Four of Stones:

On money, Scarcity and Financial Security

The Mesmerized Leopard crawls through a beautiful flourite cave, its focus squarely on a balanced stack of purple flourite gemstones. Just how obsessed is this Leopard over this discovery? Would you dare to try to steal his stones? There is no need — the cave is full of beautiful gems to admire or mine. The symbolism of the Four of Stones is indeed rich. Fours touch on the things that tether us and ground us and Stones hold the powers of wealth and resources, while leopards are a symbol of royalty, confidence and strength and flourite symbolizes protection, direction and confidence. The manifestation of the Four of Stones is a sign that your relationship with money is influencing your creative flow, and it’s time to re-examine that relationship. Money, while a force to be reckoned with, is most often not a healthy or soul-strengthening driver of creative flow, but having enough to move past survival is essential to truly thriving. Achieving some form of financial security lifts a heavy stress from your mind, allowing more energy and focus to be spent on creative pursuits. The burdens of a scarcity mindset can keep a person from truly investing in themselves and their dreams, force someone to take safer options and poison other facets of a person’s life. To achieve maximum creative flow, a person has to believe they and their creative souls are worth investing in. Now is a good time to apply for a dream job, create a new revenue stream, or otherwise think about the future with a positive outlook.

If you’re feeling blocked:

The Four of Stones could be an indicator that you’ve started to focus too much on money or that the stress of commercialization is draining you of your creative spirit. Money is a corruptive force in all aspects of life, a necessary evil of the capitalistic economy in which we are all forced to live — some more successfully than others. The entire pipeline through which we define success is tainted by its ties to money and influence. Have you been somehow corrupted by success or the will to succeed, or are you struggling with feeling like you deserve to succeed? Anyone trying to connect with their creative spirits and bring the world together through self-expression and the ties that bind us deserves to succeed. Anyone trying to shine a light on the world’s dark spots and what it means to be human, anyone trying to add peace and beauty to a world overcome with violence, deserves to succeed. So rest assured, you deserve to succeed. But what happens when you do? The ‘abundance mindset’ is often misused by people to over-spend, live outside their means or take from others. It’s not about always believing you deserve more, more, more, but about believing that you are enough to be worthy and that you have been given enough gifts, skills and resources by your Creator to succeed. So keep that abundance mindset, but don’t let it change you. Are you the version of yourself that makes the most money and lives the most materialistic life? Or are you the version that does the most good, is most in touch with your self and your dreams, and makes the younger and older versions of yourself proud of who they became and who they were?

Creativity exercises:

Get inspired by leopards: Create your own animal print or repeatable animal-themed pattern (you could even create your own animal) that could be sold as wallpaper or fabric

Create your own paper money design for your own personal country. What would its main values and symbolism be?

Design a poster with a mantra tied to your own personal financial goals and weaknesses, or your personal definition of success. Do you need to focus on having an abundance mindset? Knowing that you deserve success? Or do you need to be reminded that money is not happiness?

Create an advertisement that explains a whole new kind of economy: a world where the concept of money is entirely different. Maybe it’s an economy based off data, or content, or good deeds, universal grand funding, or something else entirely. Consider how society functions, what values are prioritized, and how individuals navigate their lives.