The buzzard told the monkey “You are chokin’ me
“Release your hold, and I will set you free”
The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye
And said “Your story’s so touching but it sounds just like a lie”
Jordan B. Peterson would appreciate this moment of synchronicity. After all, he is well-versed in Jung.
A friend in the northern hemisphere tweeted a video clip of a Peterson interview yesterday on BBC Radio 5. I just happened to see his tweet, five hours later.
In reference to young men, he said:
“They’re desperate for a discussion about responsibility and fair play and noble being and working properly in the world, and to hear the idea that their lives actually matter; that if they straighten themselves up and fly right that they’ll have a beneficial effect on themselves and their family and community, and that the world is starving for that, and for them, as individuals; not for them as a group but for each of them as individuals.”
When I heard those words spoken, my memory instantly flashed to consciousness the 1943 hit song by Nat King Cole:
A buzzard took a monkey for a ride in the air
Monkey thought that everything was on the square
The buzzard tried to throw the monkey off his back
But the monkey grabbed his neck and said “Now listen, jack”
“Straighten up and fly right
“Straighten up and stay right
“Straighten up and fly right
“Cool down papa, don’t you blow your top
“Ain’t no use in divin’
“What’s the use of jivin’
“Straighten up and fly right
“Cool down papa, don’t you blow your top.”
The buzzard told the monkey “You are chokin’ me
“Release your hold, and I will set you free”
The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye
And said “Your story’s so touching but it sounds just like a lie”
I instantly knew – by intuition, buttressed by knowledge, acquired recently and reviewed only yesterday – what this idiom really means.
It has a profound significance.
I doubt that many today – if any – fully appreciate what these allegorical lyrics mean. Wikipedia provides a helpful hint, by dint of the background story:
The song was based on a black folk tale that Cole’s father had used as a theme for one of his sermons. In the tale, a buzzard takes different animals for a joy ride. When he gets hungry, he throws them off on a dive and eats them for dinner. A monkey who had observed this trick goes for a ride; he wraps his tail around the buzzard’s neck and gives the buzzard a big surprise by nearly choking him to death.
The phrase “straighten up and fly right” is said to mean:
Fig. to improveone’sbehavior or attitudeandperformbetter.(Originallyreferred to an airplane.)
in. to get serious and start behaving properly.
Clearly this is the context in which Peterson used it.
But there is far more to this allegory. I think it extremely important that we fully understand it:
And therefore, it is wisely said, that the stone is born of the spirit, because it is altogether spiritual. For the vulture himself flying without wings cries upon the top of the mountain, saying, I am the white brought forth from the black, and the red brought forth from the white, the citrine son of the red; I speak the truth and lie not.
[F]or the vulture flying in the air without wings, cries out that it might get up upon the mountain, that is upon the waters, upon which the “spiritus albus” or spirit of whiteness is born.
The vulture flying through the air, and the toad creeping upon the ground, are the emblems of our magistery.
Last evening – again, just by ‘coincidence’ – I had tweeted a lengthy thread of quotations from a book I am reading, written by a PhD scholar. The author’s preface openly states his purpose:
This book was composed in large measure as a response to the irrational “Satanic scare” of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was written with the intention of reaching a wide readership of thinking individuals capable of understanding the historical and cultural scope of ideas underlying the images of the left-hand path. [..] It should also be noted that the author of this book is not a Satanist, but is a practitioner of the left-hand path based on purely indigenous European models.
Stated more simply, the book is a scholarly defense of Satanist ideology, and so-called “black magic[k]”.
In earlier essays, such as Cheating Females Parts 1 and 2 (here, here), Ode to Debt (18+) (here), and Stags and Unicorns: The Alchemical Root of the Normalisation of Cheating (here), I have demonstrated that the left-hand path philosophy has been deeply embedded in modern western culture. It is increasingly evident – brazenly so – in the decadence, nihilism, and orchestrated chaos of postmodern western culture.
Indeed, the “Satanic” philosophy is literally the driving force of ‘our’ capital-ist,¹ Mammon-worshipping (and thereby enslaved) world. I have shown that it is at the very core of double-entry accounting, ‘modern’ banking, and the creation of our ‘money’ supply in the form of Balance Sheet credebt records, deceitfully rented to us at “interest” (usury, compounding):
..Freud cites overcoming incapacity for work as a major motive for entering a pact with the Devil. [..] A major psychological feature of black magic is that it provides immediate gains without immediate payment. The payment is feared as “really” both deferred and excessive. Thus deferred and excessive payment for immediate gain is characteristically associated with pacts with the Devil. The aversion towards usury, in current times as well as throughout the history of Christianity, is not completely coincidental. For usury is exactly a social expression of the Satanic Pact, immediate gains and excessive deferred payment.²
To my repeated assertion that Satanic philosophy is the driving force of modern and (especially) postmodern western capitalist culture, our scholar would appear to agree:
“The existence of the left-hand path is not easily discovered, but once its principles have been uncovered it slowly becomes apparent just how widespread the philosophy is.”
“[T]he basic precepts of the left-hand path have for centuries penetrated far beyond the sphere of magical and occult activity.”
“[M]odern philosophies and political ideologies have fully embraced principles basic and fundamental to the left-hand path, almost all of which have become the accepted norm in the west.”
The true significance of the allegorical sermon by Nat King Cole’s father becomes clear only when we understand the origin and meaning of the left-hand path, versus the right-hand path.
We see then that, rather than “the devil in the detail”, in the lyrics of the song we find the exact opposite: “Le bon Dieu est dans le détail” (“the good God is in the detail”).
I will now present some excerpts from our left-hand path scholar’s book, trusting that your eyes will be opened, and you will see. Note that italicised emphasis is in the original; bold is mine:
The actual origin of the right-hand versus left-hand path terminology itself is rooted in the vocabulary of Indian tantric sects. The two main divisions of these are the dakshinachara, “right-way” and the vamachara, “left-way”. [..] The eventual elaboration of the right-hand/left-hand path distinction is quite complex, but its origins are most probably rooted in the widespread tantric doctrines of a natural flow of universal force through the human body along a left to right line – entering the left, exiting the right. This is mirrored by a cosmic flow of force from the north to the south. When the human being is oriented toward the east this flow pattern is said to be in harmony with the one natural to his body, as his left hand is to the north, his right hand to the south. Here are the roots of the key to the common antinomianism, reversal of patterns, found in left-hand path tantrism. To reverse the left to right pattern, contrary to nature and cosmic law, requires an exercise of the faculty of will. This is an act of rebellion against nature and against divinely ordained cosmic order. [..] In going against this flow, individuals more fully articulate – individuate – themselves within their environments. Independence and freedom are attained and maintained – perhaps even personal immortality is to be gained.
Julius Evola remarks on the distinction between the two paths:
“The creative and productive aspect of the cosmic process is signified by the right hand, by the color white, and by the two goddesses Uma and Gauri… . The second aspect, that of conversion and return (exitus, reditus) is signified by the left hand, by the color black, and by the dark, destructive goddesses Durga and Kali. Thus according to the Mahakala Tantra, when the left and the right hands are in equilibrium we experience samsara, but when the left hand prevails, we find liberation.”
Alain Daniélou remarks that the left-hand path corresponds to a “disintegrating tendency” (tamas) which “uses the power of Nature, the passions and instincts of man, to conquer, with their aid, the world of the senses… This way leads directly from the physical to the abstract because … the descending tendency is at both ends of the manifested, [therefore the left-hand path] may utilize even eroticism or drunkenness as a means of spiritual achievement.”
Clearly the left-hand path .. is associated both with the idea of dis-integration (separation) and with the practice of antinomianism – of “going against the grain” of conventions in order to gain spiritual power.
Here it is quite clear, at least from the masculine perspective,³ that the essence of the vamachara [left-way] is the total transformation of the human initiate into something superhuman or god(dess)-like.
One of the significant differences between the two tantric paths, although both are under aegis of Shiva, is that on the right-hand path the adept always experiences “someone above him,” even at the highest level of realization. However, on the left-hand path the adept “becomes the ultimate sovereign” (chakravartin = world ruler).
It is tempting to expand this essay with details of the antinomian “aberrations” that are practiced on the left-hand path in pursuit of its goal. But to do so would, I think, detract from the importance of the thematic understanding here presented, thanks to Jordan Peterson, a black folk tale, Nat King Cole and his preacher man father, my Twitter friend on the other side of the planet, and what was, for me, a spirit-raising moment of Jungian synchronicity.
If you feel compelled to learn more of the (disturbing) details, then you may wish to read my earlier essays mentioned above. One further quotation from our PhD scholar will be mildly suggestive:
Ultimately, [Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis] de Sade holds that the pursuit of pleasure is the object of human life, and that physical satisfaction is more noble than the merely mental. Happiness depends on the greatest possible extension of pleasure. This is done by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and fantasies. It is only through wilful imagination that the possibilities for pleasure are extended. Social or religious conditioning prevents this in most cases. Finally, happiness is not so much found in the enjoyment of pleasure as in the desire itself and in the destruction of obstacles in the way of its accomplishment.
For de Sade the greatest pleasures were to be found in overcoming things which may have at one time inspired fear or disgust.
Whether in the sexual or more abstract philosophical sphere, the truest definition of Sadism .. is: “The pleasure felt from the observed modifications on the external world produced by the will of the observer.”
Suffice it to say, the allegory of the trickster buzzard who offers to take you on a jivin’, “fly left” joy ride – one that will “set you free” – is a profoundly cautionary tale:
“It is quite understandable why the forces of orthodox Christianity fought every advance in scientific, political, or religious philosophy, for each advance in spiritual freedom and enforcement of the interests of plurality over unity is indeed a victory for the Prince of Darkness – the principle of isolate intelligence…”
“Evil is the conscious attempt to make the conditions of existence more pathological than they have to be, and it’s motivated by conscious intent.”
The buzzard told the monkey “You are chokin’ me
“Release your hold, and I will set you free”
The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye
And said “Your story’s so touching but it sounds just like a lie”
UPDATE 3 Feb 2018:
Recommend reading this article on the gnostic underpinnings of Jordan Peterson’s philosophy. Compare with Cabala’s origins. Readers of my other essays will hopefully recognise the fundamental connections between gnosticism, cabala, and left-hand path philosophies.
*****************
REFERENCES
Stephen E. Flowers PhD, Lords of the Left-hand Path: A History of Spiritual Dissent
¹ If the reader is tempted to assume that I am opposed to the ideology of capitalism alone, I would say only that there was insufficient time and space to address the subject here. Please consider that I am somewhat widely read on the true origins, intent, and consequences of ‘Marxian’ socio-economic theories; thus my views on what I consider to be an artificial opposition are likely more nuanced than you may have presumed.
² David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition
I recommend giving thought to this man’s words. But do not watch if you are unable to ignore vulgar, and/or blasphemous language, in the interest of gaining understanding.
“Of course, if I get disassociated from by a domination of empirical science I could be objectified into nihilism but apart from that little hiccup…”
I’ve been deceiv’d. The Publick Safety
Requires he should be more confin’d; and none,
No not the Princess self, permitted to
Confer with him. I’ll quit you to the King.
Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent
The base Injustice thou hast done my Love:
Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress,
And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn’d;
Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.
In marital relations, there is no greater sting, no act more likely to turn love to hatred, than the act of infidelity. The breach of trust. The breaking of a sacred bond. It is the ultimate betrayal.
Imagine for a moment the most hurtful of such betrayals. An adulterous affair, resulting in the birth of an illegitimate child.
In medieval Latin, the word infidēlitas means unfaithful, disloyal, and treacherous. It implies a willful intent.
From ancient times, men have used overt sexual symbolism to communicate and record economic actions. Even when divorced from their origins in husbandry, we still use these sexual metaphors in our economic language. In accounting and finance in particular, many words are puns – they carry a double meaning.
Growth. Cycle. Period. Maturity. Seed. Deposit. Yield. Labour. Bond. And that’s only a handful.
In New York, happiest among the financial alpha males is the big swinging dick. The term entered the lingua franca via Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker.[1]
It should come as no surprise then, that men have long used covert sexual symbolism to secretly communicate – and propagate – the art of economic deception, manipulation, and domination:[2][3][4]
Just like their oriental colleagues, the occidental alchemists expressed themselves in a twilight language. All the words, signs, and symbols, which were formulated to describe the experiments in their obscure “laboratories”, possessed multiple meanings and were only comprehensible to the “initiated”.[5]
“Make of the man and the woman a Circle,
of that a Quadrangle, of this a Triangle,
of the same a Circle, and you will have
the Stone of the Philosophers.”
So cryptic, so long disguised and so deeply embedded is it, that even men such as former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King (The End of Alchemy) appear not to have understood the core conjugal metaphor:
[A]lchemy lies at the heart of the financial system; moreover, banking was, like alchemy, a medieval idea, but one we have not as yet discarded.
As Lord King remarks, the alchemy is “the belief that money kept in banks can be taken out whenever depositors ask for it”. This is a confidence trick in two senses: it works if, and only if, confidence is strong; and it is fraudulent. Financial institutions make promises that, in likely states of the world, they cannot keep.[6]
Banking – and money – is all about the making of promises.
Mutual promises.
A mutual exchange of promises.
Banking, and money, is all about the alchemical marriage of two opposite principals (principles) – a lender (male, active), and a borrower (female, passive) – who agree to a mutual, binding exchange of promises.
The primal act of banking, is the forming of a “bond” – a union of opposites – between a creditor (Sola ☉, Mars ♂), and a debtor (Luna ☽, Venus ♀).
The purpose of this bond – this union of opposites – is not to love each other, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. There is a higher purpose.
Reproduction.
The reproduction and growth of money.
The true purpose of this union of opposites, is the creation and multiplication of money … for the lender.
In banking, the production and reproduction of money is achieved not by alchemy, or magic.
It is achieved by lying, and cheating.
Cheating females is the base principle that lies, by design, at the heart of the money system.
Cheating females, is what makes our world go round. It is the driving force behind a critical factor in all monopoly-monied economies: the “circulation”, the “flow”, or the “velocity of money”.
Cheating lies at the heart of the “creative destruction” phenomenon in capitalism, and the so-called “boom and bust” economic cycle.
Cheating females is also the cause of a phenomenon seen repeatedly, through all of recorded human history: the long term relationship between lending at “interest” (usury), and rising inequality.
The art of monetary cheating – along with its base sexual metaphor of male (lender) principle cheating the female (borrower) principle – can be traced back thousands of years to ancient Babylon, through the trade and migration routes, and the boastful claims to historicity, of a unique guild of artisanal merchants.[7]
The same secret principle – a gross perversion of the hieros gamos (“Sacred Marriage”)[8] fertility rite – is found in the accounting records, in the scholarly, literary, and technical texts, and in the magico-religious artifacts of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, Arabia, and the Far East.
“The Crowns of Red and White combine into One.” – S.A. Weor, Treatise of Sexual Alchemy (1953)
It is found in the Babylonian Talmud and Jewish Cabala, in the code words and symbolism of Eastern and Western alchemy, and in the upaya (“method”, “trick”) of the Tantric Buddhist Kalachakra (“Time Tantra”) secret high initiation rites of medieval India.[9]
(Source: Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism)
Last of all, the same secret principle of monetary cheating is found in el modo vinegia, the medieval “Venetian method” of bookkeeping by double entry, still used as the foundation of banking and finance to this day.
“And the bookkeeper can be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the bookkeeping.”[10]
Cheating females – the Royal Art of “philosophers” – is all about producing inequality, by illusions of equality.
Since ancient times, the illusion of equality has been represented by the alchemical symbol of the androgyne (Mercury-Hermes ☿). It does not, as most believe, represent the union of male and female principles – two equal opposites – in a gender-neutralising, transcendent harmony.
The androgyne actually represents a mixture of male-female reproductive forces – the mixed “seed” of the man and woman – that is “possessed by a man”.[11]
In the alchemy of banking, the illusion of equality is represented by a bookkeepers’ symbol (“$”, “€”, “£”, “¥”) called “money of account”. It does not, as most believe, represent the union of Assets and Liabilities – two equal opposites – in a “supply-demand” harmonising equilibrium.
“Money of account” actually represents a mixture of lender (male) and borrower (female) “deposits” – Assets (left side) and Liabilities (right side) … that is possessed by a Lender:
[T]he role of money [of account] as supplementer of value is concealed behind an apparent but deceptive power to guarantee equivalence. Moreover, the power of money enables the construction of previously unprecedented levels of wealth, and the possibility of new power relations for those with money and those without it.[12]
Following in the footsteps of Hermes “the Sage, the Babylonian”[13] – god of merchants, orators (eloquent liars), tricksters, imposters, hegemons and thieves – the lender actually “sucks money out of purses as the magnet attracts iron”:[14]
In the traditional Buddhist conception an embryo arises from the admixture of the male seed and the female seed. This red-white mixture is referred to by the texts as sukra. Since the fluids of man and woman produces new life [..] if the yogi succeeds in permanently uniting within himself both elixirs (the semen virile and the semen feminile), then eternal life lies in store for him. He becomes a “born of himself”, having overcome the curse of rebirth and replaced it with the esoteric vision of immortality. With the red-white mixture he attains the “medicine of long life”, a “perfected body”. Sukra is the “life juice” par excellence, the liquid essence of the entire world of appearances. It is equated with amrta, the “drink of immortality” or the “divine nectar”.[15]
In the four highest secret initiation rituals of Tantric Buddhism, this “skillful” trick (upaya) is called the Vajroli method. It is considered “a veritable touchstone of the highest yogic skill”.
In the act of yuganaddha (fusion) with a “wisdom consort” (mudra) – lots of them – the tantric master sucks out the seed of the woman with his ‘cock’ :[16]
“After he has streamed forth,” Mircea Eliade quotes a text as saying, “he draws in and says: through my force, through my seed I take your seed — and she is without seed”. The man thus steals the seed of the woman under the impression that he can through this become a powerful androgynous being, and leaves her without her own life energy.
Some of the “initiated” even succeed in drawing up the semen feminile without ejaculating any sperm so as to then produce the yearned-for sukra mixture in their own body. The mastery of this method requires painful and lengthy exercises, such as the introduction of small rods of lead and “short lengths of solder” into the urethra.[17]
Now what happens if the yogi has not mastered the method of drawing back? .. [T]he adept may catch the sukra from out of the vagina in a vessel and then drink it. It is not rare for the drinking bowl to be made from a human skull. The Candamaharosana Tantra recommends sucking the mixture up with a tube (pipe) through the nose. If one sips the sukra out of his mudra’s genitals with his mouth, then the process is described as being “from mouth to mouth”. Without exaggeration one can refer to this drinking of the “white-red bodhicitta” as the great tantric Eucharist, in which semen and blood are sacredly consumed in place of bread and wine. Through this oriental “Last Supper” the power and the strength of the women are passed over to the man.[18]
The frontispiece from Nicolas de Locques’ Les Rudiments de la Philosophie Naturelle (1665) perfectly illustrates the essence of the alchemical act. As the two “flames” (desire, lust) of Mercury-Hermes and Aphrodite-Venus “bond” – with the Sun ☼ (male) in the dominant position over the Moon ☾ (female), and her eyes blissfully wedded to the point of their “fusion” – the thieving trickster god steals her “waters” from right under her nose.
He uses her symbol (ancient Greek kteis, a pun meaning scallop shell and vagina) – held in his right hand (symbol of phallic power) – to perform the theft.
This calculating thievery is celebrated by the Tantric Babhaha (“Free Lover”) in poetic verse:
In the sacred citadel of the vulva of
a superlative, skillful partner,
do the praxis of mixing white seed
with her ocean of red seed.
Then absorb, raise, and spread the nectar—
A stream of ecstasy such as you’ve never known.[19]
The deity Kalachakra and his consort, Kali Vishvamata. (Study carefully – click to enlarge)
The gesture of dominance with which the tantric master seals his consort during the sexual act is called the Vajrahumkara mudra: he crosses both hands behind the back of his partner, with the vajra [phallus] held in his right hand, and the gantha [vagina] in the left. The symbolic content of this gesture can only be the following: the yogi as androgyne is lord over both sexual energies, the masculine (symbolized by the vajra) and the feminine (symbolized by the gantha). In encircling (“sealing”) his wisdom consort with the androgyne gesture, he wishes to express that she is a part of his self, or rather, that he has absorbed her as his maha mudra (“inner woman”).[20]
In the alchemical doctrine of both East and West, the entire wealth of the cosmos is created out of the interaction of male and female genders – two equal opposites. By stealing the seed of the woman and uniting it with his seed within the temple of his own mystic and physical bodies, the tantric adept believes that he has at his disposal the secret birth-force of the female – a power that he both lacks and desires:
The tantric master uses a human woman [karma mudra], or at least an inana mudra [“spirit woman”] to create his androgynous body. He destroys her autonomous existence, steals her gynergy, integrates this in the form of an “inner woman” [maha mudra] and thus becomes a powerful double-gendered super-being.
“He absorbs the Mother of the Universe into himself”.[21]
In the alchemical doctrine of bankers, the entire wealth of the economy is created out of the interaction of two opposite genders – Savers and Borrowers. By uniting their “deposits” within the temple of his own mystic and physical body – a monopoly banking △ system – the banking adept has at his disposal the secret birth-force of material wealth.
He now possesses legal ownership claims, on real world assets – the “collateral” he demands as “security” against failure to repay “his” “loans” – land, industrial “capital”, intellectual “property”, and the spent time and gynergy of human “labour”.
By cheating females – lots of them – the alchemist can become the “Grand Sorcerer” (Maha Siddha):
The goal of tantric androgyny is the concentration of absolute power in the tantric master, which in his view constitutes the unrestricted control over both cosmic primal forces, the god and the goddess. [..] Supernatural power gives the tantric master control over the whole universe. He can dissolve it and reestablish it. It grants him control over space and time in all of their forms of expression. As “time god” (Kalachakra) he becomes “lord of history”.[22]
This cheating process is precisely what happens in our ‘modern’, neo-medieval banking and money system. Or, to be more precise, their neo-Babylonian banking and money system. It is built on precisely the same Old Babylonian occult (Latin occultus: hidden, secret) sex magic principles.
The Unity (or Union) of Opposites.
And the Law of Inversion (or Reversal).
“Eyes Wide Shut” Artist Print (AP), J.S. Rossbach
In both East and West, the cheating method for sex magic – claimed to result in the spiritual and physical transformation of the (male) adept into an immortal Time Lord – at the expense of the female – is the same as the method for supposedly transforming base metals into pure gold:
[P]recisely because most extreme estrangement from enlightenment is inherent to the “daughters of Mara”, because they are considered the greatest obstacle for a man and barricade the realm of freedom, according to the tantric “law of inversion” they are for any adept the most important touchstone on the initiation path. He who understands how to gain mastery over women also understands how to control all of creation, as it is represented by him. On account of this paradox, sexual union enjoys absolute priority in Vajrayana. All other ritual acts, no matter how bizarre they may appear, are derived from this sexual magic origin.
The Tibetan lama, Dragpa Jetsen [..] distinguishes three aspects of the royal art: the “Alchemy of life: he can make his life last as long as the sun and moon[; the] Alchemy of body: he can make his body eternally be but sixteen years old[; and the] Alchemy of enjoyments: he can turn iron and copper into gold”. These three experiments, then, primarily concern two goals: firstly the attainment of immortality, and secondly the production of gold, that is, material wealth.[23]
It should not surprise us to discover then, that the method long used by the male “time god” to steal the female’s gynergy, is precisely the same method long used by the male (lender) to cheat the female (borrower) in banking and trade.
Faking “deposits”.
As long ago as the dawn of the second millennium BC, the oldest written law code of human civilisation targeted this covert form of thievery:
Some evidence of the knowledge and previous existence of such practice of issuance of false receipts as against supposed valuables on deposit for safe-keeping clearly exists in the Law No. 7 of the great Hammurabi [1792 BC to 1750 BC] which same law was undoubtedly intended as a preventative to this sickness in society, which, even at that day, may very well have been the cancer that destroyed much that has been before. [..] The severity of the penalty and the placing of the law so high in the code leaves little doubt that it was directed against an evil that was by no means new…
“If a man buys silver or gold or slave, or slave girl, or ox or sheep or ass or anything else whatsoever from a [free] man’s son or a free man’s slave or has received them for safe custody without witness or contract, that man is a thief: he shall be put to death.”
The requisite of witnesses and contract attesting to the true facts of valuables on deposit, would to some extent obviate the danger of the goldsmiths, silversmiths or traders, involved in a transaction, creating receipts for valuables that did not exist, in safe custody or otherwise.[24]
Figures at top of stele “fingernail” above Hammurabi’s Code of Laws, Old Babylonian Period, c. 1792 – 1750 BC. (Milkau Oberer Teil der Stele mit dem Text von Hammurapis Gesetzescode 369-2)
The death penalty must have motivated the cheating “time gods” to alter their method. As we will see, some six hundred years after King Hammurabi, the alchemists of Babylon were secreting a recipe to create the appearance of silver – their international trade (and thus, the accepted royal) standard, against which all other commodities were measured. The method, and especially the ingredients of this secret recipe, has far-reaching, explosive – and truly enlightening – explanatory powers.
Around two thousand years later, the cheating time lords were still practicing their secret method in and around what remained of the fallen and fragmented Roman Empire:
I summon today
All these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel and merciless power
that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches andsmiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul…
Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, c. 433 AD
[This prayer also known as The Cry of the Deer (i.e., the “hart”)]
Palladius Patricius (St. Patrick) chases the ‘snakes’ out of Hibernia (Ireland).
In 620 AD the Roman emperor Diocletian issued a decree ordering to destroy all alchemical manuscripts for he was afraid of devaluation of the currency by false silver and/or gold made by alchemists.[25]
Almost a thousand years after that, at the dusk of the medieval era and the dawn of ‘modern’ commercial banking, they were still at it:
Francesco de’ Medici, a prince of the Medici, eldest son and heir to Cosimo I, should have been born with the golden apple of fortune clutched firmly in his hands. What went wrong? Why did he end his life loathed and feared by the people of Florence, amid whispers he had been poisoned by his own brother? [..] [I]n in letters and documents of the day Francesco is universally described as .. obsessed with alchemy.[26]
Joannes Stradanus (Jan van der Straet) – Francesco I de’ Medici in The Alchemist’s Laboratory, 1570.
Thurneisser or Thurneysser, as well as five other spellings, was born in Basel in 1530. His father was a goldsmith. Arrested for selling gilt lead as gold, Thurneisser fled Basel [..] He wrote on chemistry, alchemy, meteorology, pharmacology and medicine, making it up as he went along. History sees him now as a flamboyant charlatan.[27]
Today, we “females” no longer use silver or gold as common money. Nor do we use cuneiform or paper I Owe You’s – written records of a Promise to Pay – receipts issued by ‘smiths for our gold and silver “deposited” with them for safe-keeping.
Instead, almost all of the “money” that we use today, is really just an electronic bookkeeping record of a male promise to pay us the government’s legal tender – cash notes and coins – “on demand”.
We pay the male rent – renamed as “account keeping fees”, “charges”, and “interest” – to have electronic “access” to his “payments system”; meaning, a system allowing us to send a request for a change in his bookkeeping records.
We believe, or unthinkingly assume, that the male – a privileged monopoly “agent” of the Sovereign – actually has a “supply” that is equal to his promises to pay out the Sovereign’s real money, stored securely in his safe.
He does not actually discharge his “promise” – a binding, legal obligation – to pay us real, physical Sovereign money, unless we “demand” it.
But he would really, really prefer that we didn’t:
In case you thought banks lend money – they take deposits and lend money – you’re wrong. Legally, they do not take deposits, they borrow from the public. The expressions in banking are designed to mislead what’s really happening…
What is a bank account? It is not a deposit. What is it? It is a record of the bank’s debt to the public; it is a record of the bank’s debt to the new borrower, and they’ll show you the record of how much money they owe you. That’s it. They don’t pay up.[28]
So what happens when we “spend” the “money” in the “account” that we are renting access to?
The male “time god” simply changes hisstory in his books.
He now records that his debt to one female is less, and his debt to another female – or, the debt owed by his fellow cheating time lord in another temple of their cabal – is more.
He calls that a “payment” or “transfer”. Even though no one has actually been paid out any real money.
He and his fellow cheating time lords have simply shuffled their stories of their undischarged promises – their Sacred Marital obligations – to give the cat the cream.
“The Conjurer,” painted by Hieronymus Bosch (between 1496 – 1520). The painting accurately displays a performer doing the cups and balls routine, which has been practiced since Egyptian times. The shell game does have some origins in this old trick. The real trick of this painting is the pickpocket who is working for the conjurer. The pickpocket is robbing the spectator who is bent over. (Source: Wikipedia)
In ‘modern’ banking, the counterfeiting of “deposits” is done using the “Venetian method” of bookkeeping by double entry. For all its fabled pretences to mathematical precision, “balance”, and objective impartiality, the art of bookkeeping – the keeping of “accounts” – is really nothing more than story-telling.
So his double story-telling has lots of opportunity for “skillful” tricks of word-play.
Puns.
Words with double, or even multiple meanings:
Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs were originally based on punning systems. Punning has been credited as the fundamental concept behind alphabets, writing, and even human civilization.[29]
In the world’s first empirical test to discover what banks really do when they “issue” a “loan” of “money”, Professor Richard Werner has proven that the trick of the ‘modern’ cheating time lord is … a pun.
He just names the record of hisundischarged debt – his promise – as her “deposit”.[30]
From the perspective of the female renter of access to “money”, it appears to be her money – the money that he promised to give her. It appears to “perform” just like the real thing.
But from the perspective of the cheating time lord, it is just a record – a reflection, a re-presentation – of hisunpaid debt. His false promise. The source of his power, to “draw blood” from “easy meat” … from, in his own words, a “Babylonian whore”.[31]
At all times, all of these “deposits” (and a few drops of real money) are stored within the temple of his mystic and physical body – the monopoly banking debt-“money of account” △ system.
The male never discharges his debt – his promise – unless she demands to have it in her“purse”.
If and when she does, he might not be able to do it:
Banks promise to return money today, when most is tied up until tomorrow or the day after. They rely on the trust of customers collectively not to call their bluff. When that trust is lost, creditors run, promises cannot be met and the banking system collapses.[32]
There is nothing the cheating time lord fears more, than having lots of “females” – karmamudras – collectively exercising their Sacred Right and demanding to have the money – the real money – that he promised to pay:
[I]n India the flowing of the male seed into “the fiery maw of the female sexual organ” is still today regarded as a sacrificium and therefore feared as an element of death.[33]
[E]jaculation is equated simply with death. [..] “The fear of losing body fluids leads not only to retention, but to attempts to steal the partner’s fluid (and the fear that the partner [karma mudra] will try the same trick) — yet another form of competition”.[34]
The drawing up of sperm by a woman is viewed by a tantric yogi as a mortally dangerous theft and a fundamental crime.[35]
For the lying cheating banker, this means that the Royal Art is a delicate balancing act. If the females ever wake up to his “confidence trick”, and collectively demand the real Sovereign money, then he is royally f****d.
He is always living on the edge, of economic life and death:
For a Buddhist Tantric the retention of the male seed is the sine qua non of the highest spiritual enlightenment. [..] As soon as a person begins to experience sexual desire, it starts to flow out, drop by drop [..] The destination of the sperm’s journey within the body is the tip of the penis. Here, through extreme meditative concentration, the adept collects the lust [..] “Through this, the act obtains a cosmological dimension. … It becomes the means of attaining enlightenment (bodhi)”. “Delight resides in the tip of the vajra [penis]”…[36]
The Sanskrit term for alchemy is Rasa-vada. Rasa means ‘liquid’ or ‘quicksilver’. Quicksilver was considered the most important chemical substance which was made use of in the “mystic” experiments, both in Europe and in Asia. The liquid metal was employed in the transformation of materials both in the east and the west, in particular with the intention of producing gold. In the Occident it bore the name of the Roman god, Mercury. The Kalachakra Tantra also mentions quicksilver at several points. The frequency with which it is mentioned is a result of its being symbolically equated with the male seed (bodhicitta); it was, in a manner of speaking, the natural-substance form of the semen virile.
It is a characteristic of quicksilver that it can “swallow” other substances, that is, chemically bind with them. This quality allowed the liquid metal to become a powerful symbol for the tantric yogi, who as an androgyne succeeds in absorbing — i.e., “swallowing” — the gynergy of his wisdom consort.[37]
The alchemist plays a dangerous game. In order to transform himself into the Master of the Universe – having “absolute power” and “unrestricted control over both cosmic primal forces, the god and the goddess” – he must “conquer” all the “females”.
To do this, he must continually “grow” the size of his undischarged promises to pay out real Sovereign money (cash notes and coins).
In bankers’ words, he must “expand his balance sheet” … until all the “females” are firmly, irredeemably in his debt.
This is nothing less than an alchemical, misogynist metaphor for growing an enormously “big swinging dick”.
Given that borrowers’ debts are recorded as the bankers’ Assets, to expand his balance sheet means that – from his perspective – he is growing an enormously “big black swinging dick”.
We “females” see a growing debt as our being “in the red”.
The “time god” sees that same debt, for him, as being “in the black”.
As we will see, according to the Law of Inversion the alchemist believes that he should begin with the worst substances, in order to “transform” them into the best. Indeed, the very first step in an alchemical experiment is “located within a context of sacrifice, death and the color black”, and is called nigredo – “blackening”. So the bankers’ cynical creed is not only malevolently misogynist; paradoxically, it is also rapaciously racist … against black people.
Professor Werner’s world-first empirical study has shown that every time a lying cheating “time god” makes a new false promise to pay – every time he “issues” a new “loan” of fake “money of account”, and does not discharge any real money – this is precisely what happens.
His balance sheet – his metaphorical ‘cock’ – grows bigger:
For firms without a bank licence, the disbursement of the loan is from funds elsewhere within the firm. Thus there is an equal reduction in balance of another account from which the lent funds came from. Therefore, the balance sheet shrinks again. There is no overall change in the total size of the balance sheet.
However the story is quite different for the bank. Surprisingly, we find that unlike the other firms whose balance sheets shrank back in Step 2, the bank’s accounts seem in standstill, unchanged from Step 1. The total balance sheet remains lengthened. No balance is drawn down to make a payment to the borrower.[38]
“For banks only the balance sheet remains unchanged in its EXPANDED position .. In other words: banks do not discharge their liability.”
From Vajrayana comes the striking saying that “A yogi whose member is always hard is one who always retains his semen”.[39]
These lying cheating time lords have long told a romantic story of their past, and present. This fairy tale “account” says that theirs is only a neutral, benevolent, guiding hand – the Invisible Hand – in the reproductive affairs of others. Just like a high priest, officiating at the Sacred Wedding of two opposites. His divine intermediation and blessing on their union is necessary to ensure that the gentle rains of prosperity, security and happiness will fall on both of them … or so hisstory goes.
Over many centuries, these invisible-handed banking high priests – along with their most-favoured choir boys in the economic theory profession – have conjured up lots of abstract word-pairs to describe this “productive” union of two opposites.
Savers and Borrowers. Patient and Impatient. Investors and Entrepreneurs. Sellers and Buyers. Producers and Consumers. Exporters and Importers. External and Internal. Public and Private. And that’s just a handful.
These abstract word-pairs serve the purpose of creating a false appearance – an illusion – of equality in the union of two opposites, with the banking high priest merely “serving” the community as the trusted, Fatherly intermediary.
As with most effective deceptions, there is some truth in this tale. One part of time lord operations once was – and still is, in a manner of speaking – acting as an intermediary between so-called “Savers” and “Borrowers”: receiving “deposits” for “safe-keeping” (legally, borrowing) from one, and “lending” to the other.
But even here, the appearance of equality between these two abstract opposites, is just an illusion. A clever trick of word-play.
The banking high priest is practicing “Time manipulation” – or more accurately, date-of-birth shuffling – with all the “accounts” of his promises to pay real money.
He is able to “create” and multiply real wealth for himself, using the “flows” between all the opposites.
The banking high priest calls this date-of-birth hustling procedure “maturity transformation” – of “term” “deposits”.
With one hand, he borrows from “depositors” for a short period of time.
With the other hand, he lends to “borrowers” – who are instantly “transformed” into “depositors” too – for a long period of time:
By doing this, banks transform [their] debts with very short maturities (deposits) into credits with very long maturities (loans), and collect the difference in the [usury] rates as profit.[40]
There is no “magic” in any of this. The cheating time lord is simply abusing his privileged, monopoly position. Because he controls the bookkeeping records of large “stocks” of hispromises, and constantly re-writes hisstory of his promises – that is, his story of the “flows” of his promises between his customers’ “accounts”, and, between those and the “accounts” written by his fellow “time gods” at other temples – he is able to gain real wealth for himself by cheating all the “depositors”.
He will only get caught if too many “account holders” (renters) start to smell a rat, and decide, at the same time, to demand the real deal – legal tender cash notes and coins – that the cheating time lord has promised to pay.
However, this is only one small part of banking “alchemy” thievery.
The hidden truth is that the banking high priest is not just a lying, cheating, fake “intermediary” officiating at the Sacred Marriage of Savers and Borrowers.
He is the infamous Mercury–Hermes (☿), the “purse”-sucking androgyne himself.
Hiding behind economic babel (“confusion”) – and that owing much to the Paradox of Opposite Perspectives in double entry – the cheating time lord does not just shuffle promises to pay; he also creates new promises to pay.
Thanks to the magic“$”, “€”, “£”, “¥”, and especially the “%” signs that he flashes in our eyes, we “females” are blinded to the reality.
His fake system is an inversion – a reversal – of “Mother” nature.
His system of promises is all about cheating, stealing, manipulating, dominating, and destroying the “autonomous existence” of the fundamental feminine principle – ourmother nature.
Almost 2,500 years ago, Greek philosopher Aristotle pointed out that money is sterile. It does not naturally breed more money, the way that cows breed more cows. He explained that “Money exists not by nature but by law”:
The most hated sort [of wealth getting] and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange but not to increase at interest. And this term interest (tokos), which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth, this is the most unnatural. (1258b, POLITICS)
For over 1000 years in the “Dark” and Middle Ages – when there was no separation of two “opposites”, the Church and the State – there was an official ban on the practice of usury.
Honoured sometimes as much in the breach as in the observance. There’s a long story of willfully-blind eyes there, all in itself.
But prohibition, nonetheless.
The defenders of usury prohibition were – are – precisely right.
Far more right, than any are given credit for.
The lying cheating system of false promises and fake “deposits”, of usury by double entry – the Royal Art of “the philosophers” – is contra naturam:
[Watch to the end. The devil’s in all the little details.]
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END OF PART I
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POSTSCRIPT
I hope that you have found Part 1 of this essay to be informative. Despite its length, it is only a barely adequate quick summary of the voluminous, multi-disciplinary literature touching the subject matter. To do the themes justice may well require a multi-volume book series. Publisher inquiries welcome.
My thanks to Professor Steve Keen and Professor Richard Werner for inspiration, support and economic reading suggestions, and kind assistance with accessing academic journals; to Dr. Omar Zaid for reading suggestions and support; to Adam McLean (alchemywebsite.com) for kindly granting permission to use his coloured alchemical images; to my family for love, patience and support; and to Anna Novikova for love, inspiration, support … and more reading suggestions! Finally, I would like to borrow a leaf out of the book of one wiser than I, in giving thanks for any good to be found here to the original source of all true wisdom (Jeremiah 33:3).
The interpretations and opinions expressed here are entirely mine – ergo, the aforementioned persons are not to be held in any way responsible for them, or for any errors or omissions.
Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.
In writing this essay, I earnestly hope to provoke in womenfolk the Fury of the Woman scorn’d.
I say this to all but especially to the menfolk reading: There is no way – in my opinion – that the Babylonian “Money Power” can ever be defeated, unless the tremendous power of the “scorn’d Woman” – and her fiercely-protective Mother nature – is invoked by all of us, and turned against her violator:
“Tell the housewife at her kitchen table about this stuff. She is smart. She understands. But if you keep it a secret, naturally she’s not going to be able to act, and we can’t transform something until we understand it.”
In Part 2 we will consider a perfect example of the righteous anger of the Woman scorn’d, from Old Babylonian mythology.
“Now whether the yogis can actually and permanently maintain control over the women through their ‘tricks’ (upaya) is another question. This is solely dependent upon their magical abilities, over which we do not wish to pass judgement here. The texts do repeatedly warn of the great danger of their experiments. There is the ever-present possibility that the ‘daughters of Mara’ see through the tricky system and plunge the lamas into hell.”
Robert H. Bork (The Antitrust Paradox) wrote that “One of the uses of history is to free us of a falsely imagined past. The less we know of how ideas actually took root and grew, the more apt we are to accept them unquestioningly, as inevitable features of the world in which we move.”
In Part 2, we will travel back to ancient Mesopotamia, and trace forward from the earliest recorded, pre-writing origins of the two fundamental principles that lie at the heart of the Babylonian “money of account” usury system.
We will learn more – and more repulsive – details about alchemical sex magic “experiments” and rituals. We will also consider the Old Babylonian magico-religious objects and incantations (“spells”), and learn the real significance of the winged lions guarding the city of Venice, and the City of London financial district.
We will also discover the “explosive” and enlightening ingredients in the Old Babylonian secret alchemical recipe for making fake silver counterfeits of the royal standard ingots.
Thank you for reading, and sharing.
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“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. (…) Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. (…) It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating.”
– George Orwell, 1984
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FOOTNOTES
[1] Daniel Gross, The End of the BSD, Slate, Sept 25, 2008 — “(Relevant quote: ‘If he could make millions of dollars come out of those phones, he became that most revered of all species: a Big Swinging Dick.’)”
[2] Miroslav Novák, Heritage of Alchemical Cryptography (2013), Il Chimico Italiano 24: 17-24 — “Medieval European alchemists used a disorganized way of coded expressing together with a very complicated system of diverse graphical symbols... The symbols, besides their shorthand role, also serve as a specific cryptographic system, for very often the alchemists tried to conceal the results from the Christian church, avaricious noblemen and possible competitors. [..] The cryptography (or cryptology; from Greek κρυπτός, “hidden, secret”; and γράφειν, “writing”, or λογία, “study”, respectively) is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties (called adversaries) (Wikipedia). And these adversaries were the main reason, why alchemists coded their written products.”
[3] Samuel Scarborough, The Imagery of Alchemical Art as a Method of Communication, Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition No. 9, Vol. 1, Autumnal Equinox (2005) — “[T]he metalworkers, especially the gold and silver smiths, who in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance formed guilds to protect their secrets and craft worked with a kind of alchemy that was later to become metallurgy.”
“Alchemists, like modern day scientists, would share their findings and works with one another [..] So, how could alchemists from various countries and parts of Europe communicate in a safe manner without giving away their secrets? The answers came as allegory and allegorical imagery, which hid, from the uninitiated what was being discussed and shared amongst them.”
“This form of discussion or conveying information and ideas in allegorical images would later go on to influence several bodies of dramatic initiating orders or lodges. Among these would be the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, particularly the fringe Masonic bodies, and even the magickal orders of the nineteenth century. This idea that images convey a message and power is powerfully illustrated in a line from the Neophyte Initiation Ceremony: ‘…for by Names and Images are all Powers awakened and re-awakened.'”
[4] V. and V. Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003), transl. by Mark Penny; p.77 — “In order to keep hidden from the public all the offensive things which are implicated by the required breaches of taboo, some tantra texts make use of a so-called ‘twilight language’ (samdhya-bhasa). This has the function of veiling references to taboo substances, private bodily parts, and illegal deeds in poetic words, so that they cannot be recognized by the uninitiated. For example, one says ‘lotus’ and means ‘vagina’, or employs the term ‘enlightenment consciousness’ (bodhicitta) for sperm, or the word ‘sun’ (surya) for menstrual blood. Such a list of synonyms can be extended indefinitely.”
[5]ibid., p. 102; — “Just as in some tantra texts, ‘secret’ practices were represented by ‘harmless’ images in the European treatises; this was especially true of the topic of erotic love and sexuality.”
“Both the tantric and the alchemic writings are [..] maps of the erotic imagination and anyone with a little speech psychology can recognize the pervasive sexual system of reference hidden in a hermetical text from the 16th century. At that time people did not have the slightest qualms about describing chemical processes as erotic events and erotic scenarios as chemical fusions. They behaved in exactly the same manner in the West as in the East.”
[7] I have chosen not to specify here the artisanal guild in question, in view of intention to publish a book encompassing the subject.
[8]Hieros gamos, Encyclopædia Britannica — (Greek: “sacred marriage”), sexual relations of fertility deities in myths and rituals, characteristic of societies based on cereal agriculture, especially in the Middle East. At least once a year, divine persons (e.g., humans representing the deities) engage in sexual intercourse, which guarantees the fertility of the land, the prosperity of the community, and the continuation of the cosmos.
Some scholars have applied the term hieros gamos to all myths of a divine pair (e.g., heaven–earth) whose sexual intercourse is creative. The term, however, should probably be restricted only to those agricultural cultures that ritually reenact the marriage and that relate the marriage to agriculture, as in Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Canaan, Israel (the Song of Solomon has been suggested to be a hierogamitic text), Greece, and India.
[9] V. and V. Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003), transl. by Mark Penny; pp. 40, 585 — “..if we translate upaya (as it is clearly intended) as ‘cunning means’ or even ‘trick’ or ‘ruse’ (Wilber, 1987, p. 310).”
upaya – “‘skill in means’ – array of expedient devices employed by bodhisattvas to enlighten beings trapped in suffering existence.”
“To summarize, upaya stands for the masculine principle, the phallus, motion, activity, the god, enlightenment, and so forth; prajna represents the feminine principle, the vagina, calm, passivity, the goddess, the cosmic law. All women naturally count as prajna, all men as upaya.” (p.39)
[10] Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars; The Lawful Path (1996), citing William Cooper, Behold A Pale Horse (1991), Light Technology Publishing
[11] V. and V. Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003), transl. by Mark Penny; p. 47, 65, 93; — “Modern Western authors with views compatible to those of Buddhism [..] tend toward the opinion that the tantric androgyne harmonizes both sexual roles equally within itself, so that the androgynous pattern is valid for both men and women. But this is not the case. Even at an etymological level, androgyny (from Ancient Greek anér ‘man’ and gyné ‘woman’) cannot be applied to both sexes. The term denotes [..] the male-feminine forces possessed by a man, whilst for a woman the respective phenomenon would have to be termed ‘gynandry’ (female-masculine forces possessed by a woman).”
“The tantric yogi unites with her not just in the sexual act, but above all through consuming her holy gynergy, the magical force of maya. Sometimes, as we shall see, he therefore drinks his partner’s menstrual blood. Only when the feminine blood also pulses in his own veins will he be complete, an androgyne, a lord of both sexes.”
“In the usual yab–yum representation of the Dhyani Buddhas, the male Buddha figure always crosses both of his arms behind the back of his wisdom consort, forming what is known as the Vajrahumkara gesture. At the same time he holds a vajra (the supreme symbol of masculinity) in his right hand, and a gantha (the supreme symbol of femininity) in his left. The symbolic possession of both ritual objects identifies him as the lord of both sexes. He is the androgyne and the prajna is a part of his self.”
[12] Mahmoud Ezzamel and Keith Hoskin, Retheorizing Accounting, Writing and Money with Evidence from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, Critical Perspectives on Accounting (2002) 13, 333–367; — “The distinctive development that we see introduced by the invention of money of account is a principle of value reciprocity. Money of account constructs value by denominating it as something other than, and separate from, either the commodity or its accounting; instead value becomes something which passes reciprocally between the two, supposedly guaranteeing that each is equalised in value terms. In so doing, the role of money as supplementer of value is concealed behind an apparent but deceptive power to guarantee equivalence. Moreover, the power of money enables the construction of previously unprecedented levels of wealth, and the possibility of new power relations for those with money and those without it.”
“[M]oney plays a double game. First, it appears as the benign supplement, embodying the new possibility that value exists in a separate denominable form and simply making space for itself as numeraire to act as the measure of that value. But secondly, money is also the dangerous supplement. Beneath the apparent surface where equivalence reigns and money is just a transparent medium, the play of difference is at work: from the production of little remainders and marginal inequalities, through the generation of interest and profit, to money’s own re-writing into new and more complex instruments.”
[13] Vladimír Karpenko, Alchemy asdonum dei, HYLE – International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, Vol. 4 (1998), No. 1, pp. 63-80; — “In the Tenth Discourse of his treatise Al-Fihrist,[12] An-Nadim (A.D. 987) writes, after the introductory basmallah, about the origin of alchemy [§ 1]: ‘The adepts of the Art of Alchemy, … assert that the science of the Art was first discussed by Hermes, the Sage, the Babylonian …’.”
[14] Antoine Faivre, The Eternal Hermes: From Greek God to Alchemical Magus (1995), pp. 36-38; — “Panurge is not only connected to the tradition of Hermetic magic: he also has something of the humanist Hermes, the savant of his time. This does not prevent him from being at the same time a sort of alchemist, for he claims to possess the Philosophers’ Stone: ‘I have a philosophical stone which sucks money out of purses as the magnet attracts iron.’ And in his speech in praise of debtors, he speaks of the ‘joy of the alchemists when, after long labors, great care and expense, they see the metals transmuted in their furnaces.'”
[15] V. and V. Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003), transl. by Mark Penny; pp. 121-122 — “Even if many tantric texts speak only of bodhicitta, the male seed, at heart it is a matter of the absorption of both fluids, the male and the female, in short — of sukra. Admittedly the mixing of the sexual fluids does seem incompatible with the prohibition against ejaculation, but through the so-called Vajroli method the damaging consequences of the emission of semen can be reversed..”
“The bodhicitta is also called bindu, which means ‘point’, ‘nil’, ‘zero’, or ‘drop’.” (p. 135)
[16]ibid., p. 124 — “The initiation path of the Kalachakra Tantra [..] now leads us on to the four highest initiations, or rather to the twelfth to fifteenth initiation stages. [..] The reader will soon see that we are dealing with an extended copy of the four ‘higher initiations’ (8–11). They thus also bear the same names: (12) the vase initiation; (13) the secret initiation; (14) the wisdom initiation; and (15) the word initiation. The difference primarily consists in the fact that rather than just one mudra, ten wisdom consorts now participate in the ritual. All ten must be offered to the master by the pupil (Naropa, 1994, p. 193). There are different rules for monks and laity in this regard. It is required of a layman that the mudras be members of his own family — his mother, his sister, his daughter, his sister-in-law, and so on (Naropa, 1994, p. 192). This makes it de facto impossible for him to receive the Kalachakra solemnity. Although the same commandment applies to a monk, it is interpreted symbolically in his case. Hence, he has to deliver to his guru numerous girls from the lower castes, who then adopt the names and roles of the various female relatives during the ritual. Among other things the elements are assigned to them: the ‘mother’ is earth, the ‘sister’ water, the ‘daughter’ fire, the ‘sister’s daughter’ is the wind, and so on (Grünwedel, Kalacakra III, p. 125). After the pupil has handed the women over to his master, he is given back one of them as a symbolic ‘spouse’ for the impending rites (Naropa, 1994, p. 193).”
[17] ibid., p. 122-123 — “Here can be seen very clearly how much of a calculating and technical meaning the term upaya (method) has in the tantras.”
“Equivalent quotations from many other Western interpreters of Tantrism can be found: ‘In … Tantrism … woman is means, an alien object, without possibility of mutuality or real communication’ (quoted by Shaw, 1994, p. 7). The woman ‘is to be used as a ritual object and then cast aside’ (also quoted by Shaw, 1994, p. 7). Or, at another point: the yogis had ‘sex without sensuality … There is no relationship of intimacy with an individual — the woman … involved is an object, a representation of power … women are merely spiritual batteries‘ (quoted by Shaw, 1994, n. 128, pp. 254–255). The woman functions as a ‘salvation tool’, as an ‘aid on the path to enlightenment’. The goal of Vajrayana is even ‘to destroy the female’ (quoted by Shaw, 1994, p. 7).” (p. 47)
[18]ibid., p. 122; citing Eliade, 1985, p. 257, Shaw, 1994, p. 157, and White, 1996, p.200
[19]ibid., p. 122, citing Shaw, 1994, p. 158.
[20]ibid.,p. 98
[21]ibid., p. 60, 62 — “[A]lthough her autonomous feminine existence has been dissolved, her feminine essence (gynergy) has not been lost. Via an act of sexual magic the yogi has appropriated this and with it achieved the power of an androgyne. He destroys, so to speak, the exterior feminine in order to internalize it and produce an ‘inner woman’ as a part of himself. ‘He absorbs the Mother of the Universe into himself’, as it is described in the Kalachakra Tantra (Grünwedel, Kalac[h]akra IV, p. 32).”
“In general, the maha mudra is said to reside in the region of the navel. There she dances and acts as an oracle as the Greek goddess Metis once did in the belly of Zeus. [..] The male tantric master now has the power to assume the female form of the goddess (who is of course an aspect of his own mystical body), that is, he can appear in the figure of a woman. Indeed, he even has the magical ability to divide himself into two gendered beings, a female and a male deity. He is further able to multiply himself into several maha mudras.”
[22]ibid., p. 48 — “In place of the human ego is the superego of a god with far-reaching powers. This superhuman subject knows no bounds when it proclaims in the Hevajra Tantra, ‘I am the revealer, I am the revealed doctrine and I am the disciple endowed with good qualities. I am the goal, I am the master of the world and I am the world as well as the worldly things” (Farrow and Menon, 1992, p. 167).'”
[23]ibid., pp. 77; 102-103 — “[F]or the ‘true’ adept (whether Tantric or European alchemist) it was not just a matter of the actual yellow metal, but also the so-called ‘spiritual gold’. In the West this was understood to mean the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ or the ‘hermetical elixir’, which transformed the experimenter into a superman. Alchemy and Tantrism thus have the same spiritual goal. In order to achieve this, numerous processes of conversion were needed in the laboratory of the adept, which did not just take the form of chemical processes, but which the alchemist also experienced as successive transmutations of his personality, that is, his psyche was dissolved and then put together again a number of times in the course of the experimentation. Solve et coagula (dissolve and bind) is for this reason the first and most well-known maxim of the hermetical art.”
[24] David Astle, The Babylonian Woe (1975), pp. 15-16, citing G.R. Driver and John C. Miles, Ancient Codes and Laws of the Near East (Clarendon Press, Oxford); and Professor W.F. Albright, The Amarna Letters from Palestine (Cambridge University Press)
[25] Miroslav Novák, Heritage of Alchemical Cryptography (2013), Il Chimico Italiano 24: 17-24
[27] Bibliotheca Chemica, p. 453; D.S.B.; cited by Abe Books, Item Description: 1571. THURNEISSER ZUM THURN, Leonhart. PROKATALEPSIS ODER PRAEOCCUPATION, DURCH ZWOLFF VERSCHEIDENLICHER TRACTATEN; GEMACHTER HARM PROBEN. Frankfurt: Johann Eichorn, 1571. First edition. (24 June 2017)
[28] Richard A. Werner, To a new understanding of the function of the banking sector: the mechanism of productive credit creation and quantitative easing; presentation to the Russian Academy of Sciences, round table “Anti-crisis fiscal policy of the state in the interests of economic development of Russia” (2015). (watch video)
[29] John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How The Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, And Made Wordplay (2011), cited in Wikipedia: Pun (21 June 2017)
[30] Richard A. Werner, How do banks create money, and why can other firms not do the same? An explanation for the coexistence of lending and deposit-taking (2014) — “What banks do is to simply reclassify their accounts payable items arising from the act of lending as ‘customer deposits’, and the general public, when receiving payment in the form of a transfer of bank deposits, believes that a form of money had been paid into the bank. As a result, the public readily accepts such ‘bank deposits’ and their ‘transfers’ to defray payments. They are also the main component of the official ‘money supply’ as announced by central banks (M1, M2, M3, M4), which is created almost entirely through this act of re-classifying banks’ accounts payable as fictitious ‘customer deposits’.”
[31] V. and V. Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003), transl. by Mark Penny, p.104
[32] Andy Haldane, Trust and Finance, Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oct 2013
[33] V. and V. Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003), transl. by Mark Penny; pp. 119, citing White, 1996, p. 28
[34]ibid., p. 123 — “‘If the woman is too powerful or too old or too young, terrible things will happen to the innocent man who falls into her trap, a fact often depicted in terms of his losing his fluids’ (O’Flaherty, 1982/1988, p. 56).”
“Now whether the yogis can actually and permanently maintain control over the women through their ‘tricks’ (upaya) is another question. This is solely dependent upon their magical abilities, over which we do not wish to pass judgement here. The texts do repeatedly warn of the great danger of their experiments. There is the ever-present possibility that the ‘daughters of Mara’ see through the tricky system and plunge the lamas into hell.” (p. 268)
[35]ibid., p. 123 — “Is this purely a matter of male fantasies? Not at all — a gynocentric correspondence to the thieving seed-absorption is, namely, known from the Kali cults to be a ritual event. Here, the woman assumes the upper position [in] the sex act and in certain rites leaves the man whose life energies she has drained behind as a corpse. According to statements by the Tibet researcher, Matthias Hermanns¸ there were yoginis (female yogis) who received instruction in a technique ‘through which they were able to forcibly draw their partners’ semen from out of the penis’, and the author concludes from this that, ‘It is thus the counterpart of the procedure which the yogi employs to soak up the genital juices of several women one after another through his member’ (Hermanns, 1965, p. 19).”
[36]ibid., pp. 118-119 — “[T]he tantras teach that the semen is originally stored in a moonlike bowl beneath the roof of the skull. As soon as a person begins to experience sexual desire, it starts to flow out, drop by drop, passing through the five energy centers (chakras). In each of these the yogi experiences a specific ‘seminal’ ecstasy (Naropa, 1994, p. 191). The destination of the sperm’s journey within the body is the tip of the penis. Here, through extreme meditative concentration, the adept collects the lust: ‘The vajra [penis] is inserted into the lotus [vagina], but not moved. When lust of a transient art arises, the mantra hum should be spoken. … The decisive [factor] is thus the retention of the sperm. Through this, the act obtains a cosmological dimension. … It becomes the means of attaining enlightenment (bodhi)” (Grönbold, Asiatische Studien, p. 34). ‘Delight resides in the tip of the vajra [penis]’, as is said in a Kalachakra text (Grönbold, 1992a)…”
[37]ibid., p. 123
[38] Richard A. Werner, How do banks create money, and why can other firms not do the same? An explanation for the coexistence of lending and deposit-taking (2014) — “The act of signing the loan contract and purchasing it as a promissory note of the borrower without yet making the borrowed funds available to the borrower (Step 1) has the same accounting implications for banks, non-banks and non-financial corporations alike. In all cases, the balance sheets lengthen, as an asset (the loan contract) is acquired and a liability to make money available to the borrower is incurred (accounts payable).”
“In Step 2, the lender makes the funds available to the borrower. The fact that in Step 2 the bank is alone among firms in showing the same total impact on assets and liabilities as everyone else at Step 1, when the money had not yet been made available to the borrower, demonstrates that the bank did not actually make any money available to the borrower. This means that the bank still has an open ‘accounts payable’ liability, as it has not in fact discharged its original liability.”
“For banks only the balance sheet remains unchanged in its EXPANDED position .. In other words: banks do not discharge their liability.”
[39] V. and V. Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003), transl. by Mark Penny, p. 119, citing Grönbold, Asiatische Studien, p. 34.
[40] Stephen D. Simpson, The Banking System: Commercial Banking – Economic Concepts in Banking, Investopedia (1 July 2017)
[41] Zosimos Alchemista of Panopolis, Tractatus Avicennae, Alchemist Wikia, (1 July 2017)
[42]Éliphas Lévi, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, 1855; (Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, translated by A.E. Waite (1896), p. 80-81
On Double-Entry Bookkeeping, Money Creation, Sexual Alchemy, and the Magickal Inversion of Values
“In vulgar opinion, transmutations and metamorphoses have always been the very essence of magic. Now, the crowd, being the echo of opinion, which is queen of the world, is never perfectly right nor entirely wrong. Magic really changes the nature of things, or, rather, modifies their appearances at pleasure, according to the strength of the operator’s will … Speech creates its form, and when a person, held infallible, confers a name upon a given thing, he really transforms that thing into the substance signified by the name. The masterpiece of speech and of faith, in this order, is the real transmutation of a substance without change in its appearances.”1
– Eliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic, 1896
“In case you thought banks lend money—they take deposits and lend money—you’re wrong. Legally, they do not take deposits, they borrow from the public. The expressions in banking are designed to mislead what’s really happening. What does a bank do? Banks purchase securities .. and they don’t pay up.”
– Professor Richard Werner, Address to the Russian Academy of Sciences, 12 Feb 2015
It is often said that “the devil is in the detail”. We commonly understand this to mean that hidden somewhere there is a catch or mysterious element. It serves as a warning to pay close attention in order to avoid error… or entrapment.
When we consider the grand mystical numberland of banking and finance today, with its infinitely labyrinthine mountains of multi-layered financial derivatives—allegedly ‘monetary’ instruments bearing incomprehensible acronyms, innumerable interconnections, and indecipherable obligations—one might be forgiven for believing that the devil and his minions really does now rule the world.
So it is both interesting and ironic that this idiom is itself a derivative—and an inversion—of an earlier saying.
“Le bon Dieu est dans le détail” (“the good God is in the detail”)2 means that attention paid to small things has big rewards. It serves as an encouragement to be conscientious in one’s work; that whatever one does, it should be done thoroughly, with an eye to how “the good God” will judge it.
There, we traced the history of el modo vinegia (“the Venetian method”) of double-entry bookkeeping, and unveiled the abundant evidence for its true purpose.
Contrary to popular belief, it was not developed as a dry, moral values-free, coolly rational mathematical tool of accounting and practical commerce. It was, rather, a Hermetic-Kabbalist ‘magick’ method for a very different kind of calculation – the deliberate, willful concealment of the immoral (and at the time, illegal) practice of lending money for gain (usury).
We also demonstrated that the method, both of double-entry bookkeeping, and of bank ‘money’ (credit) creation ex nihilo (“out of nothing”), is precisely represented by the Hermetic-Kabbalist alchemical symbol of the hexagram:
However, in one small detail, the above diagram has never appeared to me to be perfectly consistent with 19th century French occult magus Eliphas Lévi’s “Double Triangle of Solomon”, as referenced in my essay:
Seal of Solomon, front page of Eliphas Lévi’s ‘Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual’ (Source: Wikipedia)
Lévi tells us that “(t)he notion of the infinite and the absolute is expressed by this sign … the most simple and complete abridgment of the science of all things”3:
The Double Triangle of Solomon, represented by the two Ancients of the Kabbalah; the Macroprosopus and the Microprosopus; the God of Light and the God of Reflections; mercy and vengeance; the white Jehovah and the black Jehovah.4
Specifically, the detail that has long troubled me is the two little symbols (and their inverses) in Lévi’s sign, representing inter alia the Hermetic-Kabbalist alchemical axiom, “As above, so below”5:
“That which is above equals that which is below,” says Hermes.6
Comparing with my diagram, the apparent inconsistency is clear:
As you can see, that which is Above does not appear to be the same as that which is Below – that is to say, in the very particular sense of there not appearing to be two different pairs of opposing (inverse) identities on the Left hand side versus the Right hand side, as depicted in Lévi’s “Great Seal”.
Note carefully that the word values (meanings) do not appear to match – even though their numerical values do, as indeed they must (remember the fundamental rule of double-entry bookkeeping – “For every credit there must be a matching debit”):
The apparent inconsistency is easily resolved, however, by a closer consideration of Lévi’s magnum opus, with particular attention to the importance of language—and especially of speech—in ritual magick (italicised and bold emphasis added):
Grammar itself attributes three persons to the verb. The first is that which speaks, the second that which is spoken to, and the third the object. .. The magical dogma is also one in three and three in one. That which is above is like or equal to that which is below. Thus, two things which resemble one another and the word which signifies their resemblance make three.7
What is the word that signifies the “resemblance” of the symbols and their inverses?
What is the word that defines not the form but the substance of the so-called ‘Asset’ and ‘Liability’—words that appear to be contradictory—as employed in the process of bank ‘money’ creation?
Interestingly, the correct word is itself a triadic word; one in three and three in one.
Promise-to-Pay.
Or, to use the correct legal term employed by the ‘money’ creators, a Promissory Note (ie, promise-ory). In layman’s terms, an I-Owe-You (“IOU”).
If you have read my earlier essay, you will recall that we went through the double entry process step by step, demonstrating that it is precisely represented by the Double Triangle of Solomon.
Let us review that process symbolically once again, but this time, with a more precise, and complete word definition included. That is to say, we will now include the triadic word (“IOU”) that signifies the unity of the “two things which resemble one another”—the two apparent opposites—that are being created. We will also include the word that signifies the identity of the person issuing the IOU.
When you go to the bank to borrow money, the first critical step is the forming of an agreement – the loan contract:
The contract says, in essence, that the bank promises-to-pay (IOU) a number of Dollars, Euros, or Pounds (the “principal” of the loan), in exchange for your promise-to-pay (IOU) the bank the same (“principal”) number of Dollars, Euros or Pounds back again …
… plus “interest” (usury):
From your perspective as the borrower, on the one (right) hand your IOU to the bank is your Liability – you are going to have to discharge that liability, by paying the bank in future. On the other (left) hand, the bank’s IOU to you is your Asset – when the bank discharges its liability to you, you will have ‘money’ to spend:
Likewise, from the bank’s perspective, their IOU to you is their Liability, and your IOU to them is their Asset:
When the loan contract—a binding legal document—is signed by both parties, the Sacred Marriage or Divine Union between the male (phallic △) principle (the Lender), and the female (vulva ▽) principle (the Borrower) is ready to be consummated.8
It behooves one to draw attention to the obvious anthropomorphic metaphor here: the Borrower is about to get ****** by the Lender.
As we can now see, by carefully defining what is the true substance, and not just the magickal form of words used, the Above does indeed match the Below. The legal substance (an IOU) and its numerical value (the principal amount) is identical, as is the identity (person) who “owes” on either side. Only the word form (and thus, the word value, or meaning) is transformed, by inversion:
Now, consider carefully that it is the Lender (male △ identity) IOU that appears in its inverse reflections “As above, so Below” on the Left hand side, while the Borrower (female ▽ identity) IOU appears on the Right hand side.
Eliphas Lévi informs us that (bold and italicised emphasis added):
The primeval sages, when seeking the First of Causes, beheld good and evil in the world; they considered the shadow and the light; they compared winter with spring, age with youth, life with death, and their conclusion was this: The First Cause is beneficent and severe; it gives and takes away life. Then are there two contrary principles, the one good and the other evil, exclaimed the disciples of Manes. No, the two principles of universal equilibrium are not contrary, although contrasted in appearance, for a singular wisdom opposes one to another. Good is on the right, evil on the left, but the supreme excellence is above both, applying evil to the victory of good and good to the amendment of evil.9
It is apparent then, that the Hermetic-Kabbalist creators of the Venetian method of double-entry bookkeeping have also inverted the traditional correspondence of Good with the Right hand side, and Evil with the Left hand side. In double entry, the rule of law (pun meaningfully intended) is reversed – Assets (“in the black“) are shown on the Left, and Liabilities (“in the red“) on the Right:
If the stunned exclamation “Holy ****!” leapt to your lips in the watching of that video, then you might well be forgiven.
Why so?
Because you are more near to right than you know.
This formalised inversion of values can be traced back to the ancient Semitic empires of Mesopotamia, and the cult worship of Inanna-Ishtar, goddess of Love and War, the “Queen of Heaven” (all parentheses in original; bold and italicised emphasis added):
Central to the goddess as paradox is her well-attested psychological and more rarely evidenced physiological androgyny. Inanna-Ishtar is both female and male. Over and over again the texts juxtapose the masculine and feminine traits and behavior of the goddess.10
Her androgyny (also) manifests itself ritually in the transvestism of her cultic personnel. The awesome power of the goddess shows itself in the shattering of the human boundary between the sexes: “She (Ishtar) [changes] the right side (male) into the left side (female), she [changes] the left side into the right side, she [turns] a man into a woman, she [turns] a woman into a man, she ador[ns] a man as a woman, she ador[ns] a woman as a man.”11
Sjöberg… discusses the meaning of the transformation implied here. In his opinion, the passage does not suggest “a changing of the sexes when referring to the Inanna-Ishtar cult. The passages refer only to the changing roles of women and men in the cult ceremonies.” … Note the association in Mesopotamia, as elsewhere, of the left side with the female and the right side with the male. On the “pure right” hand and the “impure left” hand, see M. Civil, “Enlil and Ninlil: The Marriage of Sud”…12
Inanna-Ishtar combines male aggressiveness with the force of superabundance of female sexuality. She encompasses the two forms of potential disorder and violence—sex and war.13
The most vivid expressions of the goddess’s innate contradictions appear in the following passage:
To run, to escape, to quiet and to pacify are yours, Inanna….
To destroy, to build up, to tear up and to settle are yours, Inanna….
To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inanna…. Business, great winning, financial loss, deficit are yours, Inanna….
Neglect, careful preparation, to raise the head and to subdue are yours, Inanna….
Slander, untruthful words, to speak inimical (words) (and) to add hostile words are yours, Inanna….
To initiate a quarrel, to joke, to cause smiling, to be base and to be important are yours, Inanna.14
Inanna-Ishtar’s cultic celebrations and cultic personnel above all reflect her anomalousness and liminality. She is, one might say, externalized into unordered, carnivalesque celebration that demonstrates a reaching beyond the normal order of things and the breakdown of norms. The goddess’s festivals are institutionalized license. They celebrate and tolerate disorder. They are occasions when social rules are in abeyance and deviance from norms is articulated. Through symbolic inversion they attack the basic categorical differences between male and female, human and animal, young and old.15
The chief participants and actors in the goddess’s cult are well known by name … Their transvestism simulated the androgyny of Inanna-Ishtar. It was perhaps the inversion of the male/female binary opposition that thereby neutralized this opposition. By emulating their goddess who was both female and male, they shattered the boundary between the sexes. … The cultic personnel of the goddess in their costumes, words, and acts had but one goal: “to delight Ishtar’s heart, give themselves up to (otherwise) for[bidden] actions.”16
The male prostitutes comb their hair before her….
They decorate the napes of their necks with colored bands….
They gird themselves with the sword belt, the “arm of battle”….
Their right side they decorate with women’s clothing….
Their left side they cover with men’s clothing….
With jump ropes and colored cords they compete before her….
…
The one who covers the sword with blood, he sprinkles blood….
He pours out blood on the dais of the throne room.16a
Returning then to our account of the monetary Sacred Marriage or Divine Union that is about to be consummated—that is, now that the all-important legal document (the loan contract) has been signed—we are about to discover that another inversion of (word) values is about to take place. This one, far more crucial. And entirely one-sided.
If you go to the bank and you borrow money you sign a loan contract – very crucial. Your signature creates the money supply. Because the bank—legally—will consider the loan contract a Promissory Note, and that’s what it’s considered legally, a Promissory Note … and the bank purchases this contract. That’s what they do; they purchase the loan contract. Now, they owe you money. You say ‘I don’t care about the mechanics, give me the money’. The banker will say, ‘We’ll put it in your account. You’ll find it in your bank account’. Well, what is a bank account? It is not a deposit. What is it? It is a record of the bank’s debt to the public; it is a record of the bank’s debt to the new borrower, and they’ll show you the record of how much money they owe you. That’s it. They don’t pay up.17
In other words, the Lender—the male (phallic △) principle—does not discharge his Sacred Marital (legal) obligation to the Borrower, the female (vulva ▽) principle.
‘Our’ monetary system is really an “Un-holy ****”.
It is an anthropomorphic metaphor for the ancient alchemical practice of coitus reservatus—an andocentric, misogynist, predatory ritual magick system for the acquisition, manipulation, transformation, and domination of the female power18 principle of fertility or fecundity (i.e., the power to create abundant new life)—applied to the realm of ‘money’ creation. The Lender chooses not to discharge his ‘essence’ (substance) or ‘seed’ (the “principal”) that he is obligated to give her, in exchange for her promise to repay him with her “firstborn” (monetary) “child”; the “first fruits” of her “labour”.
Bernard Lietaer and Rivkah Harris (respectively) explain:
Essentially, to pay back interest on a loan requires using someone else’s principal. In other words, not creating the money to pay interest is the device used to generate the scarcity necessary for a bank-debt monetary system to function. It forces people to compete with each other for money that was never created…19
Play (mēlulu) is an integral part of Inanna-Ishtar’s personality… her playground was the battleground: “Goddess of fights, let the battle proceed like the play of puppets.” .. “Ishtar, whose play is fighting.”20
Now that the Borrower has naïvely signed up for her legal obligation to him, the Lender engages in a willful act of deception; he inverts the meaning of the words used to define his own legal obligation to her.
If you will forgive a little wordplay, well might ‘our’ monetary system be called “Malice in Numberland”.
For our purposes here I have taken the liberty of excerpting from the Conclusion of the professor’s paper, and inserting the relevant tables (my bold and italicised emphasis added):
The act of signing the loan contract and purchasing it as a promissory note of the borrower without yet making the borrowed funds available to the borrower (Step 1) has the same accounting implications for banks, non-banks and non-financial corporations alike. In all cases, the balance sheets lengthen, as an asset (the loan contract) is acquired and a liability to make money available to the borrower is incurred (accounts payable).21
In Step 2, the lender makes the funds available to the borrower. The fact that in Step 2 the bank is alone among firms in showing the same total impact on assets and liabilities as everyone else at Step 1, when the money had not yet been made available to the borrower, demonstrates that the bank did not actually make any money available to the borrower. This means that the bank still has an open ‘accounts payable’ liability, as it has not in fact discharged its original liability. What banks do is to simply reclassify their accounts payable items arising from the act of lending as ‘customer deposits’, and the general public, when receiving payment in the form of a transfer of bank deposits, believes that a form of money had been paid into the bank. As a result, the public readily accepts such ‘bank deposits’ and their ‘transfers’ to defray payments. They are also the main component of the official ‘money supply’ as announced by central banks (M1, M2, M3, M4), which is created almost entirely through this act of re-classifying banks’ accounts payable as fictitious ‘customer deposits’.22
This one-sided inversion of (word) values appears like this when depicted in its Hermetic-Kabbalist symbolic form:
As you can see, the ‘money’-Lender sex magicians—for all practical intents and purposes—transform their own Liability (“AC Payable”) into a fictitious “Client Deposit” (that is, as seen by the Borrower), through the power of authoritative opinion, repeated ad infinitum.
It is worth recalling Eliphas Lévi here (bold and italicised emphasis added):
In vulgar opinion, transmutations and metamorphoses have always been the very essence of magic. Now, the crowd, being the echo of opinion, which is queen of the world, is never perfectly right nor entirely wrong. Magic really changes the nature of things, or, rather, modifies their appearances at pleasure, according to the strength of the operator’s will … Speech creates its form, and when a person, held infallible, confers a name upon a given thing, he really transforms that thing into the substance signified by the name. The masterpiece of speech and of faith, in this order, is the real transmutation of a substance without change in its appearances.
This magick power of speech to create form, and to (apparently) transform the substance of a thing simply by conferring a (different) name on it, is only the more pertinent in light of the recent release of the Panama Papers, allegedly containing evidence of tax avoidance (both legal, and illegal) practiced by wealthy individuals and public officials, through their lawyers and accountants, via offshore company entities.
How so?
In yet another inversion of word values (meaning), there is a formal accounting principle called “Substance over form” that enables precisely the kinds of legal obfuscation adopted by these individuals in moving their wealth offshore … and that banks perform in the magickal transformation of their “accounts payable” obligations (bold and italicised emphasis added):
Substance over form is an accounting principle which recognizes that business transactions should be accounted in accordance with their (economic) substance instead of their (legal) form. Economic substance refers to the underlying economic or commercial purpose of a business transaction apart from its legal or tax considerations. Legal form refers to interpretation of a business transaction in accordance with the applicable business laws.
While accounting for business transactions and other events, substance over form principle requires accountants to measure and present the economic impact of an event instead of its legal form. …
Substance over form principle is recognized by all major financial reporting frameworks, namely the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and US GAAP, etc. External auditors are required to attest that companies recognize all business transactions in compliance with the substance over form concept.23
In accounting then, the legal definition of a transaction is not considered its substance; it is now only its form, is open to interpretation, and, most importantly, is to be considered only apart from and secondary to the (claimed) “purpose”. The ‘substance’ will now be whatever the accountant (or banker) claims the purpose of the transaction to be.
Since the economic purpose of a bank’s “accounts payable” item is to provide the customer with ‘money’, then according to this barefaced inversion of logic, reason, and morality, it is standard accounting practice for the bank to re-enter (transform) and record its “accounts payable” item as a “customer deposit”, even though the true substance of that item remains, both legally, and from the bank’s own perspective, a Liability (IOU) of the bank!
As we saw in my previous essay, the Venetian method of double-entry bookkeeping was developed as a tool for the deliberate concealment of illegal (and immoral) practices. So perhaps the “substance over form” example of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) should come as no great surprise.
It is important not to lose sight of the fact that it is not only through the speech of an authority “held infallible” that such a transformation becomes ‘real’ – it is also through the ceaseless repetition of those magick words over generations.
Had Apollonius [of Tyana] offered a cup of wine to his disciples, and said to them: “This is my blood, of which ye shall drink henceforth to perpetuate my life within you;” and had his disciples through centuries believed that they continued the transformation by repeating the same words; had they taken the wine, despite its odour and taste, for the real, human, and living blood of Apollonius, we should have to acknowledge this master in theurgy as the most accomplished of enchanters and most potent of all the magi. It would remain for us then to adore him.24
M. de Montalembert seriously relates, in his legend of St Elizabeth of Hungary, how one day this saintly lady, surprised by her noble husband, from whom she sought to conceal her good works, in the act of carrying bread to the poor in her apron, told him that she was carrying roses, and it proved on investigation that she had spoken truly; the loaves had been changed into roses. This story is a most gracious magical apologue, and signifies that the truly wise man cannot lie, that the word of wisdom determines the form of things, or even their substance independently of their forms. Why, for example, should not the noble spouse of St Elizabeth, a good and firm Christian like herself, and believing implicitly in the real presence of the Saviour in true human body upon an altar where he beheld only a wheaten host, why should he not believe in the real presence of roses in his wife’s apron under the appearances of bread? She exhibited him loaves undoubtedly, but as she had said that they were roses, and as he believed her incapable of the smallest falsehood, he saw and wished to see roses only. This is the secret of the miracle.25
Let us indulge ourselves in a small act of transformation of our own, replacing the forms and identities in the words of Lévi’s tale with those of our present subject:
Why, for example, should not the noble client of St Goldman, a good and firm Christian like himself … why should she not believe in the real presence of money in her bank account under the appearances of a promissory record? He exhibited her a record of the promise undoubtedly, but as he had said that it was money, and as she believed him incapable of the smallest falsehood, she saw and wished to see money only. This is the secret of the miracle.
What all this means of course, is that for several hundreds of years (yes, literally), we have all like sheep been led astray.
That is to say, we have been led to believe a lie.
All of the ‘money’ that we believe ourselves to own, and that we circulate daily among ourselves in payment for goods, services, and investments, is neither ‘money’ in true substance, nor are we the owners of it.
The reality of the system is this. Bankers create IOUs out of nothing. These digital tokens represent our IOU to the bank. Then—by a clever accounting trick—they let us borrow their IOUs as ‘money’.
Begging the question – why don’t we all do the same thing, and just lend to ourselves?*
It also begs the question of how it is that the ‘money’ magicians have been able to perpetuate this colossal deception for so long, without being discovered and called to account.
Eliphas Lévi explains:
To become invisible one of three things is necessary—the interposition of some opaque medium between the light and our body, or between our body and the eyes of the spectators, or the fascination of the eyes of the spectators in such a manner that they cannot make use of their sight. Of these methods, the third only is magical. Have we not all of us observed that under the government of a strong preoccupation we look without seeing and hurt ourselves against objects in front of us?26
The secret of invisibility, therefore, wholly consists in a power which is capable of definition—that of distracting or paralysing attention, so that the light reaches the visual organ without impressing the eye of the soul. To exercise this power we must possess a will accustomed to sudden and energetic actions, great presence of mind, and skill no less great in causing diversions among the crowd. Let a man, for example, who is being pursued by his intending murderers, dart into a side street, return immediately, and advance with perfect calmness towards his pursuers, or let him mix with them and seem to be engaged in the chase, and he will certainly make himself invisible. A priest who was being hunted in ’93, with the intention of hanging him from a lamp-post, fled down a side street, assumed a stooping gait, and leaned against a corner, with an intensely preoccupied expression; the crowd of his enemies swept past; not one saw him, or, rather, it never struck anyone to recognise him; it was so unlikely to be he!27
There are a variety of words and phrases that come to mind as being apropos to describe this phenomenon.
But perhaps the most apropos word of all would be this.
* You may be interested to discover an alternate currency ecosystem concept of my own design, that can enable everyone to do this – to be their own central banker. Visit deror.org
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ADDENDUM:
I am presently writing a book on the thesis outlined in this, and my earlier essay. As we have seen, the core concepts are traceable right back to the ancient Semitic cult worship of Inanna-Ishtar, the “Queen of Heaven”. Of particular interest is the evidences for widespread regional use of magickal talismans and erotic plaques placed at thresholds (eg, doorways, windows) to sexually attract and “bind” prosperity demons:
Source: Sex, Magic, and the Liminal Body in the Erotic Art and Texts of the Old Babylonian Period, Assante. J, (2002)
Source: Sex, Magic, and the Liminal Body in the Erotic Art and Texts of the Old Babylonian Period, Assante. J, (2002)
If you would be interested in receiving notification upon the book’s completion and publication, please feel free to drop me a line using the contact form at deror.org
UPDATE 21/4/2016
Added quotation (footnote 16a) plus video clip “The male prostitutes..decorate the napes of their necks with colored bands”
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[1] Eliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual (1896), p. 282
[2] John Bartlett, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature, 17th ed. (2002)
[3] Eliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual (1896), p. 44
[4] ibid, p. xxi
[5] “That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one” – Hermes Trismegistus, The Emerald Tablet, translation by Jabir ibn Hayyan, (Holmyard 1923: 562.)
[6] Eliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual (1896), p. 38
[7] ibid, p. 44
[8] Julia Assante, Sex, Magic, and the Liminal Body in the Erotic Art and Texts of the Old Babylonian Period (2002)
[9] Eliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual (1896), p. 46
[10] Rivkah Harris, Inanna-Ishtar as Paradox and the Coincidence of Opposites, History of Religions, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Feb., 1991), p. 268
[11] ibid., p. 270
[12] ibid., p. 270 n. 48
[13] ibid., p. 270
[14] ibid., p. 265
[15] ibid., p. 273
[16] ibid., p. 276-277
[16a] ibid., p. 276, cf. n. 83 – DD. Reisman, “Iddin-Dagan’s Sacred Marriage Hymn,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 25 (1973): 187:45-64
[17] Victor and Victoria Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003)
[18] Richard A. Werner, “To a new understanding of the function of the banking sector: the mechanism of productive credit creation and quantitative easing”, presentation to the Russian Academy of Sciences, round table “Anti-crisis fiscal policy of the state in the interests of economic development of Russia” (2015)
[19] Bernard Lietaer and Jacquie Dunne, Rethinking Money, (2013), p. 39
[20] Rivkah Harris, Inanna-Ishtar as Paradox and the Coincidence of Opposites, History of Religions, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Feb., 1991), p. 274
[21] Richard A. Werner, How do banks create money, and why can other firms not do the same? An explanation for the coexistence of lending and deposit-taking (2014)
PSALMISTICE 