Conjuration Of Money Ghost (养钱鬼)

We have seen that there are many methods to keep a spirit or djinn if you prefer to call it.

Most traditions only have a common way to deal with spirits, the Lower Maoshan school have developed more specific rituals to take care of our worldly needs. Unlike other common spirit conjuration rituals, the Lower Maoshan method strive to ‘foster’ ghosts in a container and the type of ghosts varies according to the caretakers’ needs too. For example, there are ghosts for general purposes, ghosts for revenge, ghosts specifically for love matters etc. The ritual I would like to discuss here concerns a very specific type of ghost called the ‘money ghost’ (钱鬼).

This ‘money ghost’ ritual is best for those people who have no fortune in their astrology readings. Once the ritual is a success, then the money ghost caretaker would receive windfall in relatively short time. However, a downfall of this money ghost is that the caretaker cannot accumulate the money he/she earned by hook or by crook. Whatever this person earns will be spent one way or another because the money does not belong to the person.

The method to keep a money ghost is fairly standard. Although this is a Lower Maoshan ritual, ritual of any tradition can be used; the main ingredient is of course the spirit. The prospective caretaker should look for a dying rich and famous person and strives to get his/her pillow if possible; otherwise any of the person’s personal items. Once these items are obtained, then the sorcerer can return to his/her altar to perform spirit conjuration ritual every night until the rich person kicked the bucket. Once the rich guy died, his/her soul will come to the sorcerer and attached itself onto the pillow or any of the items desired by the sorcerer.

If the rich soul is attached onto the pillow, then the caretaker should make offerings of food and incense to the pillow/item for 49 days and nights. After that, he/she should sleep with the pillow/item and the rich soul will teach the caretaker how to get money.

Since the money obtained in this way can be gone in a jiffy, there is another method to keep a ‘money watcher’ (守财鬼).

The ‘money watcher’ ritual is more troublesome. The sorcerer must collect 1 piece of paper money during Chinese All-Souls-Day (清明节) from 365 graves and then the collected paper monies are filled in a small wooden coffin. After that this wooden coffin is placed near the earth deity’s altar (地主公) and worshiped together with the deity. My Taoist bro told me that time around the All-Souls-Day, descendants of the deceased would burn a large quantity of paper money. After the dead soul received those monies; then it will guard those monies with all its power so that no one could steal them. If the ritual is done other than the All-Souls-Day, then the deceased would have no money to watch over. Hence, then the ghosts would be lazy.

I have tried both methods for years and would standby on the effectiveness of both rituals. The only thing is that it took me over 2 decades to see desirable results. So, don’t try these rituals and grumble to me if the spirits don’t work for you.