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Desmonde approaches the origins and significance of money from a psychosocial point of view. Gold, as a unit of value, possesses virtues known to every economist; its ancient significance as a symbol of the sun and of participation by the possessor in the glorious power of the sun has not lost its unconscious meaning in modern times. Gold and silver were 'noble' metals; just as gold represented the sun, silver represented the moon, while the 'baser' metals were associated with lesser bodies in the celestially projected family—for example, lead with Saturn, quicksilver with Mercury. (Freud's analysis of The Theme of the Three Caskets is illuminating in this connection.)
Coins were first minted in the temples of the gods, stamped with effigies of divinities and kings. To acquire a coin was to acquire an amulet, a protection against evil, and an insurer of prosperity and sexual fertility. Money was thus holy from the beginning, a natural object of veneration and also an acceptable sacrifice to the gods.
Desmonde traces the derivation of money to food and to the totemistic sustenance to be derived from the bodies of parents and tribal ancestors. The bull, a universal totem animal often identified with the sun, progressed from the totem feast to the sacrifice and the sacred games that have come down to us in the bullfight. Bulls were thus logical units of value and provided a monetary standard before gold. Justice is inherently related to the equal division of food or money; that is, the sharing of the parent's body and love by the children. Wampum or fetishistic personal adornments reveal an intermediate stage in the transition of values from one's own body to the external world; Manhattan was exchanged in this way for beads and mirrors.
The understanding of money as an institution must still be drawn not only from its outer but from its inner significance. When we speak today of the 'high priests of finance' and regard predictions about business and the stock ma