The Pagan savings challenge isn't just a way to get into the habit of saving, it's also a way to get in the habit of thinking about money magically. Charged with energy, representing earth, moving from person to person, what can you do with this stuff? Here's a hint: there's more to money magic than "send me more money."
Do you make offerings to the money spirits? Do you keep a money shrine? If the answer is yes to either of those questions, how is that work similar to, or different than, tending other shrines and working with other spirits?
Pictured is an antique writing desk on an antique table, with a coffee cup depicting the logo for a fighter jet which is probably also an antique. We'd hoped to turn this space into an ancestor shrine, but it just hasn't happened yet. Likewise, this probably would have been a post about how savings honor's one ancestors, but it isn't. Instead, it's just a stupid pun.
My week thirty-one savings: $496, 6.25% ($31) of which I added today.
This is the time of year when Pagans celebrate harvest, at least in the northern hemisphere, because it's the middle of summer and life seems to be bursting from every pore of the world.
Luckily for me, the savings momentum is only getting started. Most of the money I plan on saving is still in the future.
For the first time since this challenge began, I didn't take a picture of the cash. I don't know what I was thinking, but I feel the touch of the hand of fate. Why wouldn't I take a picture? Maybe it's so we can talk about visualization.
Having a growing bank balance, stuffed money jar, or other visual reminder that the savings is adding up can actually be a bit risky, because the temptation to use that money can also grow. While it may be appropriate to do so, determining that requires discernment.
Who hasn't had the experience of one's life being massively altered by some external force? I'm calling it the "hand of fate" as a shorthand, but your own experience may have felt like the hand of a particular deity, or the force of random luck. A lot of money events fall into that category, like landing a well-paying job or ending up homeless through a series of unfortunate events. Particularly when things aren't going your way, those events can make you feel powerless.
Unexpected expenses can eat up the money from your Pagan savings challenge, and make it darned near impossible to raise enough energy for your goal. But if you were able to avert something bad by using money you'd saved . . . that's actually part of the point of this exercise. Congratulations: you now have a saving habit, and with it you raised enough energy to avert the hand of fate.
Money is very often seen as a completely pedestrian thing, such that anything touched by the stuff is automatically not spiritual. Don't be fooled! Just because mainstream society embraces it completely doesn't mean that money does not have its own spirit and esoteric roles to play. That's part of the reason for there being a Pagan savings challenge at all: to encourage people of these communities to work with money according to our values and using our tools.
Chronologically, this week marks the halfway point for the Pagan savings challenge. The monetary halfway point is still a few weeks away, if you're following the same arithmetic progression that I am, or well in the past if you're going in reverse.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...