Let me introduce myself in case this is your first time meeting me:
I'm Gwynne, and I'm an atheist mystic who works with a made up deity I call Paradox and argues with a host of other mythological and fictional deities who still haven't convinced me that they're real. I was claimed by a river several years ago, and made a deal with her and the goddess of money to get me a house and I'd stay in the city I'd been trying to leave for years. I landed a two-bedroom house with two grow rooms in the basement, a woodstove in the living room, on two-and-a-half lots with a pond in the backyard, and a huge variety of perennial flowers and food plants. For $4000. So I belong to a river in a city with a bad reputation, arguing with a gaggle of deities that may or may not be real, but who give surprisingly good advice.
The sort of advice that led me to joining Farcaster just in time to benefit from the launch of Moxie.
I am a Queer Heretic Nun. I'll go more into that particular and specific label in another post, but for now, just know that I live a monastic lifestyle devoted to my spiritual - and material - development. A nun who refuses a vow of poverty? Heresy 😉
I spend my days learning and writing. In the summer, I usually also garden, but that's been put on hold while I recover from a broken leg. Shattered the top of my tibia, which makes up the weight-bearing portion of the knee joint. Ouch.
I make a living posting on social media. Mainly Facebook for the last decade. I have a small, but dedicated, and growing audience. I've survived on donations since late 2019 when I shifted to a model where I did regular Service Days - Word Day, Hex Day, Money Magic Day, Mad Mystic - where I'd post the service for that day, share my tip links, and let people decide what they'd give. I'd occasionally do fundraisers to cover unexpected or large expenses, but those became rarer and rarer as my audience grew.
But that growth has been slow.
Because I have a weird sort of niche.
Queer Heretic Nun.
Atheist Mystic.
Contemplative Sorceress.
I chat with deities that I don't believe actually exist, and no I'm not crazy cuz the "chatting" isn't hallucination and it's not really "chatting" it's a deep, mystical experience that is felt not just in the mind but through the whole body, translated into symbolism my brain can understand, and distilled into advice and nudges I can choose to follow or not.
Many years ago, couldn't tell you exactly the year, but when I was still flirting with "Law of Attraction" and similar stuff - before I started getting ranty about it - I was following a "money mindset coach" who shared an exercise where you imagine money as a lover, describing them in detail, and then describing how you'd seduce them.
I tried to imagine money as a lover and I got...
A goddess. A very distinctly Roman goddess.
I didn't really work with Roman deities. I really only worked with Paradox, a deity I made up a couple decades ago when I was dicking around with Discordianism. A goddess who had led me on a wild spiritual journey that taught me how to achieve enlightenment. I'd dream about her, she'd tell me to do a thing, I'd do the thing, sometimes it sucked, but always it led me to where I wanted to be.
So this Roman goddess?
I was a tad confused.
I googled.
Realized it was Juno Moneta.
Moneta is an epithet of Juno, Queen of Heaven and Mother of Gods. It specifically represents her role as Guardian of the Treasury.
It's the word we get "money" and "mint" from.
So... that made sense.
I started working with her.
And my life started to get better.
I didn't get rich, but it got better, and that made me happy.
Then one day, while meditating, I had what I call a Vision, but was much more complex than that.
A goddess is on her knees, her wrists in shackles that are connected to the walls at the head of a marble room with floor to ceiling windows along the opposite end of the room. Filling the room are just a few powerful men, laughing and reveling as the goddess shrinks, her power beginning to drain from her after so many years of bondage.
As these men laugh and party, they don't realize that this goddess, who they claim to have chained for her protection, but really, they chained because they wanted to make sure they always had her, is now fading away, and that soon, all her power will leave their temple completely.
They believe that their shackles and chains and their temple of marble and glass will hold this goddess, this great power, this spirit that nourishes the world.
I look closer at the shackles and chains, and I see that they are words, letters, numbers, symbols. In spots, it looks like a stock market ticker! Which tells me what these chains really are, and who these men really are, which I knew when I saw the goddess, because I know the goddess. Well.
It's Juno Moneta, literally the goddess from which we derived the word "money." She is wife of Jupiter, and she was the patroness of the treasury of Rome, shackled by men of power throughout history for fear that if she roamed free, that they wouldn't have what they wanted.
And what they don't understand is that the Divine Feminine must be free. She must never be shackled, there must be no restriction on Her. And so for centuries, this shackled goddess has been held by a few, with only trickles of her power reaching others.
And I see this in the tears and wounds in her flesh. They've been cutting her, giving out slivers of her power, just enough to keep the people from demanding she be freed. For so long, they've been able to hold her, telling the people, "We must do this to protect her. The world is a scary place." And for so long, the people agreed.
But the Goddess knows the time is coming where she will break free, and all will experience her joyful abundance. But first, she will tear down the temples of marble and glass, and the rumbles are going to be a bit rough. And looking closely, I see that it's already begin. Those rumbles. Because as those men of power party and revel in their temple of marble and glass, they haven't been paying attention to what's going on right under their noses. They've started to feel the rumbles, and in their panic, they've completely ignored the Goddess they've chained.
Money is a Goddess, and she's getting pissed
That was in 2016. I'd shared it in my group on Facebook - which makes it handing for referring to all these years later.
As I continued to follow the nudges of Juno Moneta, my life improved. In 2017, I wrote and published a journaling book in a week, which led to a cascading series of events that resulted in me moving into the house I was able to buy for $4000 in 2020.
In 2019, after one of the many times I mentioned Juno Moneta in my writings, a friend of mine - @danicaswanson who is another monastic polytheist, developed a connection with Juno Moneta and got the nudge from her to start exploring crypto in early 2021.
She did. To great success.
I knew I'd eventually get that nudge, but I had other things I needed to focus on getting in order. It just wasn't the right timing for me to get the nudge from Juno to get into crypto to any sort of degree. Also, every time i put any money at all into crypto, it crashed so I mostly just avoided it.
Until May of this year when I broke my leg.
I got hit by a truck - one of those box trucks - while I was riding my bike.
The only injury I sustained was the broken leg, thankfully.
So I had a LOT of time to meditate.
And I got the nudge.
Get into crypto.
I'm broke as fuck, I responded. Cuz I am. I'd just broken my leg. I hadn't been able to post on Facebook much while in the hospital, so my engagement - and my income - tanked.
I tried to push the nudge aside.
Then one day, while checking my email, the friend who'd gotten a nudge from Juno Moneta to get into crypto mentioned Farcaster in her newsletter, and I felt the nudge again.
Okay, okay, I'll check it out.
July 12th, I made my first cast.
I made more casts.
I started getting tips in $DEGEN and other currencies, which was fabulous because my entire business model since 2019 has been based on people sending what they felt like sending me. Every Service Day post included a little blurb with "Tips/Donations: ..." and people would donate - enough to keep me going the last five years.
But Farcaster had it built right into the culture. In such a way people could tip without costing them anything - except having to stake some $DEGEN the last couple seasons. I earned enough tips my first two weeks there that I was able to stake the minimum without having to buy any $DEGEN myself.
And then came Moxie and Juno Moneta just giggled.
This is what She was here for. This is what she'd sent me here for.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Since then?
My following on Farcaster has grown to 3.4K.
I've been a Top Castor everyday they've been doing the 5 USDC program.
I'm on the Moxie top 100 lifetime earnings leaderboard.
And the momentum keeps going.
So even though I'm still not convinced deities are real, I'm gonna keep following those nudges from the Goddess of Money.
