Why Mammon Is One of the Most Misunderstood Spirits

Mammon is one of the few spirits people feel drawn to while also being ashamed of that pull.

That alone should tell you something.

In most spiritual spaces, wanting money is framed as suspect. Dangerous. Unclean. Mammon sits right at the centre of that discomfort. He’s been flattened into a cartoon villain — the demon of greed, capitalism incarnate, the proof that wealth corrupts absolutely.

But that version of Mammon isn’t ancient.
It’s curated.

To understand why Mammon is so misunderstood, you have to look at who benefits from you fearing money, and why power tied to material survival has always been one of the first things religion tries to moralise.

Mammon Wasn’t Always a Demon

The word mammon originally referred to wealth, material resources, and trust placed in money. Not evil. Not a horned figure whispering corruption. Simply the reality of material exchange.

Mammon becomes a demon later — specifically through Christian moral framing — when money starts to be treated as competition for devotion. If you are taught that spiritual purity requires poverty, then wealth must become sinful by definition.

This is how demonisation works in witchcraft history:

• Take a force people rely on

• Attach shame to it

• Personify it as dangerous

• Teach obedience instead of literacy

Mammon didn’t become “evil” because money suddenly corrupted humanity. Mammon became evil because financial independence threatens control.

A person who can survive without permission is hard to rule.

Greed and Mammon Are Not the Same Thing

One of the biggest lies told about Mammon is that he represents greed.

Greed is excess without awareness.
Mammon is about exchange, accumulation, and material reality.

Those are not moral states — they’re functions.

In witchcraft, spirits are not Sunday school metaphors. They’re forces, currents, intelligences, archetypes. Mammon governs material flow: how resources move, how value is assigned, how survival is sustained in a physical world.

Greed is a human behaviour.
Mammon is a mirror.

And mirrors tend to get blamed for what they reflect.

Why Witches Are Conditioned to Fear Mammon

Witches are often taught — directly or indirectly — that wanting money makes you less authentic. Less pure. Less “real”.

Artists should struggle.
Spiritual people should sacrifice.
If you cared about truth, you wouldn’t care about money.

That narrative keeps you exhausted, dependent, and easy to exploit.

Mammon disrupts that story. Not because he promises riches, but because he forces you to look at your relationship with survival. He doesn’t reward fantasy. He exposes avoidance.

This is why people find him uncomfortable.

Mammon doesn’t care how spiritual you sound if you don’t pay your bills. He doesn’t care how righteous your beliefs are if you refuse responsibility for your material life.

That doesn’t make him cruel.
It makes him honest.

Power Is Not the Same as Corruption

Another reason Mammon is misunderstood is because people confuse power with corruption.

Power simply means capacity — the ability to act, to choose, to sustain yourself. Corruption is what happens when power is exercised without accountability or awareness.

Mammon deals with power at the material level. That scares people who were taught that goodness requires powerlessness.

But witchcraft has never been about helplessness. It’s about agency.

Mammon doesn’t take your ethics away. If anything, he tests them. Working with material power forces you to ask:

• Where does this come from?

• Who pays the cost?

• What am I willing — and unwilling — to exchange?

That’s not corruption. That’s discernment.

Why Mammon Attracts Artists and Outsiders

Mammon often shows up at the edges: artists, freelancers, sex workers, independent thinkers, people outside traditional structures. Not because he’s predatory — but because these people are already negotiating value without institutional protection.

When your labour isn’t validated by a system, you have to define its worth yourself.

Mammon governs that threshold.

This is also why people accuse him of being transactional or cold. But exchange is not cruelty — it’s reality. Every system runs on it. Pretending otherwise just hides who’s paying the price.

Mammon doesn’t create exploitation.
He reveals it.

The Fear of “Losing Your Soul”

People often say, “I’m afraid of losing myself if I work with Mammon.”

That fear didn’t come from nowhere. It was taught.

You were taught that:

• Wealth erodes character

• Desire makes you weak

• Survival must come with suffering to be meaningful

Mammon challenges those beliefs by asking a simple question:
What if your soul isn’t that fragile?

If your ethics only exist when you’re powerless, they’re not ethics — they’re compliance. Real values survive contact with power.

Mammon doesn’t steal your soul. He shows you where you’ve outsourced your agency.

Mammon Is Not an Entry-Level Spirit

This matters, and it needs to be said plainly.

Mammon isn’t misunderstood because he’s simple. He’s misunderstood because he’s precise. He responds to clarity, discipline, and accountability — not desperation or fantasy.

People who approach him hoping for shortcuts tend to panic when he instead exposes their habits, fears, and avoidance around money.

That doesn’t make him punishing.
It makes him exacting.

Witchcraft has always warned about forces that deal with material reality: they require maturity. Not moral purity — maturity.

Why Misunderstanding Mammon Is Convenient

A misunderstood Mammon keeps people:

• ashamed of wanting stability

• suspicious of their own ambition

• disconnected from material agency

• grateful for scraps instead of demanding equity

Demonising Mammon keeps power safely abstract — somewhere spiritual, somewhere unreachable — instead of embodied, practical, and actionable.

And that is very convenient for systems that rely on your exhaustion.

The Truth Beneath the Fear

Mammon is not good or evil.
He is not salvation or damnation.

He is a force that asks you to stop lying about money.

That’s why he’s feared.
That’s why he’s flattened into a caricature.
And that’s why he continues to surface whenever people start questioning why survival has been turned into a moral failing.

You don’t have to like Mammon.
But you should understand him.

Because misunderstanding material power has never protected anyone — it has only kept them dependent.