Harry Potter and the 12 Powers

The Power of Power & Harry Potter

Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann says;

“Power! The word itself has a magical, mystical sound. Through the years the idea of power has been the main goal of existence in more than one person’s life—the never-ending search for power over other people, power in the political or ecclesiastical area, power to accomplish miracles, power to amaze and mystify others. Power, power, power!

Like a siren song, the idea has lured people on. And always, in the end, those who have sought power for its own sake have found disillusionment and disappointment.”

Isn’t that what we think of when the word POWER is mentioned?

“… Truly, power is a gift of our Creator, freely given, but it is a gift to be used under God direction only. Wrong use of the God-given power potential will bring disappointing or even disastrous results.

But power, rightly used under the direction of the Higher Self of each individual, will accomplish good beyond our present ability to imagine.”

“Power is not an end in itself, not a goal to be sought. Rather, it is simply a means that enables us to attain the end result of bringing forth God ideas on earth. It is not to be used for selfish gain or satisfaction of the personal ego, but for the forward spiritual movement of the whole.

It is to be exercised not for the purpose of controlling others, but for the purpose of taking dominion over our own thoughts and feelings in order to come into a greater God-awareness. It is a gift of God, and as such it must be respected and utilized to further Divine work on earth.”

In Charles Fillmore’s Unity classic, The Twelve Powers, he likens the creative faculty of “power” to the divine ideas of dominion and mastery. In Fillmore’s view, the power of power is the capacity to have dominion over one’s experience and also the potential to achieve mastery over that experience.

Fillmore places the power of power energy center in the throat area, specifically, the voice box. It is with the power of our word that we engage the wheels of creation itself and whatever we “bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever [we] loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” [Matthew 18:18]

In the creation story of Genesis, the power of the word comes into play almost immediately with the words “Let there be light.” With the creative power inherent in the sound of those words, the creation of the universe was set into motion.

In John 1:1 states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

Virtually every religious and spiritual tradition acknowledges the creative power of sound and words. In the Hindu creation story, Brahma, the Creator, revealed himself as a golden embryo of sound, a vowel resonating outward from his center, resonating off the embryo walls, echoing back upon itself and becoming water and wind.

In the Toltec tradition, great emphasis is placed on being “impeccable with your word.” Words and sounds have power and they create both positive and negative effects depending upon how we use and direct them.

In Sanskrit, this power is called “Matrika Shakti,” the inherent creative energy in the sound of the letters that make up words. In the Sanskrit alphabet, each letter has a corresponding sound vibration that resonates in our body’s subtle energy channels and also in the cosmos.

In each tradition, the creative power that is implied is the same power that Charles Fillmore calls the power of power, one of the twelve creative faculties of humankind.

It was Dumbledore who said, “Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.”

When working to intellectually understand the power of power, or indeed any of the twelve powers, it is useful to maintain awareness that each one only represents a potential power. It will always remain our personal responsibility to achieve mastery or dominion over our own experience. No one can do it for us and mastery is not guaranteed. However, our creative power is never a matter of potential. It is always a matter of personal choice.

Personal responsibility again…a very important part of Unity.  Our 5^th Principle. And a reminder that we always have a CHOICE.

At the level of consciousness, dominion and mastery over our own experience means that we have assumed the personal responsibility to exercise executive management over the thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitudes that reside in our own consciousness.

When we engage the power of power, we use our words to communicate the thoughts and feelings present in our consciousness. If we have a consciousness of conflict, we use words of fear to criticize and divide. If we have a consciousness of peace, we employ words that affirm our fundamental unity.

Like the other powers, the power of power works interdependently and synergistically with the other powers. It does not achieve its potential if used in isolation or to the exclusion of the other powers. To fully engage the creative power of power, we must fuse it with the harmonizing power of love, inform it with the twin powers of spiritual understanding and discernment, clothe it in the dynamic power of our imagination and galvanize it to action through the executive power of our will.

The remaining powers, including strength, zeal and renunciation also play unique roles in the effective expression of the power of power. While mastery and dominion may not be guaranteed, it is reassuring to know that we are equipped with the limitless creative potential to accomplish them.

After all, if the power of the word is enough to set the entire universe into motion, it is likely powerful enough to help us to achieve our own comparatively smaller creative dreams and visions, even world peace.

Harry James Potter is the title character and protagonist of J. K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter series. The majority of the books’ plot covers seven years in the life of the orphan Potter, who, on his eleventh birthday, learns he is a wizard. Thus, he attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Rowling states, “Harry had to be an orphan—so that he’s a free agent, with no fear of letting down his parents, disappointing them … Hogwarts has to be a boarding school—half the important stuff happens at night! Then there’s the security. Having a child of my own reinforces my belief that children above all want security, and that’s what Hogwarts offers Harry.”

Harry is associated with the Power of Power because he uses his dominion and mastery of his Spiritual Power as he learns of his fate with regards to Lord Voldemort.  He learned to “fuse his power with the harmonizing power of love, with the twin powers of spiritual understanding and discernment, with the dynamic power of imagination and with the executive power of will.”

Harry’s ability to bring all the Spiritual Powers together as book 7 came to a close was the perfect example of the growth we all take on this Spiritual Journey called being a human being having a Spiritual experience on this planet called earth.

He took dominion over all the information he had before him and made the choice he made…to sacrifice himself and then to return and complete his journey and his growth.

Kind of like surrendering to the Divine Guidance we are receiving instead of fighting it for ego’s sake.

Could we do what Harry did? That is our question.  Harry had the opportunity to bring the 3 parts of the Deathly Hallows together to ‘conquer death’, yet he choose to aid humanity. J. K. Rowling said the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry willingly accepts mortality, making him stronger than his nemesis. “The real master of Death accepts that he must die, and that there are much worse things in the world of the living.” He placed himself to be killed by Voldemort, and in doing that he conquered death anyway.

Could you do it? Could I?  Would I have the wisdom and strength to walk away from the power that was before Harry? He was tested by ego.  As we all are.

What Harry did was find his purpose. He questioned all he was learning. All the challenges before him…or I like to call them growth opportunities.

We need to do that…to question everything.  To seek within what our true purpose is. To honor God’s gifts, whatever they are.

We are reading and discussing the book, “Hell in the Hallway, Light at the Door” by Ellen Dabenport in Tuesday’s class. The title comes from the saying, “when one door closes another opens, but it’s hell in the hallway”. And her point being, when you are in a hallway, there are all kinds of gifts for us all if we just keep open to see them, to receive them.

Harry had a hallway in each book that lead up to the long, final hallway that each earlier hallway played a part in because they each had gifts, lessons to help him grow as he came closer to facing his Shadow, Voldemort.