it for everyday expenses. My spirit guide told me that part of grounding myself involved learning solid financial skills.

Reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad didn't provide me with a font of practical financial tips, but it opened my eyes to my poor financial attitudes and helped me recognize that the mindset I had about money and finances wasn't a healthy one. I started picking up more books on finances including You have more than you think, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, and Your Money or Your Life. Some of the books had practical financial advice and some were more about the emotional attitudes and beliefs regarding finances. All of them were useful and helped me change my relationship with money. I started planning a financial future.

In mid 2007, I moved to Portland. I used wealth magic to land me a tech writing contract at Nike. At the same time, I could see that tech writing was a dead end, so I began planning my exit out of the field by getting certified as a coach. I moved from contract to contract until I worked for a telecom company, based in Florida (even though I was in Portland). I also started my coaching practice and I kept reading about finances, and started learning about investments in particular. In August of 2008, I left my latest tech writing contract, and started searching for another tech writing job, but the economy collapsed in September and I found myself with no job postings. In retrospect, I might not have quit that job. However we did have emergency savings and so I focused on my coaching business.

I have to admit that 2009 and 2010 were lean years. Business was slow and I made mistakes, which happens with any business owner. Still I learned a lot and gradually business improved. In 2011, I decided to do some wealth magic for my business, even started working with Bune as a patron of my business, and he pushed me to read more books on businesses, even as he opened up some business opportunities for me, and helped me see that a rebranding of my coaching business was in order, as well as helping me to see how I could monetize Magical Experiments.

I think what I've learned the most is how important it is to be financially literate so you can make sound financial decisions. I find myself fortunate enough to be in a situation where I can work on my own schedule, and work on each of my businesses with the support of a partner who believes in me completely and recognizes how hard I work. And wealth magic has played a role in all of this, in terms of educating me, but also providing opportunities for growth in my respective businesses and my life.

Like Jason, I'm not necessarily out to be a millionaire or billionaire. I am out to live my life on my own terms, and I'm well on track for doing that, but it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't started learning about finances and recognized something essential: There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to make money or be prosperous, or apply your spirituality toward your practical well being.

A wealth magic tip

This is actually a tip that applies to anything you want to learn, but I'm applying it to wealth magic since that's an area of magic I've been working with quite a bit. Bune, the goetic demon I've been working with, has also been inspirational in regards to this tip. If you really want to apply magic to an aspect of your life, one of the key things you need to do is learn as much about that aspect of life as possible. In my case, I started working with Bune last year in order to get him to help me with my primary business. Along the way, he's helped me see how I could also turn Magical Experiments into more of a business. But the one thing he's pushed all along is the need to educate myself if I want to succeed in business. As a result I ended up taking a Small Business Management course, which has helped me with both businesses in a variety of ways, as well as currently taking a marketing class. I've also been reading a lot of books on business development and wealth at Bune's prompting. The result is that I feel a lot more tools available to me, for both of my businesses.

I also think it helps to have a patron spirit for my business. It's something I'd recommend to anyone who owns a business and practices magic. Find yourself a patron spirit that will provide support on the spiritual side, and will also give you that intuitive push in directions you need to go in, to grow your business. And make sure you honor your patron, as it is quite a gift such a spirit provides. I've done most of the work on my businesses this year and last, but Bune has been the muse for that work. Once I started working with him, I started getting pushed into directions that could help me with my businesses and I've seen a real improvement, especially in the last six months. Praise Bune!

Planetary Magic Experiment

I've never worked with planetary magic. I got wrapped up into elemental hermeticism and didn't really explore the planets. But I'm taking the Strategic Sorcery course and one of the homework assignments involved possibly working with planetary magic so I thought I'd stretch myself. Jason thoughtfully provided symbols he'd gotten in his own work, but I decided it was better if I went straight to the source, and the other day in How to Meet and Work with Spirit Guides by Ted Andrews, I found pertinent information on contacting the archangel associated with each planet. I decided to work with one planet: Jupiter, which is associated with wealth magic. The archangel associated with Jupiter is Tzadkiel. The first step was to contact Tzadkiel. I meditated on the astrological symbol of Jupiter and Tzadkiel's sigil, as well as vocalizing Tzadkiel's name. It took a little while to make contact, but eventually I did. I asked him, if I could get a symbol for Jupiter that represented the planetary energy and associations with wealth and other areas. He was happy to provide it to me, but then we got into a discussion about the associations. I asked him about the association of wealth with Jupiter and what made Jupiter as a planet have anything to do with wealth. He replied it was less about the planet and more about how people perceived the planet (and associated God) with wealth. That what made it powerful had more to do with the perceptions that people invested in the planet. What I'm really tapping into are those perceptions of the power, the perceptions about the associations and how those associations can be worked with.

Since then I've taken the symbol and put it on my whiteboard and each time I've done anything associated with my business or a financial transaction, I've mentally imprinted the symbol on the business or financial transaction, with the idea of drawing on those associations to provide a favorable outcome for me. I plan on doing work with the other planets (and their archangels )and also with Tzadkiel, but it is an interesting thought, to look at the planetary energy in terms of the perceptions invested into it.

Value and Wealth

Jason recently posted a blog about value and wealth. He basically did an exercise that looked at the value of what he wanted to buy vs the price of what he wanted to buy vs the value of what he could put that money toward. It's a good exercise to do and its something I'm familiar with from Your Money or Your Life (affiliate link).  In that book, one of the exercises has you look at the real value of what you are purchasing vs the amount of money and the amount of time spent earning that money. And much like Jason's exercise, what it really does is force you to look closely at your relationship with money and how you are spending it.

So you might wonder why I'm writing about that on here. Wealth magic is an ongoing interest of mine, and I think to really apply magic to wealth in any substantial way you really have to understand money and its relationship with your life, as well as the value you ascribe to a given purchase. An unexamined relationship with money will find people buying anything that catches their interest, while also accruing a mountain of debt. If you want to do magic for a specific result, you've got to understand what that result will really look like in your life, and be prepared to handle any consequences that are associated with it.

This is why people who win the lottery typically end up spending their way through the money they won. They played to win, but they weren't prepared for the consequences of winning and likely they didn't really examine their relationship with money. So they win the money and they get deluged by relatives and friends who suddenly care (as long as the money flows) and they also have vague ideas on how to spend the money. I'll buy that Porsche I always wanted or pay off the house, or whatever else. Rarely do I see anything about investing the money when I hear stories about someone winning the lottery.

Money magic tends to have a similar effect. the focus is on getting the money, but once you have the money what do you do? Doing magic to get money may work, but having it is another reality and one that most people seem ill-prepared for. The question then is this: What is my relationship with money and what do I want to do with it, both now and in the future? Knowing the answer can help you figure out if you can really handle more money and if you really understand the value of what you are trying to get with that money.

An important part of magical work is the relationship. Looking at your relationship with money and knowing what you want to change with it can help you do wealth magic more effectively than just trying to get money. It's that internal ingredient that is needed to effectively integrate a force into your life, whether that force is money, love, power, or something else altogether. Can you handle the consequences? Is the value worth it and do you know what you'll do with the result, once you've got it.

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.

My business is part of my magical work

The other day an acquaintance on twitter half humorously said he was glad I was posting about the occult and had wondered if I was still an occultist. Looking through some old lj entries I can certainly say I posted a lot more about magic once upon a time, at least overt magic, than I do now. Thing is though, my business is part of my magical work. For one thing it's a manifestation of my intention and my will. I'm putting a lot of intention and focus into making it successful, and its my will that my business provide me the means to be as independent as possible and enjoy doing something I believe in for a living.

But on a much deeper level, it is also really a change in identity, an evolution from who I was into who I want to be, on a very intentional and focused journey. My business is just the most obvious part of that journey, because its where most of my activity is going. The changes in identity, and the learning of new skills that I've had to develop as a result, have in their own way been an act of magic for me, a very proactive approach exploring and manifesting my desires by choosing to actively change my attitude, beliefs, and also actions.

My business is part of my magic because it's a spiritual journey for me. It's not just about making a living, it's about living a way of life.

A Magical Experiment in Economic Activism

My latest article on Reality Sandwich: A Magical Experiment in Economic Activism I got to to really exercise Zi Fupsekip Vosri, mentioned in the article, this last week as I did a lot of networking from Monday through Friday, and was able to help a few people out as a result, by helping them make some good connections with other people. As a networking entity, he's really helpful in prompting the question, "What do you need?" as well as then helping with the connection process.

A wealth magic article, a book review, and body paint

An article on wealth and magic on Reality Sandwich I've already gotten some interesting comments on it. I hope that it gets people to think about what wealth is to them and how they manifest it. I also think there's more to explore there...I may do so in a follow up article down the line.

Review of Meta Magick: The Book of ATEM by Phil Farber

Meta-Magick is an intriguing book which presents readers with an opportunity to create not one entity, but actually a number of entities based off of principles such as attention, passion, trance, language, making, and Fitting. Additionally Farber provides 36 exercises which can be used by people to learn how to integrate these principles into their lives.

Farber also focuses on eight powers: Communication, neuroplasticity, transformation, transmission, beauty, understanding, balance, and opening. The book doesn't overtly focus on these powers much...instead the focus is more subtle. You will experience them through doing the exercises in the book, which is what the author intended.

Meta-magick definitely is not intended to be something intellectually read, so much as it is intended to be experienced and worked with. You will get a lot of leverage out of this book if you do the exercises in them. It's an excellent book to introduce people to magic, but is also good for intermediate to advanced practitioners.

5 out of 5

I did some work with body paints tonight. I find body paints to be intimate as well as beautiful. I use body paints a fair amount in my magic as a way of connecting with spirits, but also connecting with my body and its consciousness. I recommend the body paints which can be washed off with water and soap...you can find them at costume shops fairly easily.

Wealth Magic really does work

Yes, it really does. Readers of my livejournal will know that I landed a job today with a 100% telecommute. Pretty nice. what they don't know, and I didn't mention is that I only job hunted for 2-4 hours each week. I know that the usual job hunting advice is to treat job hunting like a full time job, but every time I've done that I've gotten really frustrated and usually don't feel very directed. So this time I decided to do it differently. I job hunted every couple of days, and other wise focused on building my current entrepreneurial venture. And each Thursday, I did my usual ritual before the wealth altar, thanking my household wealth entity for the prosperity it had manifested in my life and asking it for specific manifestations of prosperity. Then I stopped thinking about it and concentrated on doing what was important to me, which has been growing what will eventually become my full time career. Yesterday I made an offering of some money to my wealth deity Babalon, as well, and again let that intention go out there, knowing the right manifestation would come along. I trusted that the abundance of the universe would bring me exactly what I needed and let that trust propel me on, while focusing on what I love to do. A while back, it would've taken a lot more work from me in order to manifest this abundance, but I'm learning to let go and trust in the universe, to let my intention go out and then let it go from my thoughts. And so that's how wealth and abundance manifested this time. And I'm very thankful for it.

Re-Thinking and Re-Making Babalon into a Wealth Deity

I've been spending some thinking about my relationship to Babalon, both in relationship to the Elemental Love working I'm doing and also in where she fits or doesn't fit in the overall scheme of my life. And then this weekend I finished reading Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and I realized where Babalon fits into my life, and I had a better appreciation of the lessons she's teaching me in this year's working. In Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill discusses the necessity of mastering sexual energy in order to direct your creativity and imagination to manifest your goals of wealth. He incorporates a number of "occult" principles into his writing, which as an aside, I'm surprised more magicians haven't realized. In anycase, I began to think about Babalon and desire and the Strength card. It's true that Babalon is the sacred whore and the great mother, but it occurs to me that's much more than that. She represents desire, but in the Strength card, she also represents the ability to find inner strength to harness those desires. She holds a cup up, but is it really a cup of abominations? Or is it a cup of wealth, a realization of success in managing the internal desires to manifest the desired result?

One of my own recent realizations has been that I have to be strong for myself. This means I have to choose to master my desires in order to manifest the reality I desire to live in. While giving into my desires can lead to pleasure in the short, in the long term mastering my desires can lead me to achieving my goals. Upon some meditation and reflection, I decided that Babalon is my wealth deity. She can and has inspired me to master my desires so that I can manifest my goals. I put the bottle of red wine and the Strength Candle on the wealth shrine altar. I placed the sacred blade of desire on the altar as well.

Wealth is really about mastering yourself enough to know what you want and how to use all of your resources to achieve it. It's about finding the necessary strength to focus yourself on what really matters to you as well as tempering yourself so that while you acknowledge and enjoy your desires, you also use them to propel you to greater heights. Babalon embodies this concept by riding and directing the beast of desire, while holding up the cup of wealth to show the results of mastering the beast. She also embodies success, in and of herself, because she shows that success does involve being prepared to make sacrifices right up to and including your ego, in order to be transformed in your understanding of what you are giving to her and receiving from her. The success that comes from that is an internal success in terms of knowing and mastering your desires and external success in channeling the resultant discipline into what you want to accomplish.

Following Napoleon Hill's advice, I've decided to create a council I'd meet in a meditative state. Naturally Babalon is one of people on the council, as is Napoleon Hill, my wife Lupa, and other people/entities that are useful for the wealth work I'm currently working on in my life.

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.