Potemkin wrote:Money is itself a myth, a “phantasm,” as Marx called it. In fact, he regarded it as a hallmark of capitalist society that it turns real things (and real people) into phantasms, and phantasms into real things. After all, money, which is an abstract concept with no concrete reality, becomes the most important thing in modern society, and countless people are willing to kill other people or destroy their own physical environment in order to obtain more of it. They destroy what is real in pursuit of what is unreal. This is the “founding Myth” of the modern world.
@Potemkin , but also @Verv , and @Political Interest , and others:
I have commented before my agreement with you on this, that also Money is the reified Blood and Body of the Poor Man, Christ Himself through His brethren.
But, I think Money, or the " Mammon of Unrighteousness " that Our Lord wants us to pay particular attention to, has another aspect which has gone unnoticed perhaps by myself. I have to look at the most famous holder of Money in the New Testament, the Rich Man in Christ's parable of Lazerus, for an answer somewhat.
Read the Parable. Everyone gets a measure of joy and heavenly bliss, either now in finite time and space or forever in eternity, at a higher level. Use it up selfishly and there's not much later. Money is the token of and for present happiness, undeferred gratification.
Look at the other famous holder of money in the New Testament, Judas Iscariot. Scripture says he was a devil, the son of perdition who stole from the common purse he held for Christ and His other disciples, and who betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver.
Judas saw everything Christ did and heard everything He said, and rejected Him for money and its transitory good and more permanent evils.
So this could in these two perspectives on money's " avatars " represent what before, was just " in potentia" before the Incarnation: the rejection of God by man, collectively speaking. The sacrament of despiritualization. The Mark of the Beast, the number corresponding to the 666 talents of Gold King Solomon possessed, the greatest monarch of all time.
While being Nothing (for Christ created a sum of money inside a fish for st Peter to catch, the Temple Tax He willed them to pay), Money stands for something. I suspect it was the Pagans " Ring of Gyges" which conferred invisibility and thus, impunity, for that is also what Money can do for its bearers. The Ring of Power, the cursed gold of the Niebelungs.
But what happened to Money, shortly after the Incarnation and in response to it? It began to lose even the illusion of being a real metallic object and became paper or a notation in records. All the same in the Modern Age Money entered into its fullest and most ethereal development, it's near complete control over the mind of men. We can no more imagine our world without Money than a world without a State. And as we know, the two are intimately connected...
The Barbarian and the Saints know that neither exists.