Finances as Applied Magic
Magic and finance share an essence: both manage and conduct an energetic flow.
Even if at first glance a CEO and a shaman would seem like diametrically opposite figures —one of them running a business from a lofty skyscraper while the other is performing ceremonies from a jungle—, they both share a fundamental activity: directing flows of energy. And even if in most cases only the shaman is aware that he is actually manipulating energetic channels in order to perform an operation (healing, for example), they both play an important role as social leaders, and thus have the possibility of transmuting the reality in which we live.
Money can be conceived as a flow of energy, a sort of ethereal substance that “makes things happen” or sets them in motion. It is not by chance that we often talk about a “cash-flow” or “capital flow” when we describe financial transactions. If we recognize existence itself as an integral, holistic flow, inscribed in an indivisible system in which economics and spiritualism share a part, this suggests that there are universal forces at work at the financial sphere. This, in turn, allows for the principles of magic and shamanism to be applied onto business.
This is what, in larger terms, proposes the writer Daniel Pinchbeck. By observing the way in which large companies and financial systems operate, he suggests we should apply models that are traditionally linked to shamanism and alchemy, and in this way direct businesses that will generate material assets and simultaneously bring about social changes. It is not about a magic formula to make us rich. It is, instead, ideological scaffolding and a body of knowledge that can be applied to consciously conduct energetic cash flows towards a specific reality.
Money can act as a “fertilizer” that will germinate intent. Corporations can also see themselves as metaphoric extensions of self-organized human cells, as tools and instruments that potentiate the desire to activate a collective change. We could maybe even reconceive human endeavor as artistic work.
The shaman is the healer, the priest and the artist, but he is also the manager, the legislator and the guardian of a community’s psychic economy. Applying a shamanistic business model implies considering the possibility of contributing to the collective healing and providing a favorable environment for the integral development of humankind. In visionary capacity lies shared responsibility.
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