While every effort has been made to accurately translate this article from its original Italian version, some nuances in meaning may differ. If you wish to explore the original text, you can find it here: Inspirare e respirare, o come comprendere il mondo.

Money is an interesting object of study, as it reveals how consciousness interacts with reality. Indeed, we often say that money is power, yet what money actually is depends primarily on the observer. Money is freedom for some and security for others, but it can also represent entertainment or success. At the same time, money is none of these things, even if it appears to be so to the observer. We place our trust in money to deliver what we desire, and thus money essentially becomes a surrogate for desire.

In fact, we value money for what it can buy. Its value is unstable, and it is impossible to explain without ultimately speaking falsely. We can offer explanations that are almost always true enough, but never completely so. In the end, this is why a piece of paper can become extremely valuable, at least for a certain period of time.

In this article, I intend to argue that money has a value equal to all the resources and energy that other people are willing to exchange for it. Yet, what sustains those things, what makes them valuable? We will find that the final answer to this series of questions, that which lies at the foundation of value, is something very similar to human will itself—the will to prosper and flourish, the very force that animates us. This is what money truly represents, or rather, what money symbolizes.

Money is crystallized will. It is pure motivating force represented by a physical object. Money is valuable only to the extent that you desire, for if we desired nothing, the value of money would be zero.

But what truly is this animating force? Etymologically, the common root of both animal and animated is anima—the soul. Rationality is too weak to sustain this discussion any further, so we must turn to religion.

In Genesis, God creates Adam by breathing life into him; this is how He animates him. In the Old Testament, the word used for breath is ruach, and in the Greek New Testament, it is pneuma. Both of these words simultaneously mean spirit and breath. We find this same connection in our current language, so much so that the words inspiration and respiration share the same root as spirit. Furthermore, it is written in the Scriptures that God made man in his image and likeness, and this is largely because, unlike other animals, we effectively create just as God does, and we do so by breathing our spirit into our creations. For example, we created money, gave it a name, and gave it life, and so it is with every human creation.

However, the reason I am focusing specifically on money here is twofold. First, money represents pure value. It is not the desire for anything in particular, but rather the desire for things in general. Second, money is quantifiable and measurable. In money, we have condensed this animating force into a form that can be both empirically observed and approximately measured. In other words, just as the movement of leaves on a tree can reveal the action of the wind, so money physically maps certain currents of invisible energy, and perhaps this is precisely why Anglo-Saxons called currencies by that name.

In any case, it is this second property that allows us to observe the functioning of these flows, and consequently, we can understand how they operate even if we cannot actually see them.

In a sense, we could almost say that the stock market is already conducting this experiment: the more energy we invest in a given entity, the more manifest that entity becomes. The choice of the word entity is by no means accidental because, in the end, corporations are people, and as our condensed will is pumped into them, they become more powerful, acquiring the force to move both mind and matter. This brings us back to the opening point: money is, for all intents and purposes, a symbolic surrogate for a force that animates and gives life. For psychic energy. For will.

In the same way that money can be invested in companies, a portion of the human spirit, of our collective will, has been invested in currencies. After all, as we lose faith in a company, we withdraw our invested funds, stating that the company has lost value. Similarly, if we were to lose faith in the euro, for example, we would say that the euro is losing value. The less faith we have in a currency, the less real that currency becomes, because if we had no faith in it whatsoever, it would cease to exist.

From a purely semantic point of view, it seems an excellent idea to call this energy spirit, since, as mentioned earlier, the Greek word for spirit is pneuma, and this spirit does indeed act pneumatically. The economy and the market behave, in every respect, like a pneumatic system. They are full of centers that inflate and deflate, and just as air must flow constantly in and out of the body and its tissues, so too money must always circulate. If this ceases to happen, the body dies. It is therefore no accident that money is associated with the Gnostic demiurge, with Saturn, or with Yaldabaoth: this is the mythological being that manages to find spirit within physical matter.

Money is materialized spirit, and the perception of its value is a projection. In Jungian psychology, the factor that creates projection, the part of the psyche that projects the unconscious onto the world, is called anima in men and animus in women. Curiously, this word appears once again. It is our soul that gives the appearance of value to this seal, and this projection is as much a part of our mind as the stomach is a part of our body. In the same way that our stomach can influence our consciousness, so can the projection. Technically, it cannot make us do anything, but it can certainly try.

There are fundamentally three factors that determine how powerful the projection will be: the intensity of our desire, the faith we have in the projection, and the weakness of our ego. If all three of these factors align, this projection becomes dangerous, as it is a part of ourselves that is not conscious, yet its influence rivals that of the part that is. After all, the Hermetists had arrived at a similar conclusion a few centuries ago, stating that one could shape reality at will through the systematic and concentrated use of one’s intentions.

We should not think of this energy as trapped inside or outside our heads. Perhaps the meaning of money is inside and the piece of paper that is the banknote is outside, but from our perspective, the two are no different. As within, so without; as without, so within. The external world and the unconscious can never be meaningfully differentiated.

How can we define the force exerted by these projections against consciousness? In physics, when a large amount of matter is concentrated in a single place, it is said to warp space and time, generating something we call gravity. On the other hand, when a large amount of this spirit becomes concentrated in a single place, it warps the collective unconscious and generates something we might call gravitas, which in Latin means heaviness, and weight is often used to indicate importance. In common parlance, a person with gravitas is someone with a presence, someone who is important and should be taken seriously.

Kings have gravitas, and just like money, the reason a king has power is because a large number of people project power onto him. The problem is that once this begins to happen, it keeps happening, because the more people there are who believe in these projections, the more they possess reality. If a hundred people follow the directions of a certain individual, then that individual has a certain power, and the more power he possesses, the more dangerous he becomes. The more dangerous he becomes, the more frightening he becomes, and the more power he obtains. Gravitas is therefore the capacity of an idea to alter reality, and I emphasize idea because it is certainly not banknotes, mere pieces of paper, that change reality, but rather the idea that they signify. This is the very same reason why a simple bank transfer, which is nothing but a number being reduced on a screen, can do the exact same work as a banknote.

As stated before, this reasoning can be applied to every human creation; money is simply the most obvious illustration of this effect. If we take drug addiction as an example, an emanation is projected onto a certain substance, and this projected emanation is always the complement to the addict’s feeling of lack. Were the addict depressed, the drug would be happiness; were the addict in pain, the drug would be comfort; were the addict bored, the drug would be novelty. The emanation is thus emanated. This happens when the addict believes in it, when he buys into it, when he falls for the salesman’s pitch. Obviously, there is almost always an actual purchase involved in a drug addiction, but if we recall what money truly is, we will recognize that the purchase is a ritual sacrifice. Even in the absence of an actual purchase, the sacrifice of time is sufficient. After all, time is money. As this process of animation continues, thoughts about the drug become increasingly autonomous, and the addict’s ego becomes less autonomous. More and more often, it happens that thoughts about the drug are in command. The addict is, in fact, giving his life to the voice he hears in the drug, and he does so by selling his soul.

The most interesting effects of these emanations appear, however, when they are projected onto people. Indeed, if a large number of people project status and importance onto a certain man—that is, if many people respect, admire, and praise him—particular, strange coincidences begin to happen. First, certain highly suggestible individuals will begin to do the same, whether they know it or not. Second, there will be interesting effects on the man himself: his stress will decrease, his serotonin levels will rise, and he will produce more testosterone. As a result, his body will become more muscular, his brain will function better, and he as a person will be more confident, more decisive, and less anxious. Not only that, but he will sleep better, be less prone to illness, have more energy, and women will find him more attractive. This is what happens to people with high status, to people in whom others have invested psychic energy.

One might tell me that my use of the word energy is improper, and that what I am referring to here with that word is actually a myriad of factors, and I agree. However, the word energy in this context does not refer to anything physical or specific. Neither does the word money refer to anything physical or specific, if we wanted to be perfectly honest, but we use it anyway because it conveniently describes what occurs. Money, as previously mentioned, is not an object, nor does it exist in physical space; it is simply an unsubstantial unit of crystallized will. If only a few people believe in a currency, its value is unstable and will tend to dissipate, but if everyone believes in it, the value is stabilized.

This reflection leads us to conclude that if we synchronize our minds, we build and open channels for invisible forces, flows of energy, that pass through them. We create what we believe, and we believe what we invest energy in, what we think. In other words, it is our thoughts that shape the reality around us. And our thoughts are limited by our language, by our words, by our Logos. It is therefore no coincidence that the Gospel of John begins by writing, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

However, it is important to remember that interpretation does not occur consciously. We do not have to struggle to understand the meaning of words; we already know it. Similarly, when we speak, we do not have to consciously move our mouth to form words. Most communication, both incoming and outgoing, is handled by our unconscious; body language is a perfect example of this.

And there is likely an exchange of information going on all the time that is far more complicated than what we see. Forces much larger than those we perceive are at play around us and in what we do. But they are not elsewhere; they are right here, in front of us. They are made of this, and the less we believe in them, the less clearly we will see them. The less clearly we see them, the more vulnerable we will be.