Joseph P. Farrell - Financial Vipers of Venice: Alchemical Money, Magical Physics, and Banking in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

JOSEPH P. FARRELL

FERAL HOUSE

Financial Vipers of Venice: Alchemical Money,

Magical Physics, and Banking in the Middle

Ages and Renaissance

2010 by Joseph P. Farrell

All rights reserved

A Feral House book

ISBN 978-1-93623-974-0

Feral House

1240 W. Sims Way Suite 124

Port Townsend WA 98368

www.FeralHouse.com

Book design by Jacob Covey

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Above all, to

SCOTT DOUGLAS de HART:

You are a true

For all the shared bowls and walks and talks and so many brilliant insights in so many conversations through the years, anything I could say, any gratitude I could express, is simply inadequate.

GEORGE ANN HUGHES:

Dear and good friend:

You are a constant encouragement; thank you,

but again, it seems so inadequate.

DANIEL R. JONES:

Good friend, who has seen the full implications of the Metaphor,

and given numerous and priceless insights:

Thank you is, in your case as well, inadequate.

BJK, BAS, BERNADETTE, PH,

and all the other extended Inklings out there:

Many thanks for continued and consistent friendship through the years.

And to

TRACY S. FISHER,

who with love and gentle prodding encouraged me to write:

You are, and will always be, sorely missed.

I met Murder on the way

He had a mask like Castlereagh

Very smooth he lookd yet grim;

Seven bloodhounds followed him:

Tis to let the Ghost of Gold

Take from toil a thousand fold,

More than eer its substance could

In the tyrannies of old:

Paper cointhat forgery

Of the title deeds, which ye

Hold to something of the worth

Of the inheritance of Earth.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, from The Masque of Anarchy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Like all authors, I remain indebted to a few good friends with whom conversation so often brings insights and inspirations, and among these, I must particularly acknowledge a grateful debt to George Ann Hughes, to Daniel A. Jones, and especially to my dear friend of almost twenty years, Dr. Scott D. de Hart, whose eyes and comments on this manuscript were, as always, timely, and as I have come to expect, brilliant. Thank you George Ann, Daniel, and Scott, so very much.

Finally, a word of gratitude to Mr. Adam Parfrey of Feral House. Finding publishers willing to tackle such books as this, both controversial, arcane, and risky, is a rarity, and I have consistently found Adam both willing and eager to do so. Thank you again, Adam!

This book, like all my books, is dedicated to my many readers, whose countless letters and emails of support, of prayerful good wishes, and many suggestions, are hereby gratefully acknowledged.

Before coinage, there was barter.

Murray Rothbard

In fact our standard account of monetary history is precisely backwards. We did not begin with barter, discover money, and then eventually develop credit systems. It happened precisely the other way around. What we now call virtual money came first. Coins came much later, and their use spread only unevenly, never completely replacing credit systems. Barter, in turn, appears to be largely a kind of accidental byproduct of the use of coinage or paper money

David Graeber

THERE ARE TIMES when I wish that I had been born in seventeenth century Berlin or London, or that I could transplant their literary style and diction to the twenty-first century, so that I could indulge my taste for explanatory titles of books, those long titles that are part title, part sub-title, part academic abstract, and part table of contents, such that one could, in many cases, read the title without having to read the book. In that case, the title of this book would be:

Babylons Banksters, the Financial Vipers of Venice, the Annuitary Asps of Amsterdam, the Collateralized Cobras of the City of London, and the Weasels of Wall Street: In One Stupendous Volume,

BEING

An Objective, Dispassionate and Encyclopedic Discourse and Assaying Essay Upon the Marvelous Magick of the Metaphor of the Medium, Money, Alchemy, Metaphysicks and the Darke Secrets, Mysteries and Miserific Witchery of Banking, Bullion Brokers, and Corporate Personhood

&

Upon the High Crimes and Misdemeanors of Banksters From The Bardi, Perruzi, Cerchi, Fuggers, Contarini, Dandoli, Mocenigi, DEstes, Welfs, Orange-Nassaus, Saxe-Coburg und Gothas, Medicis, and Borgias, Contarini, Mocenigos, and other Assorted Miscreants Downe to Our Own Time

&

Upon the Excesses and Babelish

CONSPIRACIES,

CABALS,

CONGRESSES,

CONVENTIONS

&

CONVENTICLES

of the Rottenchilds, Rockefailures, Wartburgs, Schiffen, Kohns, Luhbs, Leymanns, and Lees

With Modeste Proposals for Their

SOLUTION.

Heady and Harrowsgate

Geoffrey Codswallop & Sons, Ltd. London

MMXII

All of this would, of course, be encased in the florid filigree of a baroque cartouche, with fat cherubs seraphically strumming lutes and lyres, with a scene of Christ chasing the money-changers from the Temple, while berobed onlookers, clutching their frocks anxiously around them, warily eyed the whole proceeding.

Well, unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately), times and literary tastes have changed, and publishers like quick alliterative sound bites for titles, with the contents of the book being in the actual book and not the title, and they prefer breaking up such essays into one or more volumes, rather than publishing ponderous one-volume tomes.

Thus, all humor aside, this book is conceived as the second in a series I had planned beginning with Babylons Banksters: The Alchemy of Deep Physics, High Finance, and Ancient Religion.