THE SACRED & PROFANE HISTORY OF MONEY

Whole Earth, Spring, 1998 by Peter Lamborn Wilson

The first coin was not a practical means of symbolizing exchange (as the economists believe): the earliest coins were temple tokens, pilgrimage souvenirs, detachable bits of holy power, made of substances at once chthonic (underground) and celestial (sun/moon, gold/ silver)--an exchange not between humans but between humans and spirits. As coinage is "secularized" it already appears as debased, polluted with lesser metals, subject to "inflation." But inflation is breath, i.e., spirit. Money begins as half spirit half material, a doorway between worlds. But money becomes ever more spiritualized as it circulates through "History." Money is a GNOSTIC SYSTEM, or an IMAGINAL MACHINE. "Advances" in the abstraction of exchange are always introduced by mystical orders, as for example the perfection of checking systems by the Assassins and Templars. Banking appears as a kind of alchemy, making wealth out of credit, something out of nothing. And the whole process can be summed up by the US dollar bill, a virtual crypto-text on the aethereal nature of money.

The Hermetic philosophers of the Renaissance revealed the secrets of money, but their theories were debunked as mumbo-jumbo and secretly appropriated by the masters of the new paradigm whereby money was launched completely into the world of pure spirit (or "rational mind," its secular shadow). Etherealized as sheer representation, money could become paper (text) backed by metal, then by imaginary metal, then by sheer imagination--pure textuality. By the eighteenth century all nation-states were in debt, to their own self-created banks. By 1973 the long alchemical process ended with Nixon's "toppling the gold standard," a feat of pure heraldic magic. The "Global Market" manifested as a gnostic sphere in which thought, transmitted at digital speed, coagulates as symbolic wealth. By now a trillion dollars a clay whirls around the globe in a noosphere (or "numisphere") of its own, devouring all such lesser ideologies as communism or democracy. "Money's gone to Heaven," become absolutely pure, and all-powerful. This is the future. This is the Millennium.

Money, though always based on trust, demands some material presence. Even electronic means of payments (emops), though speediest for exchange, remain secured by paper records and ledgers, held in safe deposit, to reliably store their value. Humans go back and forth on money's proper ingredients. As times worsen, as in prison camps or during disasters, money returns directly to "GO" --bartering flourishes, trading with cigarettes or jewelry, even children.

In "safe times," the matter of money appears to progress or evolve. As a unit of account or store of value, money gravitates toward forms that accomplish exchanges of goods in shorter and shorter events; has wider and wider acceptance (while retaining local value); subdivides easily so trade can become fine-tuned; and diminishes in size and weight (less in robustness) so it can be easily carried and stored. Thus, the illusion of progress: barter to commodity monies to paper-with-metal-backing to paper-with-no-backing to electromagnetic-storage-and-transmission-secured-by-paper-with-no-backing. (Other variants exist.)

Each step is faster: paper then e-monies accelerate the transmital of monetary information. Each step is also more fragile. Global e-money's store of value roller-coasters within hours, not days. While the Year 2000 will most likely avoid a planetary computer crash, you can be sure financial institutions will secure their accounts on more, stable certified paper.

Yap money (see below) is the lovely dinosaur. Commodity money is nostalgically local: shells, cattle (from which we derive "capital"), tobacco, teeth, cigarettes, chewing gum, beads, bronze in dolphin shapes, cacao seeds, gold, silver, copper, feathers, salt (from which comes "salary"), dried fish, almonds, cloth, corn, barley, coconuts, tea bricks, rice, butter in cold climates, as well as paper money and coins. Today, only eight percent of the planet's money is in paper or coin. The rest is in ledgers.

Trust in barter is face to face. Contemporary trust in money is religious in the sense that its value relies only on religare (rules) made by banks and the customs of governance--far removed from most citizens' spheres of influence. And remember, money differs from wealth, a matter of richer substance. Wealth is well-being, an affluence, a contentment money may nurture but can never buy.

Peter Lanborn Wilson is my favorite anarchist historian and intellect. His most recent books give only a slight indication of his range of mental spaciousness: "Shower of Stars," Dream & Power: Initiatic Dreaming in Sufsim and Taosim; and Pirate Utopias: Of Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes. From Autonomedia, Box 568, Brooklyn, NY 11211. 718/387-6471.