In the last few chapters, we have peered back into the past millennium to understand a little more about where we have come from and who we are. Magic is described in the Merriam- Webster dictionary as ‘an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source’, and we saw how the market's emergence from the Triennial Act of Parliament in 1641 would have closely fitted this description. Had the market not been so normalized since then, we might see it as a form of magic today. However, the market as a form of inexplicable magic is of course not the full picture; the market is like other magic in having its own internal logic. Whether reading tarot cards, enacting the divine rights of kings or managing a pension, there are certain rituals and ways of doing magic that we collectively agree on. In this chapter, we will see that the power of kings and queens was replaced by the possibility that anyone could hold power over others through the market. In Chapter 1, we saw that seeking to hold power over others is the antithesis of Love. This means that not just the monarch but everyone in society is now encouraged to act against Love. In this chapter, we will see how the market's denial of Love began in the 1500s, or perhaps in the 1000s, and how this continues today in the form of neoliberalism. In light of Bateson's schismogenesis, this type of imminent critique of the market is problematic because it is likely to compound anyone's pre- existing zeal for market economics. However, an understanding of how we got to this point will help us to understand what a more loving critique that might help us to overcome the forces of capital might look like, and this will be explored in the following chapters.

In some accounts, the origins of capitalism can be traced back to the Norman Conquest of England. William the Conqueror seized control of England at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and, as any British schoolchild will tell you, introduced castles to the English countryside. When combined with the gifting of land to his barons, the castles gave William and his loyal new aristocrats a monopoly on violence that enabled them to extract rent from the lands that they now claimed.