“The only real measure of magickal attainment is its manifestation in Midgard. I have to wonder about the claims of wizards who live on welfare, and don’t contribute articles because they can’t afford a second hand computer, or squander their talents on drugs and self pity.”
Sweyn Plowright
The second essential element of a full and happy life lies in mastering the balance between Wealth and Lifestyle.
Putting aside the question of money for a moment, I would like to point out that man cannot live in a vacuum. We need things. If you are going to survive in a human body, you will need a certain minimum amount of food and shelter. If you are going to survive in a human society, you are going to need a certain minimum of respectable clothing, transportation and some cash to spend on social events as well.
Oops, we didn’t get very far before the question of things became a question of money, did we?
The bottom line is we do need stuff to live and, in this day and age, we need money to buy the stuff we need to live. If you want to talk about going back to a DIY hunter/gatherer/farmer lifestyle, then we can talk, but I don’t want to hear anybody give me any crap about how the spiritually enlightened don’t need material possessions because that’s just a bunch of crap.
The monks, priests and yogis who preach most fervently against materialism are also the ones who beg for a living, in case you hadn’t noticed. I really fail to see how begging can be considered somehow more noble than producing something of value that you can trade with others.
The third possiblity would be to steal what you need, I suppose, and it certainly seems that some of our ancestors considered this a viable option. Personally, jail time would interfere too much with some of my lifestyle preferences. So I’m planing to stick with earning a living for now.
This is, in fact, the important point that most success gurus overlook. Once you get beyond the bare essentials, how you make your money very quickly becomes more important than how much you make. It’s not much good making $10,000,000.00 a year if you have to work in hell eighteen hours a day to do it. It might make sense, in some cases, to put in a few hard years and save for an early retirement. To me it makes much more sense to find a way to make the money you need doing something you love and still have time for friends and family.
So what are the essential steps to mastering the balance between Wealth and Lifestyle?
1. Make a decision that you’re going to take responsibility for your own financial situation. The universe does not owe you a living and you’re not going anywhere in life until you realize that fact.
2. Develop a valuable specialized skill. Unskilled laborers earn peanuts and are generally subjected to crappy working conditions into the bargain. You need to make yourself valuable to your fellow man if you want to earn anything more than a subsistence.
3.Make sure that your special skill is something that you enjoy and that you have a natural talent for. There’s no such thing as nine-to-five in the real world and you may need to be doing your thing for a long time
4. Find an honest way to make money off of your special skill. Unfortunately, the money does not roll in automatically just because you happen to be great at something. You have to learn how to sell your services and you still have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day.
5. Learn how to manage and invest the money you do make. I’ve met plenty of poor/rich people who bring in huge paychecks but blow it all on crap and live neck-deep in debt. Don’t be one of them.
6. Don’t forget the meaning of life! Money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Take the time to relax, enjoy yourself, look after your health and never ever forget the people in your life who make it all worth while.
That’s it! Not a lot of detail this time, just the broad strokes. The details are going to depend on you! What’s your greatest passion? What are your special talents? What do you want out of life and how far are you willing to go to make it happen?
I agree that economics is a fact of life in Midgard. I enjoy earning a living – part-time at the moment as I continue to recover gradually from my illness – and using my money to buy a decent computer and monitor so that it makes it pleasant to write. If I decide to choose working more in the electronic medium one day, I may even get myself an iPad, but I am careful not to get obsessed about gadgets. A gadget has to serve a good purpose for my creative work before I will spend money on it.
I have to say, I find your article honest and practical. If you are going to have something approaching an acceptable lifestyle by the western values, all these things are true. The only become untrue if you are going to take extreme actions which are definitely the exception to the way most people in Western cultures live.
The only thing that seems really arrogant to me is the quote by Sweyn. The illusionary stigma of welfare is pretty shocking. There are lots of people who live on welfare, and probably not for the reasons that most people think of. And yet, from the sense of being a dedicated practitioner of any kind of magic or spiritual discipline, from a certain point of view, welfare makes perfect sense. Just think what you could do if you didn’t have to work at all and could just focus on your spiritual discipline 24/7 without having to get up and go to a job for 8+ hours (not including traveling to and from the job) and everything else. No, it’s not a glamorous and luxurious lifestyle, but it is a lifestyle that someone can choose to embrace. And, if I was a truly great and powerful wizard, I wouldn’t really care about having any kind of computer or contributing articles of any kind to anybody. I would have far more important and better things to do then that. It’s because I am not that I do the things I do, because it is part of my own search for knowledge, wisdom, and power.
Hi Christopher – in Sweyn’s defence I think he had in mind a specific individual known to himself and I personally when he made those comments. The gentleman in question is a master of self-deception, of talking big and blaming everyone around him for his failure to live up to his unrealistic standards. While most welfare recipients are genuine as far as I can tell, it seems pretty clear that this character has not really got a legitimate reason to receive such benefits but has been astute enough to milk old injuries. Perhaps his only “success” as a magician. I take your point about not slaving away 8+ hours a day, but despite working not at all this person produces almost nothing creatively, despite presenting himself as a creative dynamo. He spends his days wrapped up in self-pity and spite and paranoia.
Sometimes I begin to feel compassion for him, now that I no longer have to deal with him sucking out my life force; almost invariably as soon as these feelings rise I hear on the grapvine yet another tale of his manipulation and abuse of this or that unsuspecting and well-meaning soul, sucked in by his hyperbole.
anyway, now you know the background to Sweyn’s comment you might be able to see where he is coming from :)
I should add that of course I acknowledge the Daoist point that sometimes the spiritual master is the disheveled homeless guy and not the splendid prince. But the person in question in this case…ain’t no Daoist master ;)
I have no problem with people who choose to do the minimalist thing.
Technically I have no problem with people who beg for their supper, either, provided that the charity they consume is requested honestly and given voluntarily. I just don’t think their impoverished status can be taken as evidence of any kind of “spiritual advancement”.
Speaking from my own experience, it takes far more discipline to get up and go to work everyday than to not. The real reason that there are so many poor people in the world is that poverty is easier than the alternative.
I think it may be fair to put the above quote into context, with apologies to Sweyn.
The above quote (and what follows) was taken from private correspondence and I believe I may have mentioned that I would like to quote him on his thoughts, but cannot say that he actually gave permission for his words to be used in this way.
“I take a third position, that attachment to the material is ultimately self defeating. However, disdain for the material is equally so. How often have we been to Pagan gatherings where the ostentatiously titled maguses & HPs barely have a job between them, and even less ability to make any difference in the real world.
As I have said before, the only real measure of magickal attainment is its manifestation in Midgard. I have to wonder about the claims of wizards who live on welfare, and don’t contribute articles because they can’t afford a second hand computer, or squander their talents on drugs and self pity.
Even if we choose to live economical lives, we still have the choices and abilities to achieve things that matter. This usually entails a minimum level of material attainment (including personal hygiene). So some material ambitions are a good thing, if the results support some worthwhile works.”
S
First of all: Awesome post, Clint! And when did you say you’ll open that martial arts / life style school? Because I want to be the first pupil there. ;)
I’m not a great worker and always felt that ‘work’ is rather an activity for ‘slaves’. And then I found out that in ancient Greece they considered work to be LITERALLY for REAL slaves (‘slave work’ = ά-σχολΐα) and that the true human being (the free citizen) should spend his time in σχολή (‘leisure’) [unfortunately this is the absolutely wrong word, in German it’s called Muße – a time inspired by one’s Muse — probably the best translation is contemplation / meditation / philosophical activity / ‘quality time’]. So, the Greeks, and later the Romans, thought that thinking, being creative, studying is better than ‘work’. Cicero spoke of otium cum dignitate in this context, a dignified activity in reclusiveness (= philosophical and scientific ‘work’). So just hanging out wasn’t ‘cool’ for the ancients: Carpe diem!
Now the Greeks and Romans had slavery, we don’t. Even good, old Thomas Jefferson who coined the legendary phrase “All men are created equal” had two hundred slaves working at his estate. So, for us free citizens today, WORK – earning money – is a reality. I admit, a reality I tried to escape as long as I could, but after all earning money in a chosen field one likes is part of discovering one’s True Will. The problem with calling yourself a great magician and living on welfare is that magic is about DOING IN THIS WORLD, not ‘hanging out’ in the otherworld and being a ‘Master’ on the astral plane whilst living OBJECTIVELY a rather meagre life. (There are always exceptions, A.O. Spare being one, but he was VERY CREATIVE, in terms of art and magical technique and their unity.) The problem here is that a magician is someone supposed to be powerful – controlling outer and inner realities, changing them at will and expanding his possibilities and thus his freedom and power (= the ability to do things). In Runic Magic this is the realm of Fehu and the aspect of the Magician’s Mind-Body-Soul-Complex known as Hamingja.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that you have to become rich or are to become an overachiever. It’s likely that many magicians will not want to “slave away 8+ hours a day” and will have to find a compromise (= find a job they love [which might take time], become a self-employed person, work part-time or, in worst case, live on welfare). But I think that the fact that a magician lives on welfare (all the time) is proof for his inefficiency. Except he CONSCIOUSLY decides to do so. After all, “… it may be that yonder beggar is a King. A King may choose his garment as he will: there is no certain test: but a beggar cannot hide his poverty. ” (AL II, 58) But if he lives on welfare he is OBLIGED to create, produce, inspire others and to prove that he has reached the status of a magician (= being a healer, writing books/grimoires, doing music, asf.). He must give something back to the community from which he receives something (money). Because the danger of occultism is to suffer from the superman-syndrome, but in reality to contribute or create nothing. A magician should be able to earn (or get) money in some way, to find a person to sleep with, to repair his bike when it’s broken – like Bob and Harry can, too, though they don’t claim to be superman. Sorry, everything else is not serious. So in context or not: Sweyn is RIGHT!
I have seen too many self-proclaimed magicians who are not able to achieve the most normal things in life, but will talk themselves into great adepts. Our Tradition doesn’t support the idea of spiritual vs. material, or of laziness. Fleißigkeit (industriousness) and efficiency is part of the Germanic Tradition, which had an important impact on the the Enlightenment and the modern world that led to our dominance in the world for centuries. I’m myself not claiming that I always get my shit together or that I have no problems in life. But I will always set certain standards for myself and measure my magick by what I have achieved in Midgard (as I said here, I don’t accept society’s idea of ‘success’) and I will not proclaim to be a great magician if I cannot achieve what I want (ok, I won’t proclaim to be great or that others are ‘less than myself’ even if I live the life I want to live).
“But the part that many armchair magicians forget is that once you have read or cast a pattern of manifestation in the world, you need to live according to that pattern in order to bring it into full manifestation. You need to live and to act in the realisation that change has occurred. Nothing will ever be delivered to you on a plate. If we take Egil’s Saga as an example, we do not see some conjurer in an ivory tower. Egil was a mighty runemaster, but he was also a man of action. We need to write our own runes in the same vital way.
There is a reason for this. The heroic soul who goes out into the world in active pursuit of his Will is exercising that part of the soul called the hamingja: crudely put, the storehouse of luck. But as with anything, exercise and training will actually increase the hamingja, making the person luckier. This is not a simple statement of, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” It is far more expansive than that. Increase of effort builds to an increase of successes, but in ever greater proportion. The go-getter becomes exponentially ‘luckier’ over time. There is also the question of just how much your Will really counts for. If it is truly your Will to gain something, you will get off your backside and set off to get it. Sit in your chair and wait for it and you’re sending yourself entirely the wrong message.” (Michael Kelly)
I have nothing more to add.
PS: And just in the case I appear as the super-nerd here because of all this ‘ancient Greek’ stuff above – that’s plain postmodern, LAZY wikipedia education. ;)
No Problems Clint. Some things can be shouted from the rooftops, …. ;-)
Hey Matt. Great reply. It could have been posted as an essay. The fact that you have made the effort to put it where others will read it, and in a form & quality that will influence some of the readers, is proof of the very points you make in the post. You have made a difference.
Yes, that was an excellent reply and could easily have been posted as an article on its own. Thanks Matt.
Actually, I’ve never believed that “work” was something natural for humans. A Hunter/Gatherer lifestyle is the closest we can identify to a natural human lifestyle and it certainly didn’t involve doing nine-to-five behind a desk. A Farmer/Warrior lifestyle would be the next most natural.
The point is just to recognize that your options are limited to productive labour, beggary or theft. Only one of these options adds value to the lives of others. The other two are parasitic by definition.
If you have any capacity to earn your own living, then I count abusing government wellfare as theft of a particularly dishonourable kind. That’s a personal opinion.
So am I saying that we all need to buck up and work for a living like good little slaves? Nothing could be further from the truth. What I am saying is that we all need to take responsibility for our own financial situations and do what it takes to build the kind of lives we’d rather be living.
Oh, and I love Egil’s Saga. You know, I think Egil’s Saga is more important to my view of Heathenism than the Eddas. Good call.
http://www.thomasplummer.net/blog/show/53