C.J. Stone's Blog, page 21

Money, Magic and the Imagination – part IV

A “King Arthur” £23 note, which we handed around liberally on the 7th Nov.

One of the gravest errors you can make is to assume that all the thoughts in your head belong to you. They don’t. They can come from all sorts of weird places: from the Ego or from the Id, from the media propaganda machine, from other people’s thoughts and feelings (including sometimes from people you don’t know), from the Earth and the Sky, from demons, gods and goblins, or from the very fabric of the Universe itself.

The trick is being able to tell the difference.

One of the surest ways to judge if a thought has meaning or not is if you notice it is “in the air”: that is, when other people seem to be having the same thought at the same time. Assuming it’s not a propaganda meme (which you have to learn how to spot) then it’s a fair bet it might have originated from some deep place in the cosmos.

Such was the case for the thoughts that lay behind Monday’s ritual events. Not only was I hearing other people expressing ideas that aligned with my own, but, when I mentioned it to friends they “got it” straight away, and were immediately enthusiastic. After that: well the Universe just seemed to conspire to make it come true.

It all goes back to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

Everybody with half a brain must have realised that something had gone seriously awry with our world in those few months. Something we had taken for granted – the money-system – had gone all wobbly on us, and what has followed is almost a decade of pain and austerity for the great mass of humanity, and increasing wealth for the elite.

Now here’s an odd thing. I tried thinking about money and discovered that it is really, really difficult. There are all sorts of knotty problems in there, which are hard to get your head around. It’s like language: so close to us it’s hard to get a perspective. I mean, do you have any idea what the past participle is? I don’t, and yet I use it with perfect ease, having been born a native to my tongue. It’s the same with money. Try thinking about fractional reserve banking for a second. It’s something we are born into and understand instinctively, without knowing precisely how it works.

So I tried reading up on it.

Anyone who has ever looked inside an economic textbook will know that this is virtually impossible. Economic textbooks are designed to ensure that ordinary people can’t read them.

Luckily there’s a group of renegade economists out there, willing to blow the gaff.

One of them is Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, a Wall Street Financial Analyst and Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

I heard him on an internet radio station one day, and he was so lucid, and his explanations so clear and so simple, that I took to reading pretty well everything by him I could find.

One of the things I discovered was this little book, which you can read and download for nothing. It’s called The Lost Tradition of Biblical Debt Cancellations.

In it he points out that in Bronze Age times Kings had the right to cancel debt. Which they often did, either on their birthday, or on New Year’s Day, as a gesture of economic renewal. It was known as a “Clean Slate” and there is an immense record of clay tablets from the Middle East which show that it was a regular practice in those distant times.

In the days before standing armies, Kings depended on their peasants to make up the infantry, and would make these occasional gestures of solidarity in order to stay popular. In the Bible, however, the practice was formalised into Law, and there are whole passages of the pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) dedicated to this.

It was known as a Jubilee. Here is an example, from Leviticus 25: 8-13:

“On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. You shall make the fiftieth year holy, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee to you; and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family.”

It is a declaration of debt forgiveness and an end to debt slavery. In the fiftieth year, the Jubilee year, every bondsman or woman would be freed in order to return to their own lands, whose title reverted to the original owners again.

The importance of this principle is evident in the Lord’s Prayer (actually a very ancient Jewish text which pre-dates Christianity by several centuries):

The line “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us” should actually read “Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us.”

The word “redemption” – which I had always understood as a spiritual word – turns out to have an economic root as well. It means to buy back what you once owned. Archaically it means to release someone from debt slavery: slavery imposed in lieu of payment on a debt. The “redeemer” of the Old Testament, the Messiah, was actually a prince who would forgive debts and free the slaves.

It’s odd that many of those in the American establishment who claim to speak for the Bible have forgotten this, one of its most important founding principles. The quotation on the Liberty Bell, for instance, is from the passage I quoted earlier: Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof . The “Liberty” it refers to is liberty from debt and debt-servitude. Not political liberty. Liberty from banks.

Anyway, that was where I got the idea from: to get my very good friend King Arthur Pendragon to make a proclamation forgiving all debt.

If the Bronze Age Kings could do it, I thought, why not our own Biker King of the Gypsy Underclass?

But that’s all it remained for many years: an idea in my head.

Later, during the last election campaign in 2015, I was up in London talking to someone from the Daily Mirror about a possible column in one of their on-line magazines.

I met him at One Canada Square, one of the large corporate buildings in Docklands.

We talked about Arthur, who was the prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Salisbury at the time, and he suggested we could set up a publicity stunt by getting Arthur to come to Docklands and do a ceremony.

He said, something like: “Because this is where the dragon is buried.”

He meant, the dragon of unregulated Capitalism.

Unfortunately Arthur was too busy with his campaign to be able to take time off to get to London, but the idea remained and merged with the other idea, about a proclamation.

Then earlier this year another good friend, fellow writer John Higgs, told me that Alan Moore was interested in meeting Arthur, having read our book.

That meant one of three things: Alan Moore going to Salisbury, Arthur going to Northampton, or the two of them meeting somewhere in between.

That’s when the idea of reviving the dragon ceremony in the heart of London came back to me. Only not in Docklands, I thought, which is a new development, but in the City of London itself, which is where the historical beast is really buried.

They even have dragons there, as I remembered from a David Icke YouTube video I’d seen once: him pointing up at one of the dragons, telling us how this proved that the Illuminati were all Reptilians.

Very quickly the idea began to grow. Not just Arthur. I thought: why not get a bunch of practising magicians along to take part in the ceremonies with us?

So that’s where my main ritualists came from: practising magicians I happen to know, John Constable, also known as John Crow, Julian Vayne and Nikki Wyrd, quickly followed by Jon Harris, “The Money Burning Guy”, who John Higgs knew from a few years back.

All Hail, The Staff ! Photo of Jon Harris burning money at Festival 23 by Dan Sumption

It turned out that I already knew Jon, and that he owed me a pint.

We all met together, those of us who could make it, in the George Inn, Southwark, near John Crow’s house.

That’s when I discovered that the thought that I had nursed in my head for half a decade or more didn’t really belong to me.

It was an idea which had been biding it’s time, waiting for the right moment to emerge, and right now was that moment.

Everyone loved it and committed themselves to taking part in the project. John Crow took us to Crossbones graveyard, which is where his own personal story began, after which we took a walk through the City of London.

That was in early September.

We tried several dates on for size. I suggested Samhain, October 31st, as the Celtic New Year, but John Crow was busy with his last ever Halloween of Crossbones. We thought about November 5th, the day of the now annual Million Mask March, which seemed apt given that the mask they all wear is based upon Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta; but that was a Saturday and we decided it would make more sense to do it when the Bank of England was open. Finally we decided to make it the nearest weekday after the 5th: Monday the 7th November.

I was due to give a talk in London at Caroline Whimsy Westbury’s Nova Stella Nights in the Castle in Farringdon (which I highly recommend) only I’d forgotten when it was supposed to be.

Jon Harris and I decided we needed to take a look at the City again, to work out where the various rituals spots should be and we agreed on the 11th of October. This turned out to be the same day as the Nova Stellar event. This was just one of a number of significant synchronicities that aided our enterprise.

That decided it. Nova Stella would be the day of our first announcement, to the Pagan, Wiccan and Druid community of London.

The next synchronicity was that someone at the event (I’ve forgotten your name I’m afraid) informed us that, according to some calculations, the 7th of November is considered to be the Celtic New Year’s Day, being exactly half way between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice.

So New Year’s Day it was then, one of the days that the Bronze Age Kings would traditionally use to announce a Clean Slate.

Another synchronicity was that Jon Harris had himself already been invited to take part in an event exploring the meaning of money. This was Daisy Campbell’s spoken word piece in the Cockpit Theatre on the 23rd of October, “Poetry Can F*ck With Your Finances”. Jon made sure that I was on the guest list, and Daisy asked me to make an announcement of our event that night.

I think everyone who was there that evening will agree that Daisy and Jon between them made us really contemplate the true meaning of money: Daisy with her choice of words from Hakim Bey,  Heathcote Williams  and Jon Harris’s own Money Burners Manual, and Jon with his awe-inspiring money burning ceremony. I don’t think I’m being immodest if I say that the words to our mission statement, which I’d composed only a few days before, fitted the evening to perfection.

That was another reminder that the thoughts I’d had didn’t only belong to me. Apparently they’d been going on inside Daisy Campbell’s head too; as well as in Hakim Bey’s and Heathcote Williams’ before us.

Taking part in Jon’s money burning ceremony remains one of the defining moments in my life.

What Jon has done is to bring back a very ancient idea, and to update it for the modern world. The idea is that of ritual sacrifice. In ancient times this could be an animal, or even a human being. But money makes a much better sacrifice, in that it can represent anything, and yet it hurts no one.

The sacrifice is yours’ and yours’ alone.

As for the argument – which I’ve heard – that you could make the sacrifice by giving it to a charity: that’s not the same thing. Giving money to a charity is not making a sacrifice, it is spending the money, albeit on a good cause. Burning money is an out-and-out sacrifice.

Burning money destroys money, but it doesn’t destroy the value that it represents. The value remains. That is the deep secret behind money burning, at least as I understand it.

Value is eternal. It never goes away.

You make the sacrifice. You burn the potential that the money gave you. In my case I’d saved up a £20 note which I’d had pinned on my bookshelves for several weeks. I could see it from my computer, so that I really felt it belonged to me. I brought it down every so often, held it in my hands and spoke to it. I imagined all the things I could spend it on, while reminding myself that its destiny was as a sacrifice. Thus it became very personal to me. It wasn’t just a £20 note. It was my own personal sacrifice.

Money burning is like a prayer. It is a way of making a connection to the deeper parts of yourself, focusing on something that really matters. In my case I was focussing on our Nov 7th New Year’s Day Ritual. I was willing it to become all the things I’d imagined it to be.

Another little synchronicity is that I decided to ask my good friend from Whitstable, Jon Eldude to come along. Jon is an anarchist, partly disabled because of his recurring epilepsy, but very open minded and with a good heart, being deeply committed to the struggle for justice.

November the 7th turned out to be his birthday.

You can read about Jon here.

And one last synchronicity: or at least a very good idea. A friend of Daisy’s, Cat Vincent, told me a little folklore on the night of the Cockpit event. He said we were to ask permission of the dragons before we entered. We were to recite the motto of the City, “Domine dirige nos” (which means “Lord guide us”) while using the finger of one hand to mark out the coat of arms of the City on the palm of the other: a large cross in the middle with a small cross in the corner.

Part V

Money Transformation Day of Ritual – part I

A “King Arthur” £23 note, which we handed around liberally on the 7th Nov.

One of the gravest errors you can make is to assume that all the thoughts in your head belong to you. They don’t. They can come from all sorts of weird places: from the Ego or from the Id, from the media propaganda machine, from other people’s thoughts and feelings (including sometimes from people you don’t know), from the Earth and the Sky, from demons, gods and angels, or from the very fabric of the Universe itself.

The trick is being able to tell the difference.

One of the surest ways to judge if a thought really matters or not is if you notice it is “in the air”: that is, when other people seem to be having the same thought at the same time. Assuming it’s not a propaganda meme (which I can usually spot) then it’s a fair bet it might have originated from some deep place in the cosmos.

Such was the case for the thoughts that lay behind Monday’s ritual events. Not only was I hearing other people expressing ideas that aligned with my own, but, when I mentioned it to friends they “got it” straight away, and were immediately enthusiastic. After that: well the Universe just seemed to conspire to make it come true.

It all goes back to the financial crisis of 2007-2008 for me.

Everybody with half a brain must have realised that something had gone seriously awry with our world in those few months. Something we had taken for granted – the money-system – had gone all wobbly on us, and what has followed is almost a decade of pain and austerity for the great mass of humanity.

Now here’s an odd thing. I tried thinking about money and discovered that it is really, really difficult. There are all sorts of knotty problems in there, which are hard to get your head around. It’s like language: so close to us it’s hard to get a perspective. I mean, do you have any idea what the past participle is? I don’t, and yet I use it with perfect ease, having been born a native to my tongue. It’s the same with money. It’s something we are born into and understand instinctively, without knowing precisely how it works.

So I tried reading up on it.

Anyone who has ever had a go at reading an economic textbook will know that this is virtually impossible. Economic textbooks are designed to ensure that ordinary people can’t read them.

Luckily there’s a group of economic renegades out there, willing to blow the gaff.

One of them is Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, a Wall Street Financial Analyst and Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

I heard him on an internet radio station one day, and he was so lucid, and his explanations so clear and so simple, that I took to reading pretty well everything by him I could find.

One of the things I discovered was this little book, which you can read and download for nothing. It’s called The Lost Tradition of Biblical Debt Cancellations.

In it he points out that in Bronze Age times Kings had the right to cancel debt. Which they often did, either on their birthday, or on New Year’s Day, as a gesture of economic renewal. It was known as a “Clean Slate” and there is an immense record of clay tablets from the Middle East which show that it was a regular practice in those distant times.

In the days before standing armies, Kings depended on their peasants to make up the infantry, and would make these occasional gestures of solidarity in order to stay popular. In the Bible, however, the practice was formalised into Law, and there are whole passages of the pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) dedicated to this.

It was known as a Jubilee. Here is an example, from Leviticus 25: 8-13:

“On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. You shall make the fiftieth year holy, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee to you; and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family.”

It is a declaration of debt forgiveness and an end to debt slavery. In the fiftieth year, the Jubilee year, every bondsman or woman would be freed in order to return to their own lands, whose title reverted to the original owners again.

The importance of this principle is evident in the Lord’s Prayer (actually a very ancient Jewish text which pre-dates Christianity by several centuries):

The line “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us” should actually read “Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us.”

The word “redemption” – which I had always understood as a spiritual word – turns out to have an economic root as well. It means to buy back what you once owned. Archaically it means to release someone from debt slavery: slavery imposed in lieu of payment on a debt. The “redeemer” of the Old Testament, the Messiah, was actually a prince who would forgive debts and free the slaves.

It’s odd that many of those in the American establishment who claim to speak for the Bible have forgotten this, one of its most important founding principles. The quotation on the Liberty Bell, for instance, is from the passage I quoted earlier: Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof . The “Liberty” it refers to is liberty from debt and debt-servitude. Not political liberty. Liberty from banks.

Anyway, that was where I got the idea from: to get my very good friend King Arthur Pendragon to make a proclamation forgiving all debt.

If the Bronze Age Kings could do it, I thought, why not our own Biker King of the Gypsy Underclass?

But that’s all it remained for many years: an idea in my head.

Later, during the last election campaign in 2015, I was up in London talking to someone from the Daily Mirror about a possible column in one of their on-line magazines.

I met him at One Canada Square, one of the large corporate buildings in Docklands.

We talked about Arthur, who was the prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Salisbury at the time, and he suggested we could set up a publicity stunt by getting Arthur to come to Docklands and do a ceremony.

He said, something like: “Because this is where the dragon is buried.”

He meant, the dragon of unregulated Capitalism.

Unfortunately Arthur was too busy with his campaign to be able to take time off to get to London, but the idea remained and merged with the other idea, about a proclamation.

Then earlier this year another good friend, fellow writer John Higgs, told me that Alan Moore was interested in meeting Arthur, having read our book.

That meant one of three things: Alan Moore going to Salisbury, Arthur going to Northampton, or the two of them meeting somewhere in between.

That’s when the idea of reviving the dragon ceremony in the heart of London came back to me. Only not in Docklands, which is a new development, but in the City of London itself, which is where the historical beast is really buried.

They even have dragons there, as I remembered from a David Icke YouTube video I’d seen once: him pointing up at one of the dragons, telling us how this proved that the Illuminati were all Reptilians.

Very quickly the idea began to grow. Not just Arthur. I thought: why not get a bunch of practising magicians along to take part in the ceremonies with us?

So that’s where my main ritualists came from: practising magicians I happen to know, John Constable, also known as John Crow, Julian Vayne and Nikki Wyrd, quickly followed by Jon Harris, “The Money Burning Guy”, who John Higgs had met at Festival 23 earlier this year.

All Hail, The Staff ! Photo of Jon Harris burning money at Festival 23 by Dan Sumption

It turned out that I already knew Jon, and that he owed me a pint.

We all met together, those of us who could make it, in the George Inn, Southwark, near John Crow’s house.

That’s when I discovered that the thought that I had nursed in my head for half a decade or more didn’t really belong to me.

It was an idea which had been biding it’s time, waiting for the right moment to emerge, and right now was that moment.

Everyone loved it and committed themselves to taking part in the project. John Crow took us to Crossbones graveyard, which is where his own personal story began, after which we took a walk through the City of London.

That was in early September.

We tried several dates on for size. I suggested Samhain, October 31st, as the Celtic New Year, but John Crow was busy with his last ever Halloween of Crossbones. We thought about November 5th, the day of the now annual Million Mask March, which seemed apt given that the mask they all wear is based upon Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta; but that was a Saturday and we decided it would make more sense to do it when the Bank of England was open. Finally we decided to make it the nearest weekday after the 5th: Monday the 7th November.

I was due to give a talk in London at Caroline Whimsy Westbury’s Nova Stella Nights in the Castle in Farringdon (which I highly recommend) only I’d forgotten when it was supposed to be.

Jon Harris and I decided we needed to take a look at the City again, to work out where the various rituals spots should be and we agreed on the 11th of October. This turned out to be the same day as the Nova Stellar event. This was just one of a number of significant synchronicities that aided our enterprise.

That decided it. Nova Stella would be the day of our first announcement, to the Pagan, Wiccan and Druid community of London.

The next synchronicity was that someone at the event (I’ve forgotten your name I’m afraid) informed us that, according to some calculations, the 7th of November is considered to be the Celtic New Year’s Day, being exactly half way between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice.

So New Year’s Day it was then, one of the days that the Bronze Age Kings would traditionally use to announce a Clean Slate.

Another synchronicity was that Jon Harris had himself already been invited to take part in an event exploring the meaning of money. This was Daisy Campbell’s spoken word piece in the Cockpit Theatre on the 23rd of October, “Poetry Can F*ck With Your Finances”. Jon made sure that I was on the guest list, and Daisy asked me to make an announcement of our event that night.

I think everyone who was there that evening will agree that Daisy and Jon between them made us really contemplate the true meaning of money: Daisy with her choice of words from Hakim Bey and Heathcote Williams, and Jon with his awe-inspiring money burning ceremony. I don’t think I’m being immodest if I say that the words to our mission statement, which I’d composed only a few days before, fitted the evening to perfection.

That was another reminder that the thoughts I’d had didn’t only belong to me. Apparently they’d been going on inside Daisy Campbell’s head too; as well as in Hakim Bey’s and Heathcote Williams’ before us.

Taking part in Jon’s money burning ceremony remains one of the defining moments in my life.

What Jon has done is to bring back a very ancient idea, and to update it for the modern world. The idea is that of ritual sacrifice. In ancient times this could be an animal, or even a human being. But money makes a much better sacrifice, in that it can represent anything, and yet it hurts no one.

The sacrifice is yours’ and yours’ alone.

As for the argument – which I’ve heard – that you could make the sacrifice by giving it to a charity: that’s not the same thing. Giving money to a charity is not making a sacrifice, it is spending the money, albeit on a good cause. Burning money is an out-and-out sacrifice.

Burning money destroys money, but it doesn’t destroy the value that it represents. The value remains. That is the deep secret behind money burning, at least as I understand it.

Value is eternal. It never goes away.

You make the sacrifice. You burn the potential that the money gave you. In my case I’d saved up a £20 note which I’d had pinned on my bookshelves for several weeks. I could see it from my computer, so that I really felt it belonged to me. I brought it down every so often, held it in my hands and spoke to it. I imagined all the things I could spend it on, while reminding myself that its destiny was as a sacrifice. Thus it became very personal to me. It wasn’t just a £20 note. It was my own personal sacrifice.

Money burning is like a prayer. It is a way of making a connection to the deeper parts of yourself, focusing on something that really matters. In my case I was focussing on our Nov 7th New Year’s Day Ritual. I was willing it to become all the things I’d imagined it to be.

Another little synchronicity is that I decided to ask my good friend from Whitstable, Jon Eldude to come along. Jon is an anarchist, partly disabled because of his recurring epilepsy, but very open minded and with a good heart, being deeply committed to the struggle for justice.

November the 7th turned out to be his birthday.

You can read about Jon here.

And one last synchronicity: or at least a very good idea. A friend of Daisy’s, Cat Vincent, told me a little folklore on the night of the Cockpit event. He said we were to ask permission of the dragons before we entered. We were to recite the motto of the City, “Domine dirige nos” (which means “Lord guide us”) while using the finger of one hand to mark out the coat of arms of the City on the palm of the other: a large cross in the middle with a small cross in the corner.

To be continued….

The Royal Proclamation

(Delivered on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice, the Strand, on the 7th of November 2016, by Arthur Uther Pendragon, Druid King of Britain, this being New Year’s Day):

I, Arthur Uther Pendragon, having been raised Druid King of Britain on the Coronation Stone at Kingston upon Thames in January 1998, this being the first day of the Celtic New Year according to some calculations, do declare a Clean Slate, and a state of economic renewal, according to powers vested in the ancient Kings.

Just as the Sun returns to the same position on the horizon each year, and the Moon revolves around the Earth; just as the land is revived season by season, and the Earth begins anew again; just as birds return to their nests and salmon to their breeding waters; just as Winter gives way to Spring and Spring gives way to Summer, so the money cycle must be ever renewed and returned to a state of economic equilibrium.

Let all debts be forgiven. Let all forfeitures be returned. Let those who were dispossessed reclaim their customary possessions. Let the records be wiped clean and the Jubilee declared throughout the lands, as it always was. Let those who are enslaved by debt be made free. Let those who are brought low by financial burden have the weight lifted from them. Let the power vested in government to create money be used for the benefit of all the people, and not just the favoured few.

Let a new bank holiday begin, a holiday from banks. Let the banks be made accountable to those they have indebted. Let their privileges be revoked. Let those who hoard money be cured of their addiction. Let the money be free to circulate as it wills. Let it flow freely throughout the economy, like irrigation in a barren wasteland. Let the financial canals be opened and the land be brought to life again.

We are planting a seed here in the heart of the City of London, City of Cities, the birthplace of the old economy, where all debt is created, and to which all debt must be returned.

It is the seed of monetary Justice, the seed of hope for a bright new future, the seed of the new debtless economy, where usury and interest bearing debt give way to sovereign money in the hands of the people, and all of the people are free.

Money, Magic and the Imagination Part III – Speech

A guardian dragon at the entrance to the City

Delivered from the plinth of the Eastern Dragon, south side of London Bridge, 7th November 2016 (this being New Year’s Day):

What is money?

Money is time. It represents all that time you have spent, in your office, in your factory, in your art, in your craft, at your desk, in your job, focussing your attention on a task of some kind, sometimes, but not exclusively, doing something that is socially useful, something that other people might appreciate.

Money is value. It is art. It is ingenuity. It is thought. It is planning. It is execution. It is service. It is giving over a part of your life to other people’s wants and needs.

Money has always been with us, since the beginning of time. Since the first human took the first steps on this planet, we’ve had money as our companion.

It is the item of exchange, the gift, the promise, the valued object, the carved stone, the rainbow-coloured shell, the glinting metal, which we offered to another as a token of trust. This is my pledge to you that I will pay you what I owe. Before the invention of writing, it was accompanied by our breath, our word, our promise. We promised to pay the bearer.

In this City, passed these gates, the wealth of the world is locked up. We want to set it free.

Money is work and there’s work to be done. Our planet is in grave danger. We need to learn new ways to relate to it. We need to find new ways of harvesting its produce. We need to find new ways to harness its energy. We need to plant whole forests of trees. We need to end the loss of species and take care of those we still have. We need to clean the rivers and reintroduce diversity. We need to rewild the remotest places, and bring back the bear and the wolf and the big cats to these shores.

Money is the key to it all.

It is lack of money that fuels crime. It is lack of money that drives people into gangs. It is lack of money that encourages addiction. It is lack of money that creates domestic abuse. It is lack of money that impedes our education. It is lack of money that forces people into bondage. It is lack of money that forces people into prostitution. It is lack of money that forces people into mercenary regimes. It is lack of money that forces people to destroy their environment. It is lack of money that stops people from fulfilling their destiny.

Don’t say it is just a bit of paper. It is so much more than that. It is our enabler. It is the means by which we store and distribute the value that we have made.

People without money are made desperate for it. People with too much money are made heartless and cruel.

We want to cure the wealthy of their wealth, and the poor of their poverty. Both are suffering from sicknesses of the soul.

We are one family, one people, one species on this planet. When a child goes hungry for lack of money, that is our child. When a man kills himself for shame because he can’t feed his family, that is our brother. When a woman sells herself to put food on the table, that is our sister. When a veteran of the war dies of cold on the bleak winter streets, or a lonely old widow freezes to death in a flat she can’t afford to heat, those are our Father and Mother, our blood relations, and we should grieve for them as we grieve for our own.

The word “capital” means the head, as in the head of a column. It has the same root as cattle and chattel. It is capitalism that has turned us into chattels that are milked for our labour. The word redeem means to buy back what we once owned. It is through debt that we became slaves, mere property without a soul. The redeemer is the one who pays the price of redemption, which is release from debt-slavery. The Jubilee is when all debts are forgiven, when the people return to the lands of their birth, when the liberty bells ring, and freedom sounds throughout the Kingdom.

Let us make today the day of jubilation. Let the Jubilee begin.

Part IV

Money Transformation Day of Ritual – Speech

A guardian dragon at the entrance to the City

Delivered from the plinth of the Eastern Dragon, south side of London Bridge, 7th November 2016 (this being New Year’s Day):

What is money?

Money is time. It represents all that time you have spent, in your office, in your factory, in your art, in your craft, at your desk, in your job, focussing your attention on a task of some kind, sometimes, but not exclusively, doing something that is socially useful, something that other people might appreciate.

Money is value. It is art. It is ingenuity. It is thought. It is planning. It is execution. It is service. It is giving over a part of your life to other people’s wants and needs.

Money has always been with us, since the beginning of time. Since the first human took the first steps on this planet, we’ve had money as our companion.

It is the item of exchange, the gift, the promise, the valued object, the carved stone, the rainbow-coloured shell, the glinting metal, which we offered to another as a token of trust. This is my pledge to you that I will pay you what I owe. Before the invention of writing, it was accompanied by our breath, our word, our promise. We promised to pay the bearer.

In this City, passed these gates, the wealth of the world is locked up. We want to set it free.

Money is work and there’s work to be done. Our planet is in grave danger. We need to learn new ways to relate to it. We need to find new ways of harvesting its produce. We need to find new ways to harness its energy. We need to plant whole forests of trees. We need to end the loss of species and take care of those we still have. We need to clean the rivers and reintroduce diversity. We need to rewild the remotest places, and bring back the bear and the wolf and the big cats to these shores.

Money is the key to it all.

It is lack of money that fuels crime. It is lack of money that drives people into gangs. It is lack of money that encourages addiction. It is lack of money that creates domestic abuse. It is lack of money that impedes our education. It is lack of money that forces people into bondage. It is lack of money that forces people into prostitution. It is lack of money that forces people into mercenary regimes. It is lack of money that forces people to destroy their environment. It is lack of money that stops people from fulfilling their destiny.

Don’t say it is just a bit of paper. It is so much more than that. It is our enabler. It is the means by which we store and distribute the value that we have made.

People without money are made desperate for it. People with too much money are made heartless and cruel.

We want to cure the wealthy of their wealth, and the poor of their poverty. Both are suffering from sicknesses of the soul.

We are one family, one people, one species on this planet. When a child goes hungry for lack of money, that is our child. When a man kills himself for shame because he can’t feed his family, that is our brother. When a woman sells herself to put food on the table, that is our sister. When a veteran of the war dies of cold on the bleak winter streets, or a lonely old widow freezes to death in a flat she can’t afford to heat, those are our Father and Mother, our blood relations, and we should grieve for them as we grieve for our own.

The word “capital” means the head, as in the head of a column. It has the same root as cattle and chattel. It is capitalism that has turned us into chattels that are milked for our labour. The word redeem means to buy back what we once owned. It is through debt that we became slaves, mere property without a soul. The redeemer is the one who pays the price of redemption, which is release from debt-slavery. The Jubilee is when all debts are forgiven, when the people return to the lands of their birth, when the liberty bells ring, and freedom sounds throughout the Kingdom.

Let us make today the day of jubilation. Let the Jubilee begin.

Part I

Money Transformation Speech

A guardian dragon at the entrance to the City

Delivered from the plinth of the Eastern Dragon, south side of London Bridge, 7th November 2016 (this being New Year’s Day):

What is money?

Money is time. It represents all that time you have spent, in your office, in your factory, in your art, in your craft, at your desk, in your job, focussing your attention on a task of some kind, sometimes, but not exclusively, doing something that is socially useful, something that other people might appreciate.

Money is value. It is art. It is ingenuity. It is thought. It is planning. It is execution. It is service. It is giving over a part of your life to other people’s wants and needs.

Money has always been with us, since the beginning of time. Since the first human took the first steps on this planet, we’ve had money as our companion.

It is the item of exchange, the gift, the promise, the valued object, the carved stone, the rainbow-coloured shell, the glinting metal, which we offered to another as a token of trust. This is my pledge to you that I will pay you what I owe. Before the invention of writing, it was accompanied by our breath, our word, our promise. We promised to pay the bearer.

In this City, passed these gates, the wealth of the world is locked up. We want to set it free.

Money is work and there’s work to be done. Our planet is in grave danger. We need to learn new ways to relate to it. We need to find new ways of harvesting its produce. We need to find new ways to harness its energy. We need to plant whole forests of trees. We need to end the loss of species and take care of those we still have. We need to clean the rivers and reintroduce diversity. We need to rewild the remotest places, and bring back the bear and the wolf and the big cats to these shores.

Money is the key to it all.

It is lack of money that fuels crime. It is lack of money that drives people into gangs. It is lack of money that encourages addiction. It is lack of money that creates domestic abuse. It is lack of money that impedes our education. It is lack of money that forces people into bondage. It is lack of money that forces people into prostitution. It is lack of money that forces people into mercenary regimes. It is lack of money that forces people to destroy their environment. It is lack of money that stops people from fulfilling their destiny.

Don’t say it is just a bit of paper. It is so much more than that. It is our enabler. It is the means by which we store and distribute the value that we have made.

People without money are made desperate for it. People with too much money are made heartless and cruel.

We want to cure the wealthy of their wealth, and the poor of their poverty. Both are suffering from sicknesses of the soul.

We are one family, one people, one species on this planet. When a child goes hungry for lack of money, that is our child. When a man kills himself for shame because he can’t feed his family, that is our brother. When a woman sells herself to put food on the table, that is our sister. When a veteran of the war dies of cold on the bleak winter streets, or a lonely old widow freezes to death in a flat she can’t afford to heat, those are our Father and Mother, our blood relations, and we should grieve for them as we grieve for our own.

The word “capital” means the head, as in the head of a column. It has the same root as cattle and chattel. It is capitalism that has turned us into chattels that are milked for our labour. The word redeem means to buy back what we once owned. It is through debt that we became slaves, mere property without a soul. The redeemer is the one who pays the price of redemption, which is release from debt-slavery. The Jubilee is when all debts are forgiven, when the people return to the lands of their birth, when the liberty bells ring, and freedom sounds throughout the Kingdom.

Let us make today the day of jubilation. Let the Jubilee begin.

Bare-faced hypocrisy on Syria

Last week Russia failed to be re-elected as a member of the United Nation’s human rights council (UNHRC).

This was because of its bombing of East Aleppo, currently under occupation by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, previously known as the Al Nusra Front, a branch of Al Qaeda.

Meanwhile Saudi Arabia is the elected chair of the UNHRC. This is despite its ongoing bombing campaign in Yemen, known to have targeted civilians, including the recent attack upon a funeral, in which 140 people died.

Other members of the council include the United States, which is currently involved in a coalition to attack the city of Mosul in Iraq, and the UK, which is selling arms to Saudi Arabia.

Of course, we all know that Mosul has been captured by Islamic State terrorists, which means that the deaths of civilians in that campaign will be justified by the media.

However, the deaths of civilians in Aleppo is not justified, we are told, because, um, some of the terrorists in Aleppo are moderate terrorists: meaning they are supported by the United States.

The fact that they are working side by side with Al Qaeda, and are hardly distinguishable from them, is neither here nor there. They are our terrorists so they must be good.

You don’t have to be a Putin supporter to recognise that there is something wrong with this narrative.

The Russians are condemned for intervening in a civil war in Syria, despite the fact that most of the anti-Assad forces there are foreign-backed mercenaries bussed in from other countries.

The Saudis, on the other hand, are intervening in an actual civil war, but they are our allies, so their on-going violations of international law are studiously ignored.

And in case you haven’t figured this out yet: the attack on Mosul is also a civil war, the majority of Islamic State being ex-members of the old Iraqi Army who were disbanded after the American invasion of 2003.

In other words, you might have very good reasons for supporting American actions in Iraq, but it is bare-faced hypocrisy to condemn Russia for doing exactly the same thing in Syria.

*************

From The Whitstable Gazette, 03 /11/2016

The editor welcomes letters on any topical subject, but reserves the right to edit them. Letters must include your name and address even when emailed and a daytime telephone number.
Send letters to:
The Editor, 5-8 Boorman Way, Estuary View Business Park, Whitstable, Kent CT5 3SE,
fax  01227 762415
email kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk

Money, Magic and the Imagination Part II – Mission Statement

A guardian dragon at the entrance to the City

We are a group of independent artists, magicians, pagans, druids, and media workers who held a series of ritual events in the City of London on the 7th November 2016.

Our aim was to bring the subject of money creation to public attention using ritual as our our symbolic tool. We say that money is a sigil, a magical symbol which enters our lives on the most fundamental level, as desire. Money represents the fulfilment (or lack) of all desire in the current world and we carry it about on our persons, in our wallets and our purses, in our pockets and handbags, allowing it to control us on the most intimate of levels.

Money activates us in the deepest parts of our being. Anyone who tells you they don’t care about money is lying to you. If you’ve ever had a wallet or a credit card stolen, you will know the feeling. It’s like a sickness in the pit of your stomach, as if you’ve been violated. It’s not only the fact that you’ve lost the potential that the money provided, it’s also the feeling that something deeply intimate and personal has been taken away from you. Money is desire and is therefore a part of what makes us what we are on the most fundamental level.

People think that they possess money, but we say we are possessed by it. It is an occult force, meaning that it is hidden. It works in the dark. Ritual is the means by which we call the secret forces into the circle of consciousness, so that they can be known and recognised, so that we can speak to them of our desire, so that we can bring love out into the open and release it from its bondage.

Money is the essence of all that is human. It is made by us, through our art and through our emotion, through our creativity and through our craft, through our time and through our desire, through our sacrifices for love. It is made by us so it belongs to us, to all of us.

The sum total of all wealth in the world is the sum total of all human activity, paid and unpaid, through all time on this planet. Therefore, we say, it must be free. It must be released from its confinement, in vaults and in safes, in secret hoards and offshore holdings, in bullion and bank accounts throughout the world, and made to work for us, for the fulfilment of all of our needs and desires.

Money is a language. It is the language of trade and exchange, those most human of activities, but also of trust, and is only meaningful when it circulates freely, when it does the rounds, from pocket to pocket, from project to project, from product to product, and back again.

Money can be anything. It can be breakfast, lunch or dinner. It can be the fulfilment of any appetite. It can mean liberation or enslavement. It can be used for good or evil. Like magic it is morally neutral, but it does not neutralise morality.

Our world is groaning under the weight of an ever increasing debt. How can this be? A tiny elite are holding the majority of the World’s population hostage, using debt as their weapon.

Banks create money. They create money out of thin air, and then charge interest on it. What this means is that the money we have to pay back is always more than the money we borrowed. This too is a form of magic, but of the smoke and mirrors kind. If banks issued bank notes (as they have in the past) then we would see what they were up to, and stop them. As it is, they issue money as loans and mortgages, and we can’t see what they are doing. We assume the money they lend us has some reality in the form of savings but, by the magic of fractional reserve banking, they are able to issue more money than they hold in reserve. Many, many times more.

Most of the money in circulation in the world today is electronic money issued by banks. If a private individual tried creating money based on reserves they didn’t have, we would arrest them for fraud. Not so the banks, it seems. They can go on issuing fake money and profiting from it with impunity.

This process of money creation by private banks as interest bearing loans is what lies at the heart of many, if not most, of the World’s problems. As long as money creation is left in the hands of private entities, the debt mountain will continue to grow. The creation of money is a public need and should not be given over to private banks to exploit for their own ends.

Part III – speech

Money Transformation Day of Ritual – Mission Statement

A guardian dragon at the entrance to the City

We are a group of independent artists, magicians, pagans, druids, and media workers who held a series of ritual events in the City of London on the 7th November 2016.

Our aim was to bring the subject of money creation to public attention using ritual as our our symbolic tool. We say that money is a sigil, a magical symbol which enters our lives on the most fundamental level, as desire. Money represents the fulfilment (or lack) of all desire in the current world and we carry it about on our persons, in our wallets and our purses, in our pockets and handbags, allowing it to control us on the most intimate of levels.

Money activates us in the deepest parts of our being. Anyone who tells you they don’t care about money is lying to you. If you’ve ever had a wallet or a credit card stolen, you will know the feeling. It’s like a sickness in the pit of your stomach, as if you’ve been violated. It’s not only the fact that you’ve lost the potential that the money provided, it’s also the feeling that something deeply intimate and personal has been taken away from you. Money is desire and is therefore a part of what makes us what we are on the most fundamental level.

People think that they possess money, but we say we are possessed by it. It is an occult force, meaning that it is hidden. It works in the dark. Ritual is the means by which we call the secret forces into the circle of consciousness, so that they can be known and recognised, so that we can speak to them of our desire, so that we can bring love out into the open and release it from its bondage.

Money is the essence of all that is human. It is made by us, through our art and through our emotion, through our creativity and through our craft, through our time and through our desire, through our sacrifices for love. It is made by us so it belongs to us, to all of us.

The sum total of all wealth in the world is the sum total of all human activity, paid and unpaid, through all time on this planet. Therefore, we say, it must be free. It must be released from its confinement, in vaults and in safes, in secret hoards and offshore holdings, in bullion and bank accounts throughout the world, and made to work for us, for the fulfilment of all of our needs and desires.

Money is a language. It is the language of trade and exchange, those most human of activities, but also of trust, and is only meaningful when it circulates freely, when it does the rounds, from pocket to pocket, from project to project, from product to product, and back again.

Money can be anything. It can be breakfast, lunch or dinner. It can be the fulfilment of any appetite. It can mean liberation or enslavement. It can be used for good or evil. Like magic it is morally neutral, but it does not neutralise morality.

Our world is groaning under the weight of an ever increasing debt. How can this be? A tiny elite are holding the majority of the World’s population hostage, using debt as their weapon.

Banks create money. They create money out of thin air, and then charge interest on it. What this means is that the money we have to pay back is always more than the money we borrowed. This too is a form of magic, but of the smoke and mirrors kind. If banks issued bank notes (as they have in the past) then we would see what they were up to, and stop them. As it is, they issue money as loans and mortgages, and we can’t see what they are doing. We assume the money they lend us has some reality in the form of savings but, by the magic of fractional reserve banking, they are able to issue more money than they hold in reserve. Many, many times more.

Most of the money in circulation in the world today is electronic money issued by banks. If a private individual tried creating money based on reserves they didn’t have, we would arrest them for fraud. Not so the banks, it seems. They can go on issuing fake money and profiting from it with impunity.

This process of money creation by private banks as interest bearing loans is what lies at the heart of many, if not most, of the World’s problems. As long as money creation is left in the hands of private entities, the debt mountain will continue to grow. The creation of money is a public need and should not be given over to private banks to exploit for their own ends.

Money Transformation Day of Ritual speech

Money City Magic: a series of ritual events in the City of London

A guardian dragon at the entrance to the City

Mission statement.

We are a group of independent artists, magicians, pagans, druids, and media workers who plan to hold a series of ritual events in the City of London on the 7th November.

Our aim is to bring the subject of money creation to public attention using ritual as our our symbolic tool. We say that money is a sigil, a magical symbol which enters our lives on the most fundamental level, as desire. Money represents the fulfilment (or lack) of all desire in the current world and we carry it about on our persons, in our wallets and our purses, in our pockets and handbags, allowing it to control us on the most intimate of levels.

Money activates us in the deepest parts of our being. Anyone who tells you they don’t care about money is lying to you. If you’ve ever had a wallet or a credit card stolen, you will know the feeling. It’s like a sickness in the pit of your stomach, as if you’ve been violated. It’s not only the fact that you’ve lost the potential that the money provided, it’s also the feeling that something deeply intimate and personal has been taken away from you. Money is desire and is therefore a part of what makes us what we are on the most fundamental level.

People think that they possess money, but we say we are possessed by it. It is an occult force, meaning that it is hidden. It works in the dark. Ritual is the means by which we call the secret forces into the circle of consciousness, so that they can be known and recognised, so that we can speak to them of our desire, so that we can bring love out into the open and release it from its bondage.

Money is the essence of all that is human. It is made by us, through our art and through our emotion, through our creativity and through our craft, through our time and through our desire, through our sacrifices for love. It is made by us so it belongs to us, to all of us.

The sum total of all wealth in the world is the sum total of all human activity, paid and unpaid, through all time on this planet. Therefore, we say, it must be free. It must be released from its confinement, in vaults and in safes, in secret hoards and offshore holdings, in bullion and bank accounts throughout the world, and made to work for us, for the fulfilment of all of our needs and desires.

Money is a language. It is the language of trade and exchange, those most human of activities, but also of trust, and is only meaningful when it circulates, when it does the rounds, from pocket to pocket, from project to project, from product to product, and back again.

Money can be anything. It can be breakfast, lunch or dinner. It can be the fulfilment of any appetite. It can mean liberation or enslavement. It can be used for good or evil. Like magic it is morally neutral, but it does not neutralise morality.

Our world is groaning under the weight of an ever increasing debt. How can this be? A tiny elite are holding the majority of the World’s population hostage, using debt as their weapon.

Banks create money. They create money out of thin air, and then charge interest on it. What this means is that the money we have to pay back is always more than the money we borrowed. This too is a form of magic, but of the smoke and mirrors kind. If banks issued bank notes (as they have in the past) then we would see what they were up to, and stop them. As it is, they issue money as loans and mortgages, and we can’t see what they are doing. We assume the money they lend us has some reality in the form of savings but, by the magic of fractional reserve banking, they are able to issue more money than they hold in reserve. Many, many times more.

Most of the money in circulation in the world today is electronic money issued by banks. If a private individual tried creating money based on reserves they didn’t have, we would arrest them for fraud. Not so the banks, it seems. They can go on issuing fake money and profiting from it with impunity.

This process of money creation by private banks as interest bearing loans is what lies at the heart of many, if not most, of the World’s problems. As long as money creation is left in the hands of private entities, the debt mountain will continue to grow. The creation of money is a public need and should not be given over to private banks to exploit for their own ends.

Details.

The first ritual will take place at the entrance to the City, on the South side of London Bridge, on the Eastern side of the road, under the dragon, at 12.30, where we will ask the dragon’s permission to enter the City and read the mission statement.

The next ritual will be at to the Monument to the Great Fire, a walk of about six minutes. The ritual will take place there at 13.00.

From there we go to the Bank of England, another six minute walk, where we plan to deposit a £100 worth of spiritually activated five pound notes into the vaults of that great institution.

From there we go to the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral, where a ritual of forgiveness will be enacted. Journey time approximately 12 minutes.

Finally we will go to the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand, where King Arthur Pendragon, Druid King of Britain, will read out a proclamation on monetary justice, in the manner of the ancient Bronze Age Kings. Walk time approximately 12 minutes.

How you get from site to site is entirely down to you. You can join us at the beginning, or meet us anywhere along the way. You can walk or use public transport, or teleport if you like. Approximate times for each of the rituals are as follows:

12.30: Southern side of London Bridge, Eastern dragon.

13.00: The Monument.

14.00: The Bank of England.

15.00: St. Pauls.

16.00: The Royal Courts of Justice. Meet at the junction of Bell Lane and Fleet Street.