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The love of money is the root of all evil. 

It’s enough to live the simple life. 

It is better to give than to receive. 

You need money to make money. 

Money isn’t that important. 

Most of us grew up with these sayings, especially if we grew up in a Christian household. Christianity has some interesting ideas about money that includes the idea that rich people are less likely to be good people. And in the ancient world, perhaps that was more likely to be true. It was more difficult to become wealthy then, and wealth was far more likely to be acquired or destroyed by violence than it is now. Religion was tied up in well-being. The gods of the conquerors were assumed to be in the right because they were stronger, which certainly left the conquered people the poorer. That being said, there is nothing in Paganism that suggests that money itself is evil.

One of my friends finds the idea that things having prices is downright offensive. College, for example should be free, because you can’t put a price on something that has such a powerful effect on one’s life.  Many of my friends believe the healthcare should be completely free because you can’t put a value on human life. To even attempt to do so is morally wrong. But lets unpack this concept.

To say that all life has infinite value is the same thing as saying it has no value. In the realm of the non-embodied, there may (I wouldn’t know) be no need to pick and choose between one thing or another, or how one spends one’s time (whatever that might mean in such a context). But we live on Earth. If all things are equally valuable, how can we decide how to designate the limited amount of time and energy we have to use? If both Mary and Eva want to spend time with us, how do we decide? One might say “Both!” But it is a fact that spending a bunch of time with Mary and Eva together is not equivalent to spending less time with each of them individually. A judgment must be made. We are limited by our physicality.

Money and Hierarchy in Today's Paganism

Warning: I am standing on a soapbox.

Recently, someone with whom I'd been conversing on Google+ for a few weeks was surprised to realize I was an author and she owned one of my books. 

It might seem odd that her surprise surprised me. I asked why she was surprised. I don't know if my question seemed ingenuous and pretentious. She kindly responded that she does not run into authors. Ah, of course! I understand. 

The thing is: I get out of touch with stupid consensus realities, so forgot it is unusual for a best selling author to be available, acting just like a community member. That's why I didn't initially understand her surprise.

But as long as big name Pagan authors are hard to be in contact with, they help create a class system in our community.

*Note: this was first published on Pagan Activist, and is also included in my book The Leader Within. These conversations about Pagans and money and do we pay our teachers come up over and over, so I thought this was worth reposting here as it's an important issue for Pagan leaders. 

Paganism: Money is Bad, Right?

The question, "Should Pagans charge for services/rituals/events/classes" comes up with some frequency within our community. One of my activist goals is looking at underlying difficulties and assumptions in our culture and how that impacts us.

Prosperity - a successful, flourishing, or thriving condition, especially in financial respects

We all want to be happy, and see those we care for to be happy as well. To be successful at what we do, to flourish and thrive is what all humans hope for. But why does it so often involve money? To be sure there are tribes that do not use money. The Bushmen of the Kalahri are happy to be eating ostrich eggs and boar’s heads, cooked in hot sand and embers, and feel extra privileged to get a bite of mostly cooked boar anus or a roasted beetle. Jakob Malas, a Khomani hunter from a section of the Kalahari that is now Gemsbok National Park says "The Kalahari is like a big farmyard, it is not wilderness to us. We know every plant animal and insect, and know how to use them. No other people could ever know and love this farm like us." * They do not feel poor. They have few material possessions, but they dance and sing.

And we might envy that happiness, that simplicity. Life in the Western world is hard apace, and filled with choices and conflicts. We lack the deep knowledge and support of each other that comes with living closely in groups. Modern economists call this social capital. And money can be very hard to think about. My mother, raised during the great depression, used to agonize over balancing her checkbook to the penny. She would sit at the kitchen table and moan and swear. The consequences for not thinking about money are high. We can loose our mode of transportation or our home. But it is worth noting that the consequences for the bushman who fails to think ahead are even higher.

In truth, even in the developed nations, we have the option of checking out of the economy. People have been making communes for generations, some of them non-monetary where resources and labor are pooled for a common goal. And yet only a small portion of the population chooses to do this at any given time.

 “Think what god it may be."

(Ezra Pound, Religio)

In the Baltics, conversion came late and memory of the Old Gods lingered long. Some of Europe's first New Pagan Movements got their start there during the period of national and cultural efflorescence between the First and Second World Wars known as the Baltic Renaissance. Like ourselves, the pagans of Latvia and Lithuania are new pagans, but they have been so for a generation longer than we have, and their experience has much to teach us.

The small (11½ x 8 x 3½ inches) inlaid wooden box shown above, from Latvia, dates to the 1920s. It is a cash box, with interior compartments for coins, banknotes, and bills. The inlaid pattern on the outside lid represents the phases of the Moon.

I've hinted at the mystery of ducks and money in previous posts, but as with any true mystery, words can never fully explain it.  This is my primary money duck.  It is a mutant duck, largely because its eyeball is located on its cute little neck, rather than in a more convenient location, such as its head.

The duck is tied to a deep prosperity, such that the ordinary sense of the word as relating to money, worldly goods, and abundance simply scratch the surface of the depth of the prosperity the duck enfolds and describes.