DOLORES ASHCROFT-NOWICKI SHARES A LIFETIME IN THE CRAFT

interview

by Gidne

Tucked away in the woods on the lower foothills of Mt. Rainier, a robust woman in her 70s, demure as a doe one moment and whooping it up with boisterous laughter the next, leads her workshop students in a series of pathworkings, songs and dances. She is Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, author and teacher of the tradition of the Village Craft. Her aim is to impart the lore and customs of a Village tradition that has long since disappeared, a tradition that was a way of life for a group of people in North Anglia, in northern England, working in harmonious tandem with the earth.

Ashcroft-Nowicki not only teaches the Craft but also is the current director of the Servants of the Light, a Hermetic order descended from Dion Fortune's Society of the Inner Light. Training students on both paths, she travels extensively, teaching a wide range of occult subjects and touching base with lodge supervisors and pupils.

It was a surprising warm and sunny autumn weekend when I first encountered Dolores at the workshop. Only the fall of the dried pine needles and a touch of crispness in the air mirrored the theme of the harvest.

Gidne: How did you get to where you are now? Were you born into a Craft family?

Dolores: No, (I was) not born into a Craft tradition. I was born into an occult family. My great grandmother was a full-blooded gypsy. A lot of the, shall we say, "extra talents" came down through her. My grandmother had her own sort of version of this. I suppose you could call this the Craft in a way, although she didn't belong to a coven. But she did practice gypsy magick and such.

Both my parents had always been interested in the occult. They were both third-degree initiates. They ran a group that was the nearest in those days to an occult lodge. Now, (the British island of) Jersey has never repealed the witchcraft laws. This could be problematic. Putting up a lodge was a definite "no-no." They referred to it as a "discussion group."

At that time, we lived in a little cottage. All the rooms sort of ran into one another. There was a short corridor between my room and the room in which they used to sit and talk. And I used to climb out of bed and go and listen behind the curtain. I would fall asleep and fall through the curtain. My mother would put me back in bed. But eventually they would get so used to this that they would just let me stay up. I'd sit curled up in a corner of the settee and just listen until I fell asleep. So I grew up with all this around me.

Like most children, I had "the Sight" when I was little. Most children grow out of it. I didn't.

G: When you speak of "the Sight," are you referring to the Second Sight as is described in Scottish lore?

D: This was the ability to see things that were of a finer substance. It has dimmed over the years. Now I'm more of a psychic sensitive than I am a psychic clairvoyant. But that is normal, something that naturally happens.

When I was little, going to school, I used to pass this beautiful wall of Jersey granite. Jersey is built on (such granite). I didn't know what it was at the time, but I know now it was an earth elemental. And I called it Christopher. I used to stop on the way to and from school and talk to him. And a teacher found me one day busily talking to a wall and informed the headmistress. The upshot of all this was that my parents were requested to take me to, not a psychiatrist, but somewhat of a counselor.

I was lucky. The Devil looks after his own, they say. This guy was Welsh and as fey as they come. He was most intrigued about Christopher. How did I see him, and what did he look like? What I had to do to see him was, I had to clap my hands three times, put my hands against the particular stone and turn it, as if I were opening a door... and Christopher was there, you see? He was most intrigued. But in the end, (he gave) me some advice. "Never let yourself be found out. Do not let normal people know about it. Then you'll be safe." Good psychic advice. He saved my bacon!.

G: Well, I'm sure your parents were very sympathetic with what you were going through?

D: Yes.

In the cottage we lived in, there was a connection with another cottage. When we first moved in, when I was about 18 months old, there was an old lady living in the second cottage. She died. She was a lovely old lady. She was always looking after me, making cookies. When she died, about six months after I moved in, my parents rented both the cottages. My father eventually knocked through the wall. (This) was to make the corridor I was telling you about. By doing this, I was virtually in the other house (of the old lady).

It never occurred to me to be afraid, being on my own. I had a lovely dog, a big dog, and he always slept in my room. But this old lady used to come and tell me stories. Now, I thought it was my granny, who used to live just around the corner. And it wasn't until I was about 4 or 5 that I realized that there were times I could see through her.

Still, it never occurred to me to be afraid. Those two cottages were very haunted. And my father was a materializing medium. He had an experience that cost him so much energy that he was ill for a while. And he said, "Never again!" And he didn't. He went more into the philosophical side (of the occult).

It was through my father and my grandfather and my mother's Welsh (ancestors) that I get my clairvoyance. The Welsh side had settled in Anglesey. In the Welsh language, the name was Ynis Dubh, which means the Black Isle. It was an old Druidic isle, where the last stand of the Druids (took place).

G: As you became older and began to pursue your own occult philosophies, where did that take you?

D: Jersey is so isolated. It was an agricultural isle with a bit of tourism. I was born and brought up (there) until we left the island when the Germans occupied it during the war. We went up to live with relatives on the Wirral Peninsula in a town called Wallasey. Then later on we came down to London. But there was such a bad blitz there at the time that we went up to Sheffield, where my mother had relatives. We got bombed out of there. We went back to Wallasey and eventually outside into the country on the Wirral Peninsula and into a little town called Heswall. The Wirral Peninsula is a very strange place, and the atmosphere between here and there is very, very thin. (The peninsula) is a little tongue of land reaching out into the sea, and it's really neither like one thing or the other. And across the Forest of Wirral, tradition says the Arthurian knights hunted for (questing) beasts. So, it's a very magickal place.

Now, usually when you are a clairvoyant as a child, when you reach puberty, you close down. It's enough to cope with raging hormones without having to try and cope with clairvoyancy as well. But because of the pressures of the bombing and the trauma of leaving home, so many things, I didn't close down. It happens sometimes. And the atmosphere I was brought up in was acting as a glasshouse. It was like forcing flowers into bloom. My parents taught me what they could. But at that time they were not as far into it as they were to become later on. So the teaching was hit and miss.

Of course, most of my things like Tarot or divination I either learned from my grandmother or I learned from the gypsies. I used to play with the gypsy children.

G: Yes, I've heard this was your summer pastime!

D: Oh, yes, it was wonderful!

So, it wasn't until we came back to Jersey very late Christmastime 1945 that things began to get more serious, if you like. My parents got around them a new group of people. They would talk things over. My mother for a while went into Scientology, but came out of it, thank God.

You couldn't put up any serious group like that in Jersey simply because of the laws.

G: When did you decide to start the Servants of the Light?

D: Oh, that wasn't until I came over to study music at Trinity College (at the University of Cambridge). I met my second (present) husband there.

It was quite strange. I picked up a book in the library. It had some wonderful occult exercises in the back. My husband and I devoured this. And I had to take it back to the library. The girl told me I could have it out again in a week. So I went back the following week, and they utterly denied they had the book. It wasn't on their list, it wasn't on their shelves, and they insisted we must have got it from somewhere else. Years later, I was talking to Mr. (W.E. Butler, a student of Dion Fortune) about this. I told him, "It was one of your books." And he said, "It couldn't have been. I didn't write it until three years later." So, explain to me how I came into this!

In the back of the book, the only thing I had written down was the Society of the Inner Light's address. So we wrote off to it. We were back in Jersey now. They offered a correspondence course. We mentioned that we'd read Mr. Butler's book and asked if we could meet him. The word came back from the Warden that, no, we would not be allowed to meet him (Mr. Butler) until we had finished the course, because there was too much of a link between us. Now, we hadn't even met this guy!

Then we went to the Hall of the Inner Light and took initiation there. And after initiation, that was when we met Mr. Butler. He was at that time setting up what were the Helios Schools. Then Gareth Knight was offered a very good job, so he took it and turned the entire project over to Mr. Butler. Mr. Butler finished writing the rest of the course. And he asked Michael (my husband) and I to take the course and become course supervisors. It was being run at that time by the Helios Bookshop/Book Service. It got to such a degree that people working in the book service were doing more work for the course. So they decided to close the course down. Of course, Mr. Butler was very, very upset. Michael and I scraped the money together to buy the copyright from them. Then we gave it back to him (Mr. Butler). And he set up the course... still the same course. But instead of the Helios Course it was called Servants of the Light. And it went on from there.

G: So how are your lodge(s) faring in the U.S. and abroad?

D: In England we have seven, one in Holland, one in Sweden, and two in the U.S. with one currently forming in Sonoma, California.

G: How has the reception been to the Village workshop in the U.S. compared to England? We seem to have a lot of Britophiles out here.

D: Well, some of them aren't actually (receptive). Some of them think its all wacky. I've actually been accused - not by students, just people wanting to be vulgar - of making all of this up. My answer to this is, "I need to sit down and make up something as elaborate as this like I need a second head."

On the whole, I'm never going to say to anybody, "You're all wrong, this is right, and this is how it's going to be." I'm just saying I have a body of knowledge here, and the people who once owned it are long gone. But I have permission to share it with you. You can take from this what you like. If you do not like any of it, fair enough. If you want to take all of it, fair enough. If you want to take part of it, fair enough. That's all I'm giving to you.

G: Now, are you considered a Walker as far as the Village Tradition goes, a person who takes information between village communities?

D: They simply call me a Walker not because I was walking between the Villages but because I'm walking between the lost village and the New World, if you like.

G: There are some other people who have used the term "Walker" before. One of them is R.J. Stewart in reference to Robert Kirk. Is that title somehow derived from the Village title?

D: Very possibly. Many people in this time used the term Walker. It nearly always means someone who has the ability to exist in two areas of life.

G: There is going to be the Lodge of the Walker established in the United States. The use of the term Walker also has a slightly different meaning in this case. It sounds as if this group will be taking the Village ways to a contemporary level?

D: Hopefully. She (Pat Scheu, who is starting the lodge) is using the term Lodge of the Walker out of respect for the Old Ways. And again she sees the Lodge as being a bridge.

G: So this is a blend of the Old Craft into something more structured?

D: Yes. I find modern ritual too structured. You know, Lord This and Lady That. High Priest and High Priestess. It's more Masonic at times than anything else!

G: I hear you have a lot of writing projects. And you've just written a book that has not been in circulation that long, The Initiate's Book of Pathworking.

D: Yes! I did that with my daughter.

G: How was it working with your daughter?

D: It was wonderful! I really enjoyed it. Tammy and I are very close. Our natal charts are amazingly close, very similar.

She's a nice person. I really like her. In the early 70s and 80s, she used to come with me to the States and travel with me. She's given up her job as a teacher, and now she's training as an acupuncturist. She has a great gift for writing, and I hope that one day she will follow that.

G: Traditional Chinese medicine certainly has an esoteric world view of energy and healing. Does she share any of your occult beliefs and ideologies?

D: Oh yes, my daughter is up to her neck in the Craft!

G: Any other books that are in the works?

D: The Magickal Art of Thought Forms will be published with Llewellyn next year in late spring or early summer, and I've sent off another suggestion. I'm waiting to see where that will go.

G: Thank you very much for your time. Maybe the next time we meet we can discuss more of your experiences with the gypsies!

D: It's a date.

When asked about her plans for Samhain, Dolores looked thoughtful and responded that she will be spending a quiet time remembering the many people dear to her who have recently crossed over.

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