As Modern Medicine Women we have the privilege of holding a remarkable set of capacities that have the potential to create immense transformation in our world. These capacities include our intuition, our truth, our sexual power, our magic, our healing gifts and our deep connection to the Earth. Many of these powers have lain dormant within us until it’s been safe for us to express them again – and in the West, that time is now.
All forms of power can be used for good and ill, or better put, in service of life or in service of self. As we reawaken, one of the greatest challenges we face is to resolve our relationship to our own power so that we can hold and use it safely. The development the powers we are awakening now has involved a formidable soul journey that has required each of us to walk a Medicine Wheel of Power through multiple lifetimes in order to arrive at a place of balance wisdom and maturity.
The Medicine Wheel of Power
The Medicine Wheel of Power requires us to recognize and experience four fundamental experiences with our power that we need to have in order to mature spiritually and find balance. It is crucial to understand that from a soul perspective, none of these experiences is better or worse than any other. They are all equally necessary if we are to complete our experience!
# 1: Holding Your Power Innocently
The first phase of the Medicine Wheel is to be in full possession of your power from a place of innocence. For a Modern Medicine Woman on her soul journey, an example might be being a shaman in an ancient earth-based culture. This shaman has a beautiful connection to the Earth and to her womb, and a natural connection to her animal spirit guides. She uses her power kindly and to heal and maintain harmony for her people. She is celebrated and accepted in her medicine woman role. She has never known what it would be like to be disconnected from her natural and joyful birth-right, to lose her power, or to use her power selfishly.
# 2: Losing your Power or being punished for your power.
The second phase of the Medicine Wheel is to lose your power or have it taken away. This includes being punished and even killed for holding your power. Since the end of the Bronze Age, medicine women of all kinds have been punished and suppressed in manifold ways. Our most recent example of this phase comes from Europe, with the torture, burning and persecution of midwives, herbalists, seers and other gifted women by the Catholic and Protestant churches. Many Modern Medicine Women emerging on the planet right now have deep trauma memories of this phase of their Medicine Wheel walk and even carry physical or emotional scars of torture, murder and violation from these lifetimes. These scars can provoke a deep-rooted and seemingly irrational fear of becoming visible, of speaking our truth and of manifesting our natural capacities.
#3: Abusing your Power
The next step on the Medicine Wheel is to take your power into the “dark side” in other words to use your power from a place of fear and self-service. Not surprisingly, many medicine women who have been punished and persecuted have lived out their archetype as rejected and outcast women. They have suffered with a wounded psyche that seeks revenge and baser forms of personal power. An example would be a dark sexual priestess, who perhaps in a previous incarnation had used her sexual power to initiate and enlighten men. In her darker manifestation she would use her sexual and seductive powers to entrap, ensnare and manipulate men for her own ends. Again, many medicine women emerging today can feel a deep-seated, irrational guilt a fear abusing of their power because of their memories of this phase of the Medicine Wheel.
#4: Being the Victim of your own Power
This final phase of the medicine wheel is perhaps the most difficult. It involves experiencing suffering because your very own powers are being used against you. Thus you are given the experience of what it is to be the victim of your power should it be misused. Examples include being subjected to voodoo or other forms of witchcraft that wound and impair you at multiple levels. Many medicine women will have some kind of experience of this in order to remind them of how the darker side of their power works and learn how to heal and resolve this so that they become immune to such energies.
#5: Coming into the Centre: Holding Your Power Wisely
Once a Medicine Woman has walked around the Medicine Wheel she can now step into the centre. She can again enjoy her power with joy and light, but this time with all of the wisdom and experience of power that her Medicine Wheel walk has afforded her. She is no longer a woman-child with power, but a mature holder of power who understands that her power has many facets and that through choice and responsibility she is capable of using her power for the very highest ends. Many Medicine Women are resolving multiple lives, memories and aspects of power within this current life, so that they can enjoy their archetype with humility and balance.
I wish you great strength and wisdom through your walk on the Medicine Wheel of Power! May you become the highest version of yourself!
