A magical ritual in the City of London
According to Julian Vayne, magic is “the technology of the imagination”. It’s using certain techniques to focus the mind, to make a change in the world. That change may be internal, to do with our own attitudes, our hopes and aspirations, our limitations and anxieties. Or it may be external. We may use magic as a way of influencing or controlling other people.
How is this possible, you ask? In a secular world, surely magic no longer has any power. Maybe that’s because we no longer call it magic. Maybe magic is still prevalent in our world, but we call it by other names.
Take money for instance. Money is magic. It is one of the most effective, and all-pervading, “technologies of the imagination” of the last few centuries, particularly in its form as fiat money, paper money.
Think about it. Unlike gold or silver, paper money has no intrinsic value. It costs virtually nothing to produce – fractions of a penny – but can represent any exchange, large or small. And where does that representation take place? In the imagination.
Money is a sigil, a magical sign. It signifies value. We measure the value of things by how much we are willing to pay for them. It works as an integral part of a system of control. In our world there is very little you can do without money. Those who have money are made powerful by it. Those who don’t become servile or oppressed. People will do anything for money. They will degrade themselves. They will lie, cheat, steal, even kill. So the power of money controls the world, and those who control that power, control us.
We call the system “Capitalism”. The word “capital” is from the Latin. It means head. And on June 5th a new head will appear on the bank notes produced by the Bank of England: the head of our sovereign, Charles III.
This is a crucial moment in British history, the birth of a new age: the third Carolean era. The first Charles had his head lopped off in 1649. The second oversaw the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The reign of both monarchs saw significant shifts in the constitutional arrangements in these Isles. It is our purpose to ensure that the third Corolean age is as transformative as the previous two.
The Bank of England was established in 1694, not long after the death of the second Charles. It is the world’s eighth oldest bank, and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. It has been at its present location, on Threadneedle Street, since 1734. The current building was designed and built by John Soane in 1806. This whole period, from 1660 to 1806, saw the rise of Britain, from a parochial off shore Island on the outer margins of Europe, to a global empire. Part of this was done using the resources of the Bank of England.
It is here that the gold reserves of the United Kingdom are held, and it was from here, from this fortress in the middle of London, that the British Empire was created. And on the North West corner of the Bank, at the junction between Princes Street and Lothbury, there is a weird little architectural anomaly: a copy of the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy. The perfect place for a ritual.
Vesta is a flame. She is the goddess of the hearth. In Rome she was considered the guardian of the Roman people. Unlike most Roman gods, there were no statues of Vesta, only a perpetual fire that was kept burning by her servants, the Vestal Virgins. So it is appropriate then, that on the 6th June 2024, a New Moon, one day after the head of Charles makes its first appearance on our bank notes, that we should put our notes to the flame, as a burnt offering, a ritual sacrifice to the gods.
We do not do this to do any harm to Charles, the man, who, let’s face it, had no choice in his position. He was born to it. But as well as being a man, a mere mortal—with all the vulnerabilities that this entails—he is also a symbol. As a man he will die. As a symbol he will not. He is the sovereign. He represents sovereign power. It is through this power, called the Royal prerogative, that we are ruled on these Isles.
The Royal prerogative is no longer wielded by the sovereign himself, but by his representative, the Prime Minister. British people are not citizens. We are subjects. We have had our sovereignty taken away from us and invested in the head of state, who in turn has invested it in the institutions of the state, the government and the Bank of England. By burning the note we are letting go the power that is inherent in it.
According to David Graeber, in his book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years: In 1694 a consortium of English bankers made a loan of £1,200,000 to the king. In return they received a royal monopoly on the issuance of banknotes. What this meant in practice was they had the right to advance IOUs for a portion of the money the king now owed them to any inhabitant of the kingdom willing to borrow from them, or willing to deposit their own money in the bank – in effect, to circulate or ‘monetize’ the newly created royal debt. This was a great deal for the bankers (they got to charge the king 8 percent annual interest for the original loan and simultaneously charge interest on the same money to the clients who borrowed it), but it only worked as long as the original loan remained outstanding. To this day, this loan has never been paid back. It cannot be. If it were, the entire monetary system of Great Britain would cease to exist.”
In other words, money is debt. It was created as debt and is maintained by debt. By burning our money, we are forgiving the debt. We are releasing the sovereign power of money into the world. We are changing our relationship to money. We are redeeming ourselves. The word “redemption” means to pay back what we owe, and thus to redeem our property. In the ancient world it referred specifically to debt slavery: enslavement due to debt. To be redeemed was to be bought out of slavery: to become free. Thus to burn money is to set yourself free, both from the enslavement of debt, and from the dark enchantment of the money sigil.
We will be gathering at the Monument to the Great Fire outside of Monument station, about three minutes walk from the bank, at 12 noon on Thursday 6th June. I will be wearing a top hat with a caduceus on it, and carrying a staff made of English bog oak, with a Celtic cross on top. From the Monument we will process to the bank. Those who wish to burn money can go into the bank to have your old notes exchanged for new. If you wish you can mark your old notes with your own magical sigil. The sigil I will use is called “The Equalizer” and was designed by Julian Vayne. It consists of a less than sign < crossed by a more than sign >, crossed by an equals sign =. (See right).
Once everyone has their notes, we will process to the Temple of Vesta, where, after a suitable prayer, and a reading from our holy books, we will perform the ritual. We will burn our notes. Don’t worry if you don’t want to burn money yourself, merely being there is enough. I will burn mine and you will be a witness to history.
Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1496865587898805/
Live streaming event: https://www.youtube.com/live/KrAckc92SKs?si=4bUFg7NDA7KIUHJU
Previous magical actions in the City of London:
(Follow the links at the bottom of each article to read the whole sequence)
Forgive Us Our Debts
Fierce Writing 
[…] Source: Money, Magic and the Imagination – Fierce Writing […]
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