A Handbook of Saxon Sorcery & Magic: Wyrdworking, Rune Craft, Divination & Wortcunning - Alaric Albertsson 2017

Rags to Riches: Prosperity Magic
More Magic Techniques

Those of us who live in America in the twenty-first century are extremely fortunate. The overwhelming majority of us live better than any other people at any other time in history. We do not worry whether we will have anything to eat tomorrow, or the next day, or the following winter. Most of us own some form of transportation, a luxury achieved only by the aristocracy in many earlier societies. We have clothing, warm shelter, and entertainment. We enjoy a level of comfort that medieval barons could only dream of. Compared to the people of almost any other era, the majority of us are, in a word, rich.

Nevertheless, most of us also want more. Or at least we claim to want more. There is rarely much passion behind our words. Prosperity is just not all that sexy and, because of this, prosperity magic can be more difficult than love magic. Love can become almost an obsession. Few people feel the same depth of passion for money that they feel for romantic companionship.

The secret to prosperity is really not a secret at all. Wealthy people know that hard work by itself is not the path to success. Those who have started at the bottom and climbed to the top are very open about their “secrets.” I was fortunate in the late 1970s to come into the employment of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Waid. Forty years earlier, the Waids had been struggling through the Great Depression. Determined to build a better life for themselves and their children, they mortgaged everything they owned and opened a small restaurant in Kansas City. Eventually, nurtured with a lot of work and dedication, Waid’s Restaurant grew into a small chain. When I began working for the Waids in 1977, they had recently sold their restaurant chain and were millionaires. Mr. Waid never bragged about his money, but you could hear the pride in his voice whenever he talked about other men whom he had helped rise to success. He took me under his wing and shared many of his secrets with me. Mr. Waid would give me books to read and albums to listen to, and he would interrogate me to make sure I was reading and listening, and none of this was anywhere in my job description. I resented the extra work a little until I realized where he was going with it. Both he and his wife were always available to counsel and advise me, not only for work-related issues, but also in my personal life.

None of the secrets they shared with me were new, novel, or covert in any way. The secrets to prosperity have been public knowledge for a long time. In the 1930s, a man named Napoleon Hill wrote a book called Think and Grow Rich that outlines these secrets in a clear and concise sequence. The book is still in print, is listed in this book’s bibliography, and is a volume you should purchase and read if personal prosperity is high on your list of priorities.

For most people, though, prosperity is not very high on that list, and this is itself one of the secrets that has been shared openly with the public for countless years. You need to develop a deep and sincere desire for prosperity if you hope to achieve it. Desire alone is not enough, of course; you cannot just wish for wealth and have it fall into your lap. But without desire, your efforts will be halfhearted and unfulfilled.

Most people do not really understand what prosperity is. They confuse the physical form of money with the essence of prosperity. Coins and bills and checks are not prosperity, they are merely the symbols representing this concept. The secret of prosperity, the nature of its essence, is the mystery embodied in the feoh rune.

Feoh means “cattle” but, in early English society, cattle were a measure of a family’s wealth, so much so that feoh also means “money.” There are more than twenty Old English words with feoh as their root that refer to some sort of financial concept. By contrast, there are only three or four words with feoh as their root that refer specifically to cattle. The Rune Poem tells us this:

Each man shall greatly share his (cattle)

if he will be awarded honors from his lord.

Cattle must be shared if they are to have value. Modern cattle are specialized as beef or dairy breeds, but the cattle of the Anglo-Saxons were multi-purpose. These cattle were shared or exchanged as a means of building prosperity. A bull was shared when put to stud on someone else’s cow. The resulting calf was shared when sold. A young heifer might have been kept for milk, but some were slaughtered for beef. Young males were either sold and slaughtered for beef, or castrated and trained as draft animals. Only a lucky few males were left as intact bulls. All of this sharing and exchanging created wealth for the community. Cattle provided beef, milk, butter, cheese, leather, horn, and manure. When shared and nurtured, cattle were a primary source of prosperity.

Superficially, prosperity seems like a very different concept now, but the most significant change is in our own perception. Today we may count dollars and cents instead of cattle, but the basic principles of prosperity remain the same. Cattle standing idly in a field were not prosperity. It was their productivity that generated wealth. Likewise, today, all of our paper and coins and electronic transfers are merely symbols of productivity. Some exchange must go on to build prosperity.

Money is an abstract concept with little meaning in itself. We can and should continue to use monetary symbols, but they must be used with precision. Here is where many traditional money spells fall apart. There is no use in working magic for “more money,” because the expression has no substance. As soon as you pick a penny up from the sidewalk you have “more money” than you did a moment before. “A lot of money” is no less vague. How much is a lot? Ten dollars is a lot of money compared to a nickel.

To work prosperity magic and achieve any degree of success, you must define a precise goal. This goal can be expressed however you desire so long as it is not vague or subjective in any way. Having an income of X dollars per year is a specific goal. Having “enough money to be comfortable” is not.

Your goal also has to be believable. If you do not believe it can be achieved, any magic you attempt is almost guaranteed to fail. If you are working the magic for someone else, your subject must fully believe he or she can reach the stated goal. If your ultimate goal is not believable, you can often change this by breaking it down into parts. Working prosperity magic can be much like climbing a flight of stairs—leaping to the top may be impossible, but taking each step one at a time is fairly easy.

As an example, let us imagine a woman who has a talent for art. It does not matter what kind of art. She has decided that her goal is to become a professional artist earning X dollars or more each year from the sale of her work. (I am saying “X dollars” because the real value of money fluctuates constantly. If I were to give a dollar amount, no matter what the figure, this book would be as outdated as the Jitterbug in just a few years.) Our hypothetical artist looks at this goal and realizes it is not believable. She can easily imagine herself with an income of X dollars from art sales, but it is a fantasy, not something she really believes in. She can, however, break this dream down into realistic portions. Her first goal could be to become a professional artist. To sell something. Anything. As she takes this step, she is not going to worry about the long-term goal. She can glance up at the top of the staircase once in a while, but, understanding the secrets of prosperity magic, she will focus on the immediate step before her.

Her second step, after she has sold one or two pieces of art, might be to set up her own business. At this point, it will probably be more of a hobby business. Our professional artist will not be quitting her day job. Again, her only concern is reaching the next goal. The goal is realistic. She can believe in it and achieve it.

By breaking down a larger goal into manageable steps in this way, you can create smaller goals leading toward prosperity. You do not need to be an entrepreneur to put these principles into action. Not everyone wants to go into business for himself or herself. The same concepts apply in a corporate setting. Set small, reasonable goals leading toward the larger picture. You are not likely to walk in from the street and immediately assume a high-level position in any company unless you have already held a similar position elsewhere. To get a senior position, you will need a plan consisting of a series of steps, each building on the last. Focus on the next step of your climb rather than worry about why you are not already at the top of the stairs.

Each step must be as precise and defined as your ultimate goal. It is not enough to say, “I want to be making more money six months from now than I am today.” As I have said, “more money” is too vague a concept. Exactly how much more, and is that before or after taxes?

These steps—achieving small, believable goals over and over—reveal another secret of prosperity. The most successful prosperity magic involves repetition and persistence. Repetition builds the momentum of your magic. And persistence is an absolute necessity. You cannot turn away from your goal when you stumble. Be prepared for this, because you will indeed stumble somewhere along the way. Stumbling is part of the process. It is only a failure if you allow it to be.

Runes of Prosperity

The rúnwita will immediately think of feoh as a rune to use for prosperity magic. It is difficult to imagine a runic spell involving money that would not include this symbol. Feoh embodies the mystery of wealth, teaching us that the exchange of energy (work) and resources (goods) is the foundation of prosperity.

Another important prosperity rune is gyfu, the “gift” rune. It relates to feoh in that it further reveals the creative, constructive power built through an exchange of energy or resources. The Rune Poem tells us:

A gift from others is an honor and praise,

a help and of worth.

True prosperity is not measured by how much you own, but by how much you can afford to give. This is a subtle but important distinction. A miser is not prosperous, no matter how much he or she possesses. Charles Dickens showed us this in A Christmas Carol, where Ebenezer Scrooge lived as poorly as a pauper despite his resources. There can be no prosperity unless energy and resources are shared, and there can be no sharing without giving.

The place of gyfu in prosperity magic is more apparent when your goal includes a business partnership, but the fact is that almost every work relationship is a partnership in some way. If you can internalize this, you are much more likely to prosper in whatever job you apply yourself. Sadly, the mystery of gyfu goes unnoticed by many people today who only look for what they can get from their occupations and have little concern for what they might give. It does not matter how menial you think your occupation is, give it all you can. If you do not treat your work as important, then why should anyone else believe your work—and by extrapolation, your own worth—is important?

Sigel and tir are both useful as runes that can help guide you toward your goal. Although these are both runes of guidance, each has its own unique nature. Sigel is better if you are trying to achieve something other than what you already have. Once you have reached your goal, tir is more appropriate to help stay the course. Going back to our hypothetical example of the woman who wants to become a professional artist, sigel would be the rune to use as she begins her quest. Just as the sun—the Glory of Elves—travels across the heavens, sigel guides us from one point to another. After the artist achieves her dream, selling enough artwork to be self-sufficient and perhaps owning a gallery or online store, then tir becomes more useful in rune magic. Tir is steadfast, keeping us focused on our destination. Our hypothetical artist is still on a journey, of course, but now she has reached a point where there is no question as to how she will arrive. There is little if any need to change course or alter plans. The artist has achieved her primary goal and now needs to simply stay on track.

Speaking of journeys, rád has its place in prosperity magic as a rune that can help you “move” your situation toward something more desirable. The Rune Poem tells of a journey to your hall, or home. It carries you to your destination. The Rune Poem further reminds us that the journey is “very fast for he who sits high on a mighty horse.” The rune has a message: you will achieve your goal more quickly if you have an ally or allies. That ally could be another person (taking us back to the gyfu rune), or it could be something abstract, like education or a financial loan.

Wynn works well in prosperity charms because it teaches us that enough is sufficient enough. The wynn rune is interpreted as joy, but it has this meaning because it defines precisely what joy is. Our hypothetical artist may have dreams of selling her works for millions of dollars, but this is not realistic and, further, it is more than she needs to achieve success. Wynn will help keep you focused on true success. I recently spoke at length with a man who has a senior executive corporate position earning a healthy six-figure income. He is very close to achieving success and prosperity because he knows, now, that he does not enjoy or want the stress of a senior executive position. His prosperity goal is to find a position with less stress that still provides an income sufficient to his needs. Or, to quote the Rune Poem, an income that will ensure he “knows little want.” Wynn reminds us that more is not necessarily better.

Creating a Prosperity Cycle

Remember the secret of repetition and persistence? You can make a runic charm or cast a spell for a raise or for a new job at any time of year, but for long-term success, you should create a prosperity cycle. This is a series of spells intended to shape your wyrd in a way that will help draw prosperity and abundance to you. We are speaking of reasonable prosperity and abundance, not something unbelievable. It takes a lot of energy to achieve great wealth, and most of us are just not that devoted to the task, but neither should you accept chronic deprivation as your due.

For the early Anglo-Saxons, cattle and wealth were inextricably connected. They were aware of their dependence on the earth and its cycles. We are now more removed from this relationship, but our wealth is no less dependent on the earth. You may work at a computer keyboard each day, and the goods you purchase—your food, your clothing, your car, and your home—may be raised, built, and packaged by people you have never known, but the raw materials ultimately come from the earth. For this reason—to harness that primal flow of energy—Saxon sorcerers plan their prosperity cycles in harmony with earth’s seasonal cycles.

I have had good results timing prosperity rituals with Ewemeolc (early February), May Day (May 1), Lammas (early August), and Hallows (late October or early November). This sets up a plan for a prosperity spell every three months, which is enough time to let your work mature before you follow it with another spell. These four seasonal workings present one annual prosperity cycle.

Ewemeolc, in early February, is the time for planning. It is a seasonal holiday originally observed when the new spring lambs were born, but is now usually celebrated on February 1 or 2. The Saxons called this month Solmonath, because it was the month when sol-cakes were offered to the earth. Sol is Old English for “mud,” and the cakes, which were likely more similar to coarse breads, were ploughed into the barren, muddy fields as offerings.

For your prosperity cycle, this is the time to define a reasonable and believable goal for the coming year. Do not grasp for something beyond your reach. You may ultimately see gains beyond your defined goal, but the goal itself is something you will be committing yourself to. Using runes, herbs, and galdor, design a prosperity spell to bring this defined goal into your life. Remember that you are creating an exchange of some kind. Define not only what you envision receiving, but also what you intend to give.

May Day celebrates the beginning of summer. By now you have planted the seeds of prosperity and should be seeing some result, however minor. The first of May is a time to assess your progress. What if you have already achieved your annual goal? That is great! It is still early enough in the year to put in a second “crop,” so move on to the next step. Commit yourself to a new goal.

It is more likely that you have some way to go before achieving your annual goal. Repeat the spell you worked at Ewemeolc. This is the repetition you need. You are continuing to build momentum.

The next phase in your prosperity cycle will come at Lammas. Like Ewemeolc, this is a seasonal holiday. Lammas celebrates not the first grain harvest, which would come in June, but the first bread. It was observed in early August after the grain had been cut, sheaved, dried, threshed, and ground into flour. The ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle called this holy tide “the feast of first fruits.”

Again you should assess your progress, but by now your own first fruits in your cycle of prosperity should be evident. You have only three more months to attain the goal that you set for yourself at Ewemeolc. If there is any question about this, ask yourself why. Have you followed all of the principles given here? Was your goal both specific and realistic? Have you nurtured a strong desire to achieve that goal? Are you giving all you can to create the necessary exchange of energy? What must you still do to attain success in this year’s cycle?

If everything is going well and you can see reasonable progress toward your goal, this is a time to give thanks. An offering to your gods is appropriate. Or you might thank someone who has helped you get as far as you have come, whether this is an employer, a co-worker, or a friend. If you are married or partnered, thank your spouse also. Expressing gratitude is an important part of your prosperity cycle. By expressing gratitude, you are investing energy into the cycle again.

Hallows is your final harvest. By this time, if not before, you should have attained your goal. If you did not meet your goal by the end of October, make no excuses. Acknowledge this, and learn from the experience as well as you can.

Now the cycle is complete. Even if you did not meet your goal, give thanks for any progress you did achieve, no matter how small. This is the time of year to preserve what you have reaped. Your prosperity spell should have a thankful tone, but this time it should reaffirm the magic you have worked and ensure that your gains are stable and secure.

For the next three months you have no new goal to achieve. Your task now is to become accustomed to the step you have taken and to consider what goal you will set for yourself the following Ewemeolc.

Desire, repetition, and persistence are your keys to success with prosperity magic.

Bringing It All Together

Our artist friend is a Saxon wyrdworker, and she is going to create a cycle of prosperity to lead toward her ultimate goal. Let us see how she might approach this.

For some time now she has dreamed of quitting her job and earning a living with her paintings. In her imagination, she can see herself sipping champagne as her latest collection of paintings is unveiled to an admiring crowd of wealthy art patrons. It is a lovely vision, but the first thing she does is pull her head out of the clouds and look at her dream realistically. She knows that she can live comfortably enough if her art will bring her X dollars a year. That cannot be her goal for the coming cycle of prosperity, though. No matter how vivid her imagination, she knows in her heart that it is not going to happen. The goal is not believable. What she can believe in, though, is the idea of selling a painting during the coming year. That is going to be her goal.

On the first or second night of February, she plans a spell involving a small charm that she will keep with her until she achieves her goal. She gathers a few things: some red cloth and thread, a needle, a red candle, a small holder for the candle, a few small amber beads, and three camel hair artist’s brushes. She also sets out an incense burner and a floral incense. All of these are placed on her myse.

Our artist first offers a prayer and burns a little incense to honor the goddess Fréo. She does not need to do this, but Fréo is sovereign over both beauty and wealth, and our artist has given offerings to this goddess in the past. She is not asking for Fréo to work a miracle for her; the work will be her own effort, but she would like the blessing and support of the goddess.

Fréo’s brother, the god Ing, can also be responsive to prayers while working prosperity magic. Ing is called Fégjafa, meaning the Wealth-Giver, in the Prose Edda. But the blessings of these deities, or any others, should only be sought if you already have a relationship with them. If you have never given them honor previously, do not expect them to honor your request. It is possible they might, but rather unlikely.

After giving her prayer and offering of incense to Fréo, our artist lights the red candle. She meditates for a few minutes, defining in her mind what she hopes to achieve during the coming cycle of prosperity. Her commitment is to sell one painting. This she can do. She reminds herself that it does not matter, now, how much the painting sells for. It does not matter, now, if she sells no more than one. A single sale will be a success.

Now she takes the cloth and thread and begins to sew a small pouch. As she sews, she recites this galdor over and over:

Colors cultured cast on canvas

Craft a calling for my own

Kernels gold and candle bold

My work be true, my work be known.

The kernels gold are the small amber beads. Amber attracts prosperity; they are the tears of Fréo. The artist places these beads in the pouch. Then she breaks off the handles from the three artist’s brushes and puts the small heads of the brushes in the pouch with the amber beads. Here she is calling on the Laws of Contagion and Sympathy. The bristles will lay next to the amber beads, acquiring their power of attracting prosperity through the Law of Contagion. This power will in turn be transferred, through the Law of Sympathy, to the brushes our artist actually uses in her paintings.

With this first spell, the artist has set her prosperity cycle in motion. Now she needs to give it something to affect. There are many things she could do at this point. She might enroll in an art class to improve and explore her painting techniques. If she has a few works that she is proud of, she could look into setting up a website offering prints for sale. She could also search for inexpensive venues, such as sidewalk art festivals, where she can try to sell her work.

Three months pass and the artist has not sold anything, but she has made a few friends in the local art community. She is still carrying her charm bag. Now, for May Day, she wants to engage the repetitive process by making another charm. This time she will use runes.

The artist recognizes that the galdor she designed three months earlier alliterates a “k” sound. This is the phonetic value of the cen rune, which evokes the flame of inspiration. Looking at the passage from the Rune Poem, our artist decides that cen aptly describes the inspiration behind her painting.

To this she adds the runes sigel, for guidance, and feoh, for the obvious reason of attracting prosperity. These three runes will be marked in that order, presenting a linear statement to say “my inspiration shall be guided toward material compensation.” This will not be a permanent charm. She intends it to have a finite effect, to help her make the one sale she needs to complete her prosperity commitment. For this reason she decides to paint the runes, in red, on a small, flat piece of wood that she can burn after the charm has taken effect. She drills or punches a hole in one end of the wood so it can be tied to her charm bag.

She rewords her galdor slightly this time, as there are no “kernels gold” in this new work. Most of the galdor remains the same. In particular, she retains the first two lines because they carry the alliterated “k” sound of the cen rune. Now as she paints the runes, she chants:

Colors cultured cast on canvas

Craft a calling for my own

Runes inspire my heart’s desire

My work be true, my work be known.

Our artist has no reason for concern, as this is only May Day. But she assesses her progress and how it might improve. She has been looking into artists’ venues, and has become more aware of the fact that supply and demand are working against her. Selling an original painting can be difficult. She begins to imagine alternative ways to market her work. She has registered as a vendor at a sidewalk art fair, however, and she will wait and see if she has any success there. To help things along she will brew a prosperity infusion with crushed dock seeds. At the art fair, she will sprinkle the infusion on the sidewalk around her displayed paintings.

There is no way to say what will happen next, but we can be reasonably sure our artist will make her first sale before Hallows. She may go much further than that, which would be wonderful, but the cycle of prosperity has worked as soon as she reaches her goal of selling one piece of art. At that point, depending on the time of year, she could set a new goal or begin to make plans for the next cycle. Step by step, she will make her way toward her dream.

Desire, repetition, and persistence.

Over the years I have worked with other sorcerers using this prosperity cycle. It can be done as either a solitary or group working. I once went through this cycle with a woman who was dissatisfied with her career. She wanted to find a successful position in the field of alternative healing. We used the principles I have given here and worked our spells at Ewemeolc, May Day, and Lammas. That was as far as we could go with it together. By the end of the summer, my friend had been offered a position in another state. I was sorry to see her go, but happy to know she had found—had created—her heart’s desire.

Review

1. What important quality do you need to work effective prosperity spells?

2. How does the mystery of the gyfu rune apply to prosperity magic?

3. What is the best time of year to begin a cycle of prosperity spells? Why?

4. Why are expressions of gratitude important for prosperity work?

5. What two Anglo-Saxon deities are particularly associated with wealth and prosperity?