Dearest Parishioners,
I’m pleased to share with you what I believe is my best work. I wrote it in the first weeks following my redundancy when I was dizzy with the hope and joy of freedom. Special times that hopefully fizz away in the words.
It’s going to require twenty minutes of your attention (thirty if you listen). This seems like an eon in the three second days of Tiktok. But as the great Scouse philosophers have said many times, “It is what it is”.
I’m going to give you the text first - for free subscribers and for those who prefer to read rather than listen. Then the Audio is behind a paywall at the end of this post.
I do want your money but I promise you I’m not saying this because I want your money. I write these pieces to be heard not read. It’s a Sermon. The words are for your ears not your eyes.
But, of course, I’m not going to argue with you if you prefer visual to auditory consumption. I hope you enjoy it either way.
TEXT
Church of Burn’s Inaugural ‘Sermon for The Mycelium’
22nd November 2023
[ 1. WELCOME ]
Whence The Staff, so the Church.
All Hail, The Staff!
May the blessings of Melusine be upon you
on this the eighth anniversary of our Founding Ritual.
I would love listeners so inclined
to take a banknote from your purses, your pockets,
- from the dark safety of its hidden secret place -
and unfold it and hold it between your fingers.
As I’m talking to you now
I’m imagining you looking at its symbols.
Even though physical currency is the most familiar
and ubiquitous propaganda on Earth
we rarely take a moment to really look at it.
If you can, write down its serial number.
It’s the one thing that marks it out as unique.
Acknowledge your note as the single cell of a vast organism,
a mycelial magic which connects each of us
with one another and with all of creation.
Above all, I want you to feel your money’s material presence.
[ 2. THE IGNOMINIOUS EVENT ]
As well as being our Church's eighth anniversary,
today is also the first anniversary
of the most ignominious event in the history of monetary destruction.
Last year, the comedian and nascent national treasure Joe Lycett
parked his rainbow-coloured tank on our church lawn.
If you recall, Joe threatened to shred ten thousand pounds
unless David Beckham resigned as an ambassador to the Qatari World Cup.
When Beckham didn’t comply,
Joe filmed himself following through on his promise.
Then a few days later Joe revealed he’d lied.
The film was a fake and the money had gone to charity.
Before the disclosure,
there’d been media attention from all around the world.
Joe’s righteous aim was to shine a light
on the abuse of sexual rights in the Middle East.
The immediate consequence his action, though
was to create extreme heat
around the morality of destroying money.
At Church of Burn we kept a close eye on things.
Swept along by the manufactured moral panic,
honest, hard-working Britons pleaded with Joe,
"Don’t shred it! Please give it to charity instead!"
Most thought putting ten k into a shredder would be wrong.
Now we understand these sentiments are sincere.
We know the ardent appeals of ordinary folk are born of altruism.
And even while they directly oppose what is sacrosanct to us,
we still reach out to these salt-of-the-earth stalwarts
and keep our hearts and our Church’s doors open to them.
[ 3. FOOTSOLDIERS ]
But. Regardless of our sympathies
as your High Priest, as a servant of this Church,
I am duty bound to fully expose
the fatal depths of their shallow-minded folly.
It may be they’re uninformed about
Charity’s role in sustaining hierarchies of power.
It may be they’re unaware that
they’re frontline fighters on the wrong side of an ideological war.
It may be that they're wholly innocent
in the bliss of their blind nescience.
But what is certain is that in the final reckoning
ignorance will offer no defence.
Because make no mistake,
everyone who spoke out against the shredding.
Everyone who said ‘The money could be put to better use!’
Everyone who felt anything other than blessed
at the prospect of bearing witness
to the Divine spectacle
of the public sacrifice of Capital’s sacred totem
was serving Mammon, directly!
[ 4. ZEALOUS SUPPLICANTS ]
And let me tell you about Mammon.
He controls an unholy trinity of servants.
The pleading plebs with their bleeding hearts
are just His lowly Footsoldiers.
They’re mustered to action by buttoned-up, holily laundered,
crinoline crisp devotees to the prescribed moral order.
We call these commanders His Zealous Supplicants.
Our Church has a good deal less affection for them.
Unlike His Footsoldiers, Supplicants are motivated
by a competitive and pernicious piety.
They lust for moral status.
Sinew-tight and primed to pounce they’ll bear down;
on any thought, any word or any deed
that doubts austerity’s role in remedying our economic ills;
on any thought, any word, or any deed
that disaffirms charity as the apotheosis of money’s possibilities on Earth.
As our Church grows, stretches out its young limbs,
as we amble lamb-like into the sunlight of a new day,
as we nourish ritual and sacrifice
as the sacred centre of our living communion,
the Supplicants will be there,
forested in dark shadows waiting for fresh prey.
Then unable to repress their desire,
they’ll mount their high horses,
point a crook-boned finger at our Church,
at our devoted Congregation,
at you, the initiates to our most sacred rite.
And they'll bare their teeth, fix their gaze
and pull from their guts every ounce of spite, bile, and derision
to spit the words in our faces "I am holier than thou!”
Well. Fuck them! Let them do their worst.
Let them shout their censure
and let them spread the name of our Church
as far as their hate-filled voices will carry.
Eventually, they will all perish by the righteousness
of our sober and sacred endeavours.
[ 5. SERVANTS OF UTILITY ]
Even the most zealous of Supplicants can harm us, only
if we allow them to leach upon our faith and resolve.
Mammon wants us weak and embattled.
He wants us shamed and isolated
from the kind hearts of common folk.
He wants us desperate and seeking escape
from the suffocating crush of His Supplicant’s condemnations.
For in this state of alienation,
outside the loving fold of our Church,
our money burning flock is quarry to His most deadly predators -
the Servants of Utility.
They do not deceive themselves with ignorance.
Nor do they make claims upon the moral high ground.
They are not motivated by altruism or status.
They don’t even exist as distinct beings.
No. The Servants of Utility are demons
who glide and lope-sly from host to host.
Possession by them involves no fever,
no spirit dance, no rapture or exaltation.
You will not succumb to mad mutterings or espouse new doctrines.
In fact, possession will bring comfort.
You’ll experience it as a somatic reality.
The system will make sense as it is.
You’ll no longer see social injustice, only individual failings.
And you will fit right into the messed-up metacrisis of modern life.
These are the evil powers with which Joe was playing so carelessly.
These are the evil powers this Church is sworn to vanquish!
[ 6. OUR MISSION ]
Our sacred mission is to change money by changing our relationship to money.
I worry it sounds a little tame when we put it like that.
Like we’re creating an ‘organic’ money alternative,
“This is not just money, this is M&S money”.
But the line ‘changing our relationship to money’
is what our PR people tell us will work best.
They’ve better sense than me of what will engage the public
and what will scare or offend them.
Right now though, talking directly to you,
I’d like to make our mission cut through a little more sharply.
To do so, I’m going to risk causing offence by framing it
within the spiritual narrative that perhaps most dominates our age.
If any of the billions of followers of this Religion
feel I’m taking their Holy doctrine in vain,
then I beg their forgiveness.
No insult is intended to you or your Faith.
The Death Star of Capital
is capable of destroying entire planets
and looks to be impenetrable.
But some who’ve studied its plans say
there is a point of vulnerability.
The nature of money, as the late David Graeber told us,
“Is [at] the crux of the [economic] argument”.
So if Capital is the Death Star
then we, the Church of Burn, are a Rebel Alliance
and you, the money burners,
are the brave Jedi flying in X-Wing Fighters
firing flaming proton torpedoes
right down the thermal-exhaust port of money.
Every Ritual Burn is a trench run.
Every brickbat and bad-mouthing
a sure sign Emperor Mammon
trembles on His throne.
[ 7. MAMMON’S WAR ]
His power to shape and form humanity
depends upon how we think, act and feel about money.
If by some miracle humankind lost all attachment to it,
if money’s capacity to marshal our thoughts, actions,
and feelings was spent overnight,
then so much that seems solid today
would melt away by morning.
But renunciation without action is pure rhetoric.
Meaning is emaciated by money.
Confronted by money, the value of language
lies only in its propensity to create a persuasive reality
wherein money’s negation might be materially enacted.
If, and only if, we can incorporate
an active transgression to our spiritual and moral praxis
will individuals transform their relation to money.
The shimmering future-truth
that will see an end Mammon’s reign on Earth
is that individual transformation
births the possibility of collective transcendence.
Any conscious act of money destruction threatens Mammon.
Joe promised to deliver a significant
and very public repudiation of money’s power.
Mammon’s response was to order His demons into battle.
Shrewd, cold and cunning
The Servants of Utility began their possession from above.
We saw it spread out through the TV coverage and Press commentary.
The spin was subtle but devastating.
It nullified the spectacle, horror and power of the transgression
by offering what seemed like ‘the smart take’.
Possession seeded the thought that actually
“ten thousand pounds was a good price to pay for so much publicity”.
Even Joe himself, bless him, was later to boast
that he'd got two million pounds worth of PR for his money.
This is transgression transmuted into compliance.
You see initially, Joe’s stance was defiant.
His taunt to Beckham was that he’d sold out.
That Beckham had put a price on his status as a gay icon
and the Qataris had paid it.
Threatening to shred ten thousand pounds made the point
that some things should__ and must be beyond the logic of money.
[ 8. MONEY DESTRUCTION IN PARLIAMENT ]
The public angst around Joe’s stunt reached
its ruinous climax in no lesser place than the House of Commons.
The Leader of the Opposition
wanted to cover our Prime Minister in hot-zeitgeisty-shame.
Rishi Sunak, claimed Sir Keir, was more profligate than Joe Lycett
because the PM shreds ten thousand pounds every other minute
propping up Oil and Gas companies.
Keir Starmer, House of Commons, Wednesday, November 23, 2023
You may have seen this week, Mr Speaker, that somebody shredded £10,000 in protest at those propping up an oil and gas giant, but the Prime Minister shreds £10,000 every other minute propping them up. Which does he think is the more absurd?
But Sunak smiled like the jolliest girl at the swingingest party.
As the government benches saw it,
Sir Keir was trying to tarnish Rishi’s reputation with polish.
The PM was brazen.
He argued that oil and gas subsidies
are the fuel for economic growth.
And it is economic growth that funds the NHS.
To speak against economic growth,
is to declare oneself against the NHS.
Rishi Sunak, House of Commons, Wednesday, November 23, 2023
This is the Government who have actually put in place an economic plan that will deliver confidence and stability to our economy. All I have heard from the right hon. and learned Gentleman today is that he has no answers and no substance, because there is no plan. He talks about the NHS; the government’s economic plan will deviler [sic] …is delivering record funding for the NHS, but we can only do that on the foundations of a strong economy. You cannot deliver for the NHS unless you have a plan for the economy, and he does not have either.
You heard that slip of the tongue?
“The government’s economic plan will deviler… devil_er”
Even though it’s unconscious, it’s probably healthy that
the PM can finally admit to his government’s alliance with the Dark Lord.
[ 9. THE POLITICS OF RIGHTS VS MONEY ]
It’s usually safer for a Sermon to navigate a circuitous route
around the minefield of political and economic problems.
But I feel I’ve no choice but to stride boldly through it with my fingers crossed
because the PM made his comments in direct response
to a statement about the destruction of money.
That NHS spending is predicated on a strong economy
seems like basic common sense to the majority of British people.
Universal healthcare might be a cherished right
secured after the sacrifices of the war generation.
But that right still has a cost attached to it.
Last year it was 182 billion pounds.
And what about our other rights?
In 1951, the UK helped draft the
European Convention on Human Rights.
I don’t know if anyone’s ever added up
how much those rights have cost us
but it must be a truly astronomical figure.
Consider what’s caught the headlines this year -
the cost of our right to protest.
As Daily Mail readers will know
all those slow marching retired rectors
and trustafarian troublemakers
cost the Great British public
- the Great, honest, hardworking, decent, fair-minded British public, no less -
over a million pounds a week.
Rights are really expensive!
So imagine you’re in control of the government’s purse strings.
On the one hand you want to encourage economic growth
- you want the money you spend, to make money.
And on the other, you want to cut back on unproductive expenditure
- you want to stop spending money on anything
that doesn’t contribute to economic growth, or worse still,
actually works against it.
With this as our mindset many rights could very easily
start to look like luxuries we can’t afford.
And when that happens,
when sacred and inviolable principles mutate into costs,
when fundamental rights become numbers on a balance sheet
then something is shifting our moral consciousness.
We can see the social symptoms of this shift in
the erosion of our right to protest,
the undermining of the social provision of care,
and in the harsh treatment of our most vulnerable citizens.
The effect of the shift on our institutions of governance
is to make corporate, market-orientated, and profit-driven
what should be sacred, duty-bound, and honourably discharged.
Financialisation is a word coined by academics
to describe the process by which a rationality
of accumulation, speculation, money and finance
embeds itself within both institutions and our everyday lives.
It’s basically the secular version of ‘possession by Mammon’.
No surprise then that our current PM
comes from the heart of the beast.
From Investment Banking, Hedge Fund management
and the ‘so called’ Industry of Finance.
But it’s not Sunak who has carved out
the space he so neatly fills.
It is financialisation. It is Mammon.
It is the system of systems,
the vast and immense, interwoven, interacting,
multivariate, multidimensional
dominion of dollars that is carving out
that same space, everywhere.
The fecundity of money is fast becoming
the Holy Grail, the Divine source
the shining Sunyata,
from which all else flows.
And ultimately,
the consecration of this financialized first principle
as the ‘obvious’ truth of practical governance,
the assimilation of calculative self-interest
to the ‘common sense’ judgements of ordinary people,
the conflation of the sacred and the financial
to form the moral basis of our collective existence
ultimately, ultimately,
these create the conditions
where we no longer make weapons to fight wars,
but instead create wars to sell weapons.
[ 10. REGRETS ]
What I didn’t say earlier,
was that Starmer’s reference to the shredding of 10k
on the 23rd of November 2022
was the first ever mention of money destruction
in Parliament’s long history.
It was a significant but bittersweet moment for us.
As you heard, it came in the same breath
as mention of the UK’s financial support for the Fossil Fuel Industry.
Under different circumstances,
to have these themes arise simultaneously
- to have money destruction
and money’s role as oxygen for the fires of global warming -
enter our Parliament’s consciousness, together
might have marked a milestone in our Church’s mission.
But the sweetness of what might have been,
sharpens the bitter taste of what was.
Because the sad truth is Joe’s deception hurt our Church.
Great anger was expressed in the Ecumenical Council last January.
I was tasked with writing an open letter to Joe to tell him how we felt.
There was unanimous support for our Archbishops’ stern determination
that Joe may have committed
“the most terrible crime in the history of humankind.”
Lay people may think the determination hyperbolic.
They may regard our Church as overblown and quixotic.
And likely engaged in some bizarre situationist spoof
of charity, religion and eschatology.
The more you understand our Church, though
the more you realise how deadly serious we are
about our mission.
[ 11. MONEY, GAIA AND US ]
Intentionally or not, Joe spurned a rare opportunity
to publicly challenge Mammon.
And worse.
A singular vision of how we must be with money
was further cemented into people’s minds.
It’s a vision that sees the destruction of money as a mortal sin.
As a grave offence against the Holy commandments.
It says that if money wisely spent can solve any problem
then money wasted
will deny us the solutions we so desperately need.
To see the world in this way
is to be wholly under the spell of Capital
it is to regard money as the Divine incarnation of the Celestial order.
And in its final, most extreme form,
of twenty first century Financialised Capitalism
it is a vision that demands we
continue to sacrifice Gaia on the altar of money
despite knowing that to do so
will bring an end to life as we know it.
Gaia’s pain is plain
for those who would open their hearts
and bear witness.
Species death accelerating.
Polar Ice melting.
Oceans acidifying.
Rivers polluted.
Clouds raining plastic.
And the Earth getting hotter and hotter and hotter.
This unfolding environmental apocalypse
is not happening in isolation from our spiritual lives.
One is a reflection of the other.
Humankind has severed its relations
with the spirits of the natural world.
No longer do we commune with the rivers, the trees, and the wind.
No longer do we feel genius loci beneath our bare feet.
Animism is out.
Instead now we trade with our Gods… and our conscience.
Sacrifice rewards us,
Charity redeems us.
Pay and Ye shall receive.
And what do we think is at the heart of this change?
What explains the turning of trees into timber.
Pigs into pork.
Poetry into content.
It is Money, of course.
Money is the watershed between the last 100 generations
and the 10,000 generations that precede them.
It distinguishes us from 99% of our ancestors.
Money is the most powerful psycho-social phenomenon
our species has ever encountered.
Within blink of an epochal eye
money has raised Gods in the image of man
and then demanded those Gods should kneel before it.
Money has put the destiny of the natural world
into humanity’s bloody hands.
Yet for all the power money bestows on us,
its presence cannot give to us now
what its absence gifted to our ancestors.
Oneness with the Divine Mother
cannot be bought and bolted onto modern life.
We can never go back to that state of innocence
when there was no separation between us and nature,
when we were__ as one with Gaia.
Humanity’s umbilical cord is cut.
[ 12. THE POWER OF RITUAL SACRIFICE ]
And although today it cannot find full expression
our deep longing for connection to the Divine remains.
Ritual sacrifice has forever been
humanity’s gateway to the Absolute.
Those gates remain open to us
even if we rarely choose to walk through them any more.
Instead, if we engage in religious practice at all,
it is ceremonial rather than ritualistic,
it is rarely, if ever, sacrificial.
Our traditional practices often
shore up structures of oppression
and suppress the spiritual freedom
necessary for us to realise a new living communion
We are the destination of our ancestors'
three hundred thousand year journey.
If we are to honour and extend their legacy
then we must overcome our spiritual sclerosis.
So let us begin our overcoming here, with a purification.
[ 13. PURIFICATION ]
We confess our sins.
It is We who give power to Mammon. He is us.
We are His Footsoldiers, His Zealous Supplicants
and His Servants of Utility. We are Him.
We have imagined this dark world into being.
We disavow our desire for tradition.
We know nostalgia will not nourish a new world.
The spiritual cultures we appropriate, the ancient aesthetics we venerate,
and the esoteric wisdom of ages past cannot create our connection.
Deliverance to the Eternal must begin from our present moment.
And we acknowledge our mortality.
As we dance in the ecstatic fullness of life
we must hold death in intimate embrace
and daily remind ourselves of its unifying presence
for all living creatures.
And let us acknowledge death, right now.
In every mythology, in every theology,
in all narratives of creation,
in the season-cycles, and the heart crosses of a murdered and risen deus
it is death - it is real loss -
that always precedes renewal and rebirth.
Death is Genesis.
Our Church’s doctrine demands that money
- humankind's most universal and powerful symbol -
be brought within the dominion of death.
We believe that money’s ritual sacrifice
will bring a new world into being.
Each of us must volunteer to be its executioner.
Be we rich or poor,
we must offer up our money as sacrament.
Enough so each of us can experience the sharp pain of its conscious loss.
The meaning of sacrifice is accessible only by the doing of it.
Magic must be felt for change to be made.
But know this.
From the heart-cut of an ancient Obsidian blade
to the melt-burn of a fifty pound note,
ritualised transgression is the birthplace of hope.
[ 14. INVOCATION ]
As one of our friends from Extinction Rebellion says,
"Once one has burned money, what else is possible?"
“What__else__is__possible?”
A different world is possible.
A world where the infinitely expansive capacities
of care and freedom
are enshrined as first principles
at the heart of our institutions,
our corporations and our governments.
Where money itself shines forth,
renewed as a boundless obligation
to offer from our collective resources
what is needed by each of us for dignity and life.
And where those first principles
find individual expression
through a loving and playful engagement
with our communities, our environment
and our spirit.
As that future sends its light into this present,
I say to you,
to the Earth,
the Sky and all its creatures,
and to myself,
without embarrassment,
I love you.
[ 15. RITUAL ]
And I burn for you.
I commit
AA53 154113 Fifty Pounds Sterling
to the flame.
At the centre of all creation is not purity but purification.
Burn.
Audio
It’s constant disclaimers with me. This is a draft, not the final recording.
I had the flu on recording. I had to get it done on that day for my latest Arts Council England grant application. I also think I read too fast in the beginning section. Excuses, excuses.
But I think its good enough that if you listen with a little forgiveness you can - hopefully - imagine what it might sound like with a some collaboration on the soundscape and a better delivery (or maybe with an Actor friend reading it?).
It’s best listened to with headphones and in as undistracted a situations as you can manage. If you have banknote handy too, that’d help.