Michael Wann | The Tao of Multidimensional Creativity & Innovating Personal Systems
The syncromystic sage of the Susquehanna returns! Michael Wann is a multi-disciplinary creator and reality-analyst. In this episode we talk about I Ching, initiating the synchronicity flow state, the Tao of money, and much more.
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In this episode
Core themes
Cards as a Daily Mirror
Michael Wann opens with the habit that frames the whole conversation: each morning he draws from the Yijing, the tarot and one looser contemporary deck, logs the results in a calendar built on new moon to new moon cycles, and later checks which cards came up most against how the month actually felt. He says the practice adds mystery in a tangible, playable way. Then he and Chance draw Yijing cards live, Chance with Taming Power of the Small and Michael with Great Power, and Chance calls the pairing mind blowing given how often he consults the deck.
Defining Words Before Debating Them
Michael insists on asking how someone defines a word before building on it, so that neither side assumes it knows what the other means. Chance backs this with Confucius, arguing that without shared meanings nothing gets done, and says he likes old dictionaries such as Webster's 1828, where, he says, race meant family and he sees signs of a PR campaign to change a word's reputation. Their riff on the rat race, rats and vultures turns a reputation for filth into a case for reclaiming symbols, with Michael wanting to take back the rat.
Inventing Your Own System
Michael describes how he began making collages from cut paper around 2010 because he wanted the images out of his head without learning to paint or studying under anyone. Inventing his own system, he says, gave him freedom, since there was no outside standard to be wrong against, and he sits with each piece until the next step arrives. Chance adds that the creative person simply picks a step while the non-creative person freezes, ties it to verbs over nouns in a Tao based life, and credits his own podcast templates for his efficiency and confidence.
The Tao Through a Money Book
Michael recalls a yin and yang symbol on a skateboard shirt from his childhood, then a stretch in his late twenties as a product manager when he studied personal finance intently. Hunting in a library for The Richest Man in Babylon, he found The Tao of Money on the shelf beside it, felt what he calls a tuning fork moment inside, and says it became his threshold into the Tao Te Ching and the Yijing. Chance suggests fate served him better than Babylon would have, noting that money and Tao are both conceptualized as flow and current.
Money, Currency and Cash Flow
Michael argues that Occam's razor suits the natural world but fails against human schemes, and that a debt based central banking system was designed so its debts cannot be repaid, which he calls a mathematical impossibility. Separating money from currency, he treats currency as cash flow that must keep moving, and says hoarding out of fear of never having enough blocks it. Chance adds that treating money as evil builds its own barrier, and offers his definitions: currency as a medium of exchange, money as a store of value, and wealth as tangible things that bring prosperity.
Quotes
“When we get into contemplation and stuff like that, there's always gonna be a foundation for each person in terms of how they ultimately interpret something. And that foundation is what you're born into.”
“The non-creative thinks they don't know what to do. The creative realizes that's just one step at a time and you just pick something.”
“I'm not wrong. I don't have to go and explain this because I invented this system.”
“Money and Tao actually do have some commonalities in the sense that they're both conceptualized as flow and current.”
“The simplest answer for nature tends to be the most obvious one. It does not hold true to the realm of humankind.”
“Currency is a medium of exchange. Money is a store of value. And wealth is anything physical and tangible that brings you prosperity or happiness.”
“The dynamic between human beings and the conversation always unearths something which can never happen just by one person.”
“It all comes down to how you feel when you're doing anything. So let that guide you.”
Michael Wann hosts Susquehanna Alchemy, approaching astrology as a tool for cosmic orientation rather than fortune-telling; he has appeared on InnerVerse multiple times, most recently discussing birth charts as maps of 'where you are in the living cosmos.'
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