Attracting money is one thing. Knowing what to do when it arrives is another.
There is a particular version of abundance that spirituality loves to sell us. Think positively. Light the candle. Set the intention. Believe money is coming. Then remain open while the universe rearranges itself in your favor.
I believe in attracting money. I believe spiritual work can be used to support abundance. I cast money spells myself. But I also think we've made the conversation considerably simpler than money actually is.
Because what happens when you attract it?
What happens if someone can bring money into their life repeatedly but spends it just as quickly? What if someone finally begins earning more but is so afraid of returning to scarcity that they can't bring themselves to do anything with what they've accumulated? What happens when money arrives and there is no plan for it, no strategy behind it and no understanding of the relationship you've already developed with it?
Attracting money and building abundance are not necessarily the same skill.
And perhaps before we ask how to attract more, we should understand what happens to money once it reaches us.
Your Relationship With Money Came From Somewhere
Nobody begins their relationship with money as an adult.
Long before you had a salary, a bank account or a credit score, you were watching. You saw what happened when bills arrived. You heard how adults spoke about people who had money and people who didn't. You learned whether money meant security, freedom, status, fear, arguments, secrecy, possibility or something that disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived.
If you grew up with scarcity, having more money as an adult doesn't automatically erase what scarcity taught you.
For one person, scarcity can create an urge to spend while the money is available because some part of them doesn't trust that it will remain. For another, it can produce the opposite response: hold everything. Don't touch it. Don't risk it. Don't invest it. Don't let it leave because you remember what it felt like when there wasn't enough.
Neither pattern automatically disappears because your income changes.
And this is where I think some conversations about abundance become dishonest. We tell people to change their thoughts about money without examining the experiences that created those thoughts. Then, if they struggle financially, we imply they simply haven't achieved the correct vibration.
Your mindset matters. But so does your behavior.
You can attract $10,000 and spend $12,000. You can save money and never develop a strategy for making it work for you. You can ask for financial growth while repeatedly refusing opportunities because they don't look prestigious enough, comfortable enough or exactly like the opportunity you imagined.
Abundance requires movement.
Sometimes that means saving. Sometimes investing. Sometimes spending strategically. Sometimes taking the job, accepting the client, learning something new, building another stream of income or saying yes to an opportunity you might previously have dismissed.
Money sitting still because you're terrified to touch it isn't necessarily the same thing as financial security. And money constantly moving out because you assume more will simply arrive isn't abundance either.
There still has to be a strategy.
Give the Money Somewhere to Go
This is also why I prefer money work attached to a goal.
“I want more money” is a desire.
“I need another $3,000 for the deposit on my store” has direction.
“I want to eliminate $8,000 of debt” has direction. “I want six months of expenses in savings” has direction. “I need the capital to launch this business” has direction.
Once you know what the money is for, you can begin recognizing movement toward it.
And that movement may not look like someone handing you exactly the amount you requested.
Perhaps additional work appears. Maybe someone refers a client. Something you own sells. An opportunity you previously wouldn't have considered suddenly makes sense. A forgotten payment arrives. You discover money you were owed. An expense disappears. Someone introduces you to the person who can move your idea forward.
Or something completely unexpected happens.
If you're waiting for the universe to deliver your answer in the packaging you've already designed, you may overlook the answer when it arrives.
That is where spiritual work and practical participation meet.
An Abundance Working With a Destination
Before beginning, choose one specific financial goal.
Write the amount you need and, more importantly, what it is intended to accomplish. Don't simply write I want $3,000.Write I am calling in $3,000 for the deposit on my store.
Place that written intention beneath a green candle or another candle you personally associate with abundance and financial movement. If you work with anointing oils, herbs or other materials in your practice, prepare the candle according to your tradition and experience. You don't need seventeen ingredients to convince the universe that you're serious.
As you light it, focus less on imagining piles of cash and more on the condition you are trying to create. See the deposit paid. See the debt reduced. See the business funded. See the savings account reaching its goal.
Then ask for pathways toward that outcome to become visible to you.
And after the spiritual work, begin the practical work.
Look.
Pay attention to conversations. Check the email. Follow up. Apply. Ask. Sell. Negotiate. Research. Take the meeting. Reconsider the opportunity you dismissed too quickly. If something opens, examine it.
A money spell isn't permission to abandon judgment, ethics or common sense. Every opportunity still requires discernment, and not everything that appears after a working is automatically a sign meant for you.
But if you ask for movement and movement begins, you have to be willing to move too.
That, to me, is the difference between wishing for money and participating in abundance.
Abundance Has to Survive After the Money Arrives
There is another part of abundance work that isn't nearly as glamorous as manifestation.
Management.
If your goal was $3,000 and you receive it, what happens next?
This is where your relationship with money comes back into the conversation. If the $3,000 was for your store deposit and you spend $1,200 of it because having money made you feel temporarily comfortable, the spell didn't fail. The goal changed because of what you did after the money arrived.
Spiritual practice can help us create intention around money, but it cannot manage our finances for us.
Eventually we have to decide what money is supposed to do in our lives. Some money needs to protect us. Some needs to pay obligations. Some may need to grow. Some may need to fund the thing we're building. Some is meant to be enjoyed. Abundance isn't necessarily about squeezing every dollar until you're afraid to live, nor is it about spending freely to prove you trust more money will come.
It's about developing a relationship with money in which you can receive it, direct it and make conscious decisions about what happens next.
That may require confronting things a money spell can't resolve by itself.
Maybe you need to learn how to budget. Maybe you need to understand investing. Maybe you need to stop treating every increase in income as permission to increase your lifestyle. Maybe you need to become less afraid of spending money strategically. Maybe you need to stop turning your nose up at opportunities because they don't resemble the life you pictured yourself having.
There is spiritual work in asking for abundance.
There is also spiritual work in becoming capable of holding what you asked for.
As for Me
I consider myself someone who attracts money.
That doesn't mean I've never experienced difficult financial periods. I have. What I've noticed over time, though, is that when my mindset around money changes, what I attract tends to change with it.
I've also had to learn that attracting money doesn't automatically mean I'm handling money well.
My relationship with it matters. What I believe about scarcity matters. What I do when money arrives matters. Where I put it matters. Whether I'm thinking beyond today's need matters.
And I strongly believe that when I do money work, it works better when I give the money a purpose.
Once, I needed money to get to Atlanta for a job interview. I didn't have what I needed, I was frustrated, and I had a very specific goal: get to Atlanta for that interview.
Then something happened that still makes me laugh because it was certainly not the neatly packaged manifestation story anyone would recommend putting on a vision board.
I went to The Fresh Market. As I was near my car, a woman stopped me and asked whether a wallet lying nearby belonged to me. It didn't. I picked it up and told her I would take it inside.
Then I noticed a $100 bill.
When I opened the wallet, there was $500 inside.
Now, ordinarily, there wouldn't have been much of an internal conversation. My moral instinct would have told me exactly what to do: don't touch the money. Turn everything in.
This time, I made a different decision.
I took the money.
Dear impulsive thieves, this is not the part where Ameynra tells you that finding somebody else's wallet is an abundance strategy.
I know there is an ethical question in what I did. I'm not rewriting the story to make myself look spiritually pristine, and I'm not declaring that the universe authorized me to take someone else's $500. I made the decision. I own the decision.
But I also can't separate that moment from what I had been asking for.
I needed the money to get to Atlanta. Something appeared in front of me in a form I never would have predicted. I took it, went to Atlanta, interviewed for the position, and now I'm preparing to begin the job.
Make of that what you will.
What the experience reinforced for me wasn't find wallets. It was something I've learned repeatedly about abundance: the pathway doesn't always resemble the request.
I've had money arrive in expected ways and unexpected ones. I've watched opportunities appear that I could have easily dismissed. And I've learned that when I ask for something specific, I need to start looking at what's moving around me instead of deciding beforehand exactly how my answer is allowed to arrive.
But I still have to choose.
That's the part I think gets lost when we talk about manifestation. A spell doesn't remove agency. An opportunity doesn't remove discernment. And abundance doesn't absolve me of responsibility for what I do with either one.
I can ask.
I can attract.
I can recognize an opening.
But eventually, I have to participate in what happens next.
Because getting the money was never the entire goal.
Creating the life I needed the money for was.
— Ameynra J. Alquemi
Founder, Haus Of Alchemy
Manifest your vision.
