In rural agricultural times, Lammas was a holiday of prosperity and plenty when all the good folk would gather round the village green to celebrate the first fruits from the fields and their hopes for the harvest to come. For us urban wage slaves farming our 401Ks, the outlook doesn't appear nearly so bright this year. Not a whole lot of green in our retirement fields. Nevertheless, since the yield of our labor takes the form of money, it would not hurt to consider once again the magickal principles of capital that in good times and bad have always helped raise a harvest.
Mary Rowland knows the principles of capital magick. She is a financial journalist who writes for Microsoft Investor, The New York Times, Business Week, Fortune and Bloomberg Personal Finance. She quit her successful stockbroker job a few years back to return to school. Her co-workers thought she was crazy. This is what she told them:
"It's about following a light I see, even though I don't know where it might lead, about enriching my days rather than my portfolio. My portfolio, you see, is composed not just of stocks and bonds and real estate, but also of the investments I make in myself, in my lifestyle, in designing a life that makes me happy. Sure, we need financial investments to accomplish that, especially stock investments for growth. Yes, we should be setting aside regular amounts of money and dollar-cost averaging into stocks and mutual funds. But what good is all that if we don't know what kind of life we want, if we're not investing in ourselves?"
I learned this lesson personally when I bought my condo. I was loath to part with my stock options. They represented more money than I had ever seen in one place before in my life. When I cashed them in for the down payment, I grieved about how much more they might grow in the future versus getting a nice place to live now. That's because I perceived that I was "spending" the money. What I came to understand is that I was really "investing" the money. I still had it. It had just changed form from negotiable securities to real estate. As it turned out, the stock has stagnated and my condo has doubled in value.
What was happening here was the First Principle of Capital Magick. It's called Conversion. I converted the form but retained the value. That's the magick between spending and investing. Spending seems like a choice but really it's just a farewell to the money. Investing is a true choice between value in one form and value in another. I find I can even apply the principle of conversion in other transactions. If I buy something at the grocery store that I don't need, that's spending. If I buy it for a specific purpose, that's investing. Yes, sometimes I do retail therapy, I admit, but the value of retail therapy is in the action of buying, not the amount. So if I keep my purchase small, then it is commensurate with the value received and I can still consider it an investment.
The principle of conversion works with time, talent, even interpersonal boundaries. We can waste time without a real purpose or we can invest time doing the exact same thing, but with intent. We can languish in an unproductive relationship or suffer a boring conversation, or we can be clear about our values and therefore know when they no longer being met. It's about converting our money, time, and energy into what we have chosen to value.
The Second Principle of Capital Magick is flow. Money has no value when it is sitting still. This principle came home to me during the savings and loan crash. I had scrimped and saved. I was miserly with what little extra money I accumulated. When my company went under and I was unemployed, this little nest egg was all I had to show for 14 years of sacrifice. It was wiped out in a single afternoon by events 3000 miles away that I could neither foresee nor avoid. The point was not that I lost my nest egg -- fortunes are won and lost and won again every day. The point was that by hoarding, by taking money out of flow, I had taken myself out of the flow of life and wealth as well.
I used to think that if I got a present or a card, I had to reciprocate to the sender in like kind. Not! The principle of flow tells me to receive graciously and to give generously, without worrying about who from and who to. Nor does the price matter. The old saying "It's the thought that counts" applies here. When I hoarded, I did not own my possessions, they owned me. Now that I flow possessions, I am not defined by them, but by how I keep them moving along.
Converting and flowing are well and good, but all magick needs a little grounding. That's where the Third Principle of Capital Magick comes in -- enough. Knowing the meaning of enough is a most powerful magick. When I was in the army (a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away), I remember that a brigadier general got paid $2000 a month. Of course housing, medical and lots of other costs were taken care of. Nevertheless, that number stuck with me. I thought that if I could ever manage my life at $2000 a month, that would be enough. Sure, it meant that I had to save for a car and I could not go out to eat often. On the other hand, having a clear target was far more comforting than having an endless greed for more and more that could never be satisfied.
The principle of enough applies as well to balance my social time and my alone time, my sleep and awake time, my work and rest and my hunger and fullness. The best part of enough is that it eliminates the word "should." Knowing what enough is for me means I do not have to live up to someone else's prescription for ideal body weight, or clothes to wear or work to accomplish. The principle of enough also helps me prioritize, knowing that I am not Martha Stewart so I have to choose what is most important -- whether I am buying stocks or choosing how to spend my morning.
Mary Roland concludes "I can't think of a better time to focus on this than summer. So I urge you when you're lying on the beach next weekend, or playing golf or hiking up a mountain, to think about where your passion is and what you can do to invest in it, to make it a more meaningful part of your life."
Maybe we urban wage slaves are not so far from our pagan country roots after all. The principles of conversion, flow and enough worked for our ancestors just as much as they work for us today. They converted their time and work into crops. They participated in the flow of nature and the seasons to bring forth their harvest in due time. They stopped working when they had enough and set down to celebrate.
May your Lammas be enough.