Trade existed from the first day humans walked the earth, but it was in Ancient Egypt that it was first instituted as a sacred practice. Since then, this sacred practice has re-emerged in many forms through every known civilization, bringing about the empowerment needed to create and evolve human societies.

Sacred Commerce is the “party-cipation” of the community in the exchange of information, goods and services that contributes to the revealing of the divine (beauty, goodness, and truth) in all and where spirituality is the bottom line. Sacred Commerce lifts the concept of participation to its higher octave of party-cipation — a participation sourced in celebration and joy, with choice and responsibility at its core, versus a participation that is weighted down with duty and obligation, demands or expectations.

It is a participation involving co-creation, where one shares the success of that creation equally yet takes full responsibility for any failure. After all there is no one to blame. The tradition of Sacred Commerce includes a lineage of Merchant Priests in service to humanity that appeared on every continent and throughout every period in history. Highly trained in Emotional Alchemy, they used their relationship to business as a feedback mechanism to learn and grow personally while aspiring to create prosperity for all.

By meeting people’s basic needs of survival, security and community, crafting a democratic environment and the tools of capitalism, they freed the individual and society to pursue their higher spiritual needs and desires that contain their unlimited potential. In the process of manifestation or creation there are three main steps: The Why (the intention/purpose), the How (the means), and the What (the result or bottom line). For hundreds of years, the concept of the bottom line in business has been synonymous with money earned, markets controlled, or power over the competition.

The “What” has been given first order of priority at the expense of the How and Why leaving the end to justify the means and dictate the purpose. Pioneered by the human potential movement and evolved and embraced by the green and sustainable businesses, the new paradigm dethrones the absolute authority of money and measures success in broader terms. It replaces the top-down vertical patriarchal hierarchy in favor of a horizontal collaborative one.