Welcome to Gaia! ::

How many pieces of paper is human life worth? The answer depends on what color those pieces of paper are.

In the Golden Years, (funny how everything, including time and memory, is worth only its weight in gold), society was one of bartering; trade was the way to go. Tit for tat, quid pro quo. Then came money. A nonexisent, abstract concept that could grant you anything you wished, so long as you had enough of it.

Metals became the enovys of this immaterial, omnipresent being, and soon everything had value - a piece of leather, a stalk of corn, a piece of land, words, ideas, beauty, and eventually, people. How much would you pay to keep an idea secret? How much would you pay to stop people putting their names on your things? How much would you pay to make the neighbours say "Gosh, they must have paid a lot of money for that?" How much would you pay to talk to God?

"When it's a question of money, everybody is of the same religion." The rich want more, and the poor want more; when it comes to the Cardinal Sin of greed, the proletariat can commit it as much as the plutocrat; the only difference is who gets what, and how much.

How much would you pay to make sure your daughter received the best treatment for her leukemia?

How much would you pay to have someone in your service for their whole lives?

How much would you pay to have a tyrant assassinated?

Careful - you just put a price on human life.



Still to come:

• Theory of Money
  
• Banknote faces: The Archetypes of Money
  
• The Plutomancer's Portfolio: Spells, rituals, meditations

(Apologies for the crypticness. All will be explained. I should point out that this is purely occidental/western plutomagy. Other cultures have different viewpoints towards money, use different currency, etc, and so will likely have an entirely different system for plutomagy)

Money is energy. There are a myriad of ways that money presents itself, but the five most common are analogous to the forms of energy we hear about in science -- Kinetic energy, Potential energy and the like. Though each of these are just as valid as one another, each path advantages that the others do not have, allowing for a highly specific, finely tailored mindset that produces equally specific results.

Potential Energy: The Miser
Conservation and amassing wealth is the game of the Miser. Unlike the Neo-Plutocrat, the Miser sees power in having money; to them, money is not a means to an end, but an end in itself - after all, do we not judge the rich by how much money they've got in the bank?

Kinetic Energy: The Spendthrift
Money is to the spendthrift as semen is to the promiscuous rake; it's only good when it's spent. Whereas the Neo-Plutocrat refines his money to be collected and spent along the path of least resistance, the Spendthrift sticks his buck in wherever he damn well pleases. Where the Miser accumulates, the Spendthrift deposits. The spendthrift's central premise is that the spending is what is important; Not the having, nor the goods. Naturally, the rich make excellent Spendthrifts - impulse buying of unnecessary (and often unwanted) goods is rife among the financial elite.

Chemical Energy: The Bondsman
To the Bondsman, coins and bills are not gods but dogs; impressive animals to be bred in order to get more animals. Like the Miser, his power is through accumulation of money- unlike the Miser, he's willing to spend some to earn some. The stock exchange is his hallowed hall, as are things bought as investments, high-paying insurance policies, banks with high interest and pyramid schemes. Note, however, the lottery is not within his domain. Experimental risk is virtue - relying on blind luck is vice. Potentially, the Bondsman has infinite potential - if spending two dollars brings him four dollars in return, he could very well be sitting on a lot of money very soon. Not that the Bondsman is one to hoard in excess - after all, you have to give something up to get something back.

Electrical Energy: The Neo-Plutocrat
The neo-plutocrat is the king of the service sector, lord of the disposable income: McDonalds, Odeon, Gap, BMW and Sony and Maybelline are their loyal subjects. The central idea of the NeoPlutocrat is that money should travel along the path of least resistance towards and end - in essence, money should be directed towards specific goals, in order to create a particular effect, be it a nice meal, a good movie, a new pair of shoes and the like. To the Neo-Plutocrat, there is no merit in hoarding money beyond excess, nor spending money indiscriminately; he must instead go to the places where money is exchanged for immediate gain.

Mechanical Energy: The Wage-Slave
For most people, money is not about either gain or loss - it is a delicate equilibrium. Money comes in from work, and gets spent on food, clothes, shelter and the like.. This is the archetype that most people unconsciously adhere to - input = output. For many it's awful, unbearable, but inescapable. For the few, it's absolutely perfect. An equation so finely balanced, so free of gross fluctuation that one never needs to worry about where money's coming from and what they have to spend it on.

Bless you for this and for keeping our research alive.

About time you got to work on your shizz, chief. XD

I should have it finished soonish, though, so keep your eyes sauteed.

(Edit 25/11/08: Haha, lies.)