Money is often linked to earth, but in fact this spirit is associated with all four classical elements. Here’s some examples of how language points to those associations:

Earth: this is the most obvious elemental connection. The tarot suit of pentacles is aligned with earth, and it’s also sometimes represented as coins. Gold, the quintessential money, comes from beneath the ground. Money and crops are equally tied to soil according to An Inquiry into the Nature of Slow Money by Woody Tasch. Likewise, new ventures are started with seed money.Air: electronic and fiat money are insubstantial as air, but can be gathered in force even without substance. References to the “economic climate” also suggest air, as well as inadvertently comparing two academic disciplines (economics and meteorology) which are associated for forecasting. Symbolically air is connected with knowledge and decisions, which resonates with the argument that money is itself an idea made manifest.Fire: money can burn a hole in the pocket, can it not? On the other hand there’s the acronym FIRE, which stands for “financial independence, retire early.” Joseph Campbell described money as “congealed energy,” but at times it’s anything but congealed, and can be outright fired like a weapon in war.Water: money flows and ebbs; one can be drowning in debt or awash in wealth. The ebb and flow is supply and demand; some have argued that a rising tide lifts all boats. Water is symbolically linked with emotion, and our relationships with money can be described in terms of emotions: which are experienced and how intensely, and which are not. Allowing emotions to guide financial decisions is seen as foolhardy, but removing emotions from financial decisions is the kind of dispassion that might be described as “soulless.” The flow of money through our lives is an oft-underappreciated force.

Money connects strongly with all of these elemental forces, rather than possessing a focused tie to just one. It’s much the same with humans; we can describe someone as air-headed or reference a fiery temper, or with phrases like “all wet” and “salt of the earth.” It’s difficult to see money spirits as individuals in the same way humans are, since money is fungible, or easily divided. It may be that the distinction between singular and plural is meaningless here, and that what money experiences as “self” is alien to our experience. However different the experience of money is from human life, we have in common this composite nature, being comprised of all the elements, and something more.

The concept of money is a human idea. In the form of credit, money existed in the human world prior to being fashioned into coins. Learning to track the movements of money gave it a story, but curiously the behavior of this human invention could not be predicted. More refined tools and disciplines have been created to understand money: double-entry bookkeeping, spreadsheets, finance, economics. Money multiplies to the brink of extinction if overfed. Prices change in unexpected ways. Jobs are created and destroyed. Fortunes spring from nothing, or fall into dust. Despite the deference given to economists’ predictions, their foresight is equal to that of a Mercury dime. The missing factor, I venture, is that even though money was a human invention, that’s never been entirely true.

Spirits without bodies can live in stories, to experience the physical world. If human interest in a story is lost, that might mean that the link to our reality fades as well. A spirit desiring to stay connected to the human world might just move into a new story—such as the story of money. It’s a compelling story, given that money itself is embedded in most aspects of human community.

Maybe the truth is that humans didn’t quite invent money, any more than humans invented trees. We’ve found many different ways to utilize trees, including for furniture and paper, but they fit in with existing laws: they burn at certain temperature, for example, and they absorb a certain amount of water when submerged. The main law that constrains money is that of supply and demand. Even the value of money itself changes when the supply of or demand for it is altered. This effect we usually see when prices of most goods and services increase at the same time. That occurs because the amount of money in the world is inflated, like a balloon. Increasing the supply of something decreases its value, and when that happens to money itself, prices of everything else go up. In other words, higher prices are at their core the result of decisions to inflate the money supply. Inflation is an intentional act.