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(printed in Reclaiming Quarterly in 1999)

I student taught a path on power with Starhawk at the Tejas Web witch camp, held in April of this year in Austin Texas. We planned path material to explore how one holds one's power, and how one uses it wisely.

We arranged the path's sessions around a couple of different, interwoven themes: There was energy work, and some work with attentional states. And, we added exercises that we hoped would help us explore our attitudes about power, about who has it, attitudes about how we use power, and how we meet and work with the power of others. We worked with holding our power against power over, and using our power collectively.

After a few days of path work, one of the campers told me that he thought that our exercises had, "no power. They're all therapeutic." I protested that a couple of the more energy focused exercises were directly about power, nevertheless, he had a point. I do focus on inner work a great deal. And I wasn't clear just how this inner work relates to power. He stated flatly that "There is no power in the path work". His statements have been on my mind ever since.

Much has been written about the nature of power, power from within, power over, power with. Many of our exercises and workings use power, build power, create places of power, anchor our power, etc. Others of our tradition have thought a great deal about these issues, I'm not going to address them here. However, many of the exercises either focus on our emotional and relational states, or attention to these states is a component of the work. Why?

In some more politically focused work, like Sue Negrin's Begin At Start, a connection is made between our inner world and our political activism, as in the slogan, "the personal is political." But I hadn't given much thought to the assumption that "the personal is powerful", despite the fact that I act as though this is true.

In addition, I have an assumption that working within the Reclaiming tradition develops one's power from within. When I look around at the wonderful witches with whom I've worked, I continually experience their power from within - I hadn't really questioned this. But, having been prodded with the camper's observations, I've begun reflecting about how folks become empowered.

I'm addressing 2 different but related aspects of power. There are those times when we must hold our personal power, our truth, no matter what the obstacles. I will call this holding power. And there are those times when we must move energy, for a magical working, or to speed ourselves on our bicycle to work.

After meditating and requesting guidance on this issue, an answer did come to me. The people who I think are quite powerful have done the simple practices consistently for a long time. Empowered witches consistently ground themselves, and run energy regularly; they have a magical practice. These are among the folks who seem to "have power" to me. There is centering one's self. There is having a place of power and perhaps, using an anchor for one's power. These exercises are pretty simple in form. But they are very powerful over time. It is through continual practice that these exercises reveal and develop one's power.

And, there's another ingredient that I think is also a key. It is the personal work, that work which the questioning camper didn't feel was interesting or worthy, the "therapeutic" work. I don't think that we can develop the wisdom and the understanding that we need in order to wield our power well and wisely without this inner work, also sometimes called "shadow work".

By personal work, I mean delving into our shadow side, the mysterious and unknown parts of ourselves. Our shadow side includes that part of us that we reject: those things about ourselves that we do not like. In the shadow lies those parts of ourselves against which we defend. And, our shadow also holds much of our unseen creativity and potential.

For me, personal work also includes relationship work. This is the work of communicating as openly as possible, including reflective listening and empathy. It is the work of maintaining relationships as they grow and change. It is speaking one's personal truth without attacking, and the art of listening fully to another's truth.

I believe that it is the combination of magical practice and inner work that develops one's power from within. The people that I admire, those that seem to have power from within, do both of these practices. And, they have done these things for a some considerable length of time.

When I watch the empowered people that I know meet power over, it is an amazing thing to behold. For instance, when someone stands up to domination with centered personal strength, it is beautiful to me. Confronting domination isn't a counter-attack, it's holding onto what we want, what we need, and what we think is right. There is telling the landlord that the roof must be fixed before it rains again, or insisting that every arrestee be treated equally.

And, I'm always amazed at the breadth and depth of manifested talent that I meet amongst the witches that I've work with. So many of us have written fine books, are exquisitely sensitive teachers, have produced musical works, visual arts, or have other talents.

I also am in awe of those witches among us who can consistently produce powerful and effective workings. Further, there is the power to draw a magic circle so well that the mundane world simply drops away. Or, there are those times when a priestess intuits where the energy of the circle needs to go and then guides the ritual so that it manifests the spirit of the working and of the participants rather than a plan that has become irrelevant.

Consistently maintaining a magical practice teaches us how to sense and move energy. But doing our inner work gives us the wisdom and understanding to know whether it is the time to hold power, or time to use it. Upon reflection, I've come to believe that chasing "power", the powerful experience to the exclusion of "therapeutic" work is an empty path. Energy without wisdom is useless. Instead, practicing both inner work and magical work together gives us the tools to understand energy, it's relationship to power, and how and when to use our power effectively.