Exploring The Inner Realms
The Gnosis Interview

By Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

Jay Kinney, former editor of the regrettably defunct magazine "Gnosis" has given permission to offer this interview with Dolores to the SOL website. Please note, although the magazine itself is no longer in circulation, back issues are available, including the issue from which this interview was extracted. This interview appeared in Gnosis issue 36, which you can order at the Gnosis website.

Note from Dolores:

Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, author, lecturer, and instructor, is a modern hierophant of the Western mystery tradition. As director of studies for the Servants of the Light (SOL), she heads a fraternity whose roots are firmly planted in the tradition of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (by way of Dion Fortune's group, the Society of the Inner Light). SOL is dedicated to occult study, practice, and ritual. It gives instruction through the mails using a system of supervisors.

Butler (1898-1978) was a member of the Society of the Inner Light, and out of his friendship with fellow-members Gareth Knight, John Hall, and Ashcroft-Nowicki, SOL came into being. Butler's books include Magic: Its Ritual Power and Purpose; The Magician: His Training and Work; Magic and the Qabalah; and Lords of Light: Teachings of the Ibis Fraternity.

Dion Fortune (1890-1946) was originally a member of the Christian Mystic Lodge of the Theosophical Society and an initiate of the Golden Dawn (Alpha & Omega). Author of The Mystical Qabalah as well as several essay collections and occult novels and stories, she provided a genuine curriculum for magic today.

These groups and individuals have all regarded magic as a spiritual path rather than as an egotistical way of accruing power. They also see it as a means for expanding consciousness and participating in the greater reality of Spirit. This task has been known as the Magnum Opus, in which each practitioner plays a small but absolutely vital part. As Dion Fortune once said, "Any magician worth his salt becomes, almost inevitably, a mystic."

Ashcroft-Nowicki lives with her husband Michael Nowicki on Jersey in the British Channel Islands. This interview was conducted in Seattle, Washington, in August 1994

Frank Donnola: What is your understanding of the inner planes?

Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki: People refer to the inner planes, the inner worlds, by all sorts of different names. The terms "levels" or "planes" is perhaps a little mis­leading. Although I have used the term "inner planes" because that's what people are used to, for myself I tend to call them "dimensions." Using the term "inner dimension" clarifies it more for me, it gives it less of a woolly, open-ended, not quite defined quality. I find the word "dimension" is more encapsulated, and suggests, to my mind at least, a place, a situation, a loca­tion somewhere that is crisp and clear and has well-defined areas. Let's say the nearest plane to us is an astral plane. But it really is the next dimension away from us, a dimension which has a peculiarity: the matter of which it is made is loose and flowing, rather like a river. One can pick it up and pour it into various receptacles like thought-forms. If you go further, the next dimension or plane is the mental, in which you don't need a form; all you need is an idea of yourself, an idea of something abstract to which you want to go or with which you want to interact. And then what happens is on that mental plane, that mental call or energy pattern with which you want to communicate is drawn towards you, or you are drawn towards it. I don't think these dimensions or planes are separate in that they proceed in a linear way. I think they all exist in one space. There is some link here with science fiction and fantasy, with their notions of parallel worlds. It's a very interesting subject, and heaven knows there have been enough books written about it. I think the term "inner planes" comes from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Those were the terms that were used then. We haven't gotten around to giving them new titles yet, but it's certainly time we did.

Donnola: These dimensions are often presented as being distinct, as a way, I suppose, of tuning into each one separately. But they must be happening all together. Is moving through them a matter of what has been called a higher rate of vibration?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: That is the way that I was taught, that it was a matter of raising the vibrations of your particular energy pattern to match those of the denizens of that particular world. We tend to speak of the astral and other inner planes as being inhabited only by ourselves when we are in an astral form, or by astral shells. But I was taught that each of these layers of beingness has its denizens, inhabitants that belong to that level.

Donnola: Like the flora and fauna of that kingdom.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Very much so. And I think one can find angelics at their level and elementals on that level, and I have no doubt that there are levels where less savory things can be found.

Donnola: Sometimes people talk of encountering demons or evil spirits, and I wonder if it isn't similar to going to the bottom of the ocean and finding scary-looking creatures there, but which are only beings that inhabit that world.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: I have no doubt that in many cases this is true, but I also think that people tend to describe themselves as traveling on the astral which of course is inhabited only by that person. And any demons in it are their own inner demons.

Donnola: So it's all their own thought-forms, built up over the years?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Yes, or sometimes even over several lifetimes. You may bring all sorts of fears and phobias with you. I'm not saying this is so in every case, but a lot of people, particularly the sort that leap about on the so-called astral with their magical swords, cutting up dragons and what have you - I really do think that in many cases this is a question of being in their own inner world and being afraid to face their own inner demons. And they insist on carving them up, only to find that you can't do that; the pieces just come back together again. It's not until you face those inner monsters and absorb them and transmute them that they actually vanish out of that inner world

Donnola: So merely killing them in a stereotyped hero-and-monster fashion doesn't resolve the issue.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: It's like trying to cut off a little bit of your astral; it will simply join itself up again. I think there is a little too much of the Dungeons & Dragons attitude: people getting loose on what they think of as the astral with their magical sword. Very often it's a way of saying, "Look at me, aren't I great! Things are actually trying to destroy me, so I must destroy them first." It's a yell for recognition. We get a lot of those.

Donnola: Could you compare some of the different occult systems describing how the inner planes work?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: For those who work in the kabbalistic system, the inner world is very much represented by the Tree of Life and the four worlds. For the Hermeticist in the Western tradition, it's mainly to do with the elementals and elemental worlds (earth, water, fire, and air) and the variations of those as they go through the different levels. One gets to a point where the earth is more than just an element: it can become a color or a sound or a taste or a scent.

To the Wiccan, of course, things are expressed in a slightly different way. Very often it goes along with the Hermetic tradition in the sense that it touches on the elementals, but they often touch it at the level of earth gnomes, water undines, air sylphs, and fire salamanders, and they tend to work with nature spirits in their native kingdoms. Everybody has a different idea.

I would say almost categorically there are as many astrals as there are people believing in astrals, simply because we color them with our own thoughts and our own ways. Even individuals working in the same tradition see things differently.

We might take as a point the opening of a temple. The magus opens first the east and then moves clockwise. Now for me, the east opens great bronze doors, and through it comes Raphael. On one side is Paralda, king of the sylphs, and Paralda to me is very like one of Tolkien's elves: slightly pointed, very ascetic features, long hair which blows continually in the wind, a cape, and so forth. The choir of angels on the other side, or maybe one of the Four Holy Creatures, the elementals themselves in front, and behind maybe high mountains and a sense of a breeze blowing through that has caught the scent of wild thyme and honey and fragrances. But for my husband that's not so. It is a tall snowcapped mountain with a kind of devic figure on it.

We also differ vastly when it comes to opening the earth. For me, it's always an underground cave, stalactites and stalagmites, and Uriel tends to be a dark cloaked figure, almost Hecate-like, with a reversed sword. For my husband, it is an open field, with flowers and poppies and a woman crowned with flowers.

So even in one temple, in one family, the astral vision differs from person to person. But of course those landscapes are so elastic that they blend, and each one can exist in the same space. So you get twelve people in a room visualizing the opening of these quarters, and what comes through comes in different ways, but they all exist interdimensionally.

Donnola: I've wondered how much the differences between occult systems is the personality of the teacher filtering it, and how much of it is just the vastness of the inner worlds and their ability to accommodate so much.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: I think there is a tendency to follow one's teacher. Naturally enough, as I'm teaching people to open quarters, I will say, "Now visualize this" and give them my version. They may change that as they will later on, as they come into their own power, or as they decide to take it on because it is something they can accept.

On the other hand, equally right is your statement that maybe it's so vast and so wide that anything goes. There is no boundary, no edge, no way of binding the inner dimensions. You can't do that: there isn't any edge to fall off. They all exist in the same space, which one can actually see. On the few occasions when you can hold one of the highest of the inner beings steady in your mind, you can see little bits of them in different dimensions, and they change. What appears to be a pair of winged feet on the earth, or just slightly above the earth, just moving into the astral, that's one level. But the rest of the legs up to where the torso would begin are simply shifting colors. Above that it may be a geometric shape, and above that a sound. And you're looking at the same being in all those dimensions. They're just there all at the same time, and what you're seeing, through a trick of your mind, is a way of looking at things. You're seeing them all together, but you're seeing little bits of them in each.

Donnola: It sounds like that composite being in Daniel's vision whose different parts are composed of different metals.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Exactly. In fact, I'd lay my bottom dollar this is what happened to Daniel. He was looking at a being through all the different dimensions.

We simply cannot make a statement and say, "This is how it is" because that's how it is for that person. For me, for you, it looks different. Clairvoyants or clairsentients do not see the same things in the same way, nor do they see it in the same way as a person without those gifts.

The gift of sight on the inner levels is a very strange one. There's a point at which "sight" as we know it at all is simply a question of vibrations and energies. It's rather like looking at the aurora borealis in some cases: great curtains of color that ripple and move. And yet it's a being on one of the other levels.

Donnola: Probably the main thing about different occult systems is that they're functional more than anything else, and visualizing certain things in certain ways helps attune you to make contact and work with them. Rather than it being an objective picture, an absolute, a dogma.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: It's always difficult to pass on information; we have to pass it on in the form of analogies and symbols and pictures. Inevitably after a person goes through all the levels of that school and comes out the other side trained, they will begin to change their way of looking at things, no matter how well they've been trained.

Each generation sees things and uses different symbols from the one before it. What Ernest Butler used and saw, and the way he described things, was of his generation. It's not of mine: I have adapted and changed. This does not mean I have thrown out his ideas. I have taken their essence and given them a new symbol, given them a new way of being looked at. The essence doesn't change, the image does. The perception of that essence changes.

And in a hundred years, with four generations, you get four very different ways of looking at the same essence, the same truth, whether that is an orthodox truth or an occult truth.

Donnola: So then it's more than just forms adapting with the times, isn't it? It's finding new things, finding more there?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Certainly.

Donnola: The teachings grow as the generations go on?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: They do, and of course each generation sees a little further, a little deeper.

Donnola: Because you're standing on the shoulders of the people who went before you.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: A teacher is a rung on a ladder. You need to be a support for the very ones you teach; they need to climb on your shoulders to see further. Just as you did with your teacher.

Donnola: It's a human ladder.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: It's Jacob's ladder!

Donnola: I was interested in learning how you met Butler, in your magical work with him and the Society of the Inner Light, and how the SOL got started.

Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki: My husband Michael and I joined the Inner Light in the early part of the '60s and went right through their training program and even­tually took initiation. During that time we came into contact with Butler's books, and knowing he was part of the Inner Light, we asked the then-Warden, Arthur Chichester, if it would be possible to meet him. We got a rather strange letter back saying that the connection between us was so close that they thought it would be better for us to finish the course and then meet him.

About this time, Ernest and Gareth Knight and John Hall had gotten together to put something out called the Helios Course. Gareth Knight wrote the first six lessons of that, and then he had an opportunity to go into a really good place of work, and so he turned the rest of the writing of the course over to Ernest.

The whole course was put out in '65 or '66. At this time we were coming to the end of our stint of learning with the Inner Light, and we applied for initiation, which is what one did in those days, and this was granted. Ernest had started to attend some of these meetings again. We wrote to him, and he said that he would meet us at one particular seasonal meeting.

Afterwards we took him out to dinner, and it was very obvious there was some close relationship that may have hung over from a former existence. But the fact of the matter was we got on extremely well and we formed a very close relationship at that time. A few years later Ernest would ask us to become supervisors for the Helios Course.

In the very early '70s the Helios Course began to get more and more popular, and it became very obvious that the Helios Book Service, which was part of it, could not spare the time or the personnel to deal with this incoming course work. So the suggestion was made that the whole course get dropped. This upset Ernest a great deal, because he wanted very much to keep on doing this. So Michael and I gave him the money to buy back the copyright, and then out of that came the Servants of the Light (SOL). The name was Ernest's idea. It has the secondary title of Fraternitas Alexandrae.

Slightly before this time, I had managed to make a contact with the inner plane guide under whom Ernest had worked for many years. Ernest had asked this being for confirmation that he would be able to pass on his work and was told in due course that someone would approach him and that they would bring with them the correct name of the being. Also they would state unequivocally that they had come to take over, and that is exactly what happened.

Donnola: Is there anything you can say about this inner plane contact?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Ernest had gone to Dion Fortune a few years before her death and had said to her that he had had several visions in which the Christ child appeared on the other side of a fast-flowing river, and he had stretched out his arms to him. But Ernest was unable to cross over and bring the child across. But out of the mist on the other side was a jackal-headed god, Anubis, who lifted the child onto his shoulder and took him across the water.

Donnola: Rather than St. Christopher.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Yes, and halfway across the Christ child wore the Horus head! This, and other things, decided Ernest that he was being directed into service with one of the great messenger gods, who we know do not die, as it were, with the age. They are the ones that cross over from age to age, taking on different names, guises, and forms, but still remaining the messenger gods, the ones with a message for humanity.

Ernest went to Dion Fortune with this, and she said, "Yes, this is a true vision," and gave him leave to establish a small lodge outside the Inner Light, and to work with this being. Now Ernest left the Inner Light for a while, though he was to go back again eventually, and this contact became very real. This being made itself so accessible to him that Ernest was able to get a great deal of teaching across from one side to the other.

Years later, Michael and I used to meet Ernest in London or sometimes Southampton - because he was very frail by now - and go up with him on the train. We would give him lunch, then go on to the meeting house for the ritual, and then see him back onto his train safely later on. And this particular time we had gone to the top of a place called Havistock Hill. There was an Indian restaurant at the top which Ernest loved. We were sitting outside, having finished, and I became aware that standing beside me was something that couldn't be seen by anybody but me. I'd been used to this kind of thing since childhood, so it didn't faze me too much, except for the fact that it seemed overly Egyptian.

Donnola: Did you see it or sense it?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: At that time I was still an objective clairvoyant, so I was seeing it, which was another bit that made it rather scary. So I interrupted Ernest and said to him half-jokingly, "What do you know about Anubis?" And he said to me, "Why do you want to know?" And I said, "Well, I've got this feeling that this is an area of my service." And he used to smoke a pipe. It literally fell out of his mouth and smashed on the ground, and he got very cross and said, "I wish you wouldn't give me shocks like that!"

Anyway, he turned around and went on talking to Michael, and after a few minutes we got up and started to make our way quite slowly down the hill. This thing followed us, and it kept saying "Give him this name; tell him this." And my immediate reaction was, "Sling your hook, mate: I am not going to tell an old man that as soon as you croak I'm in line for your job." This was a man I held in the greatest respect.

So I hung out until we reached the bottom of the hill and turned into the road we were headed for when this thing got really insistent, so I stopped and said to Ernest, "I'm ever so sorry about this, but I do have to tell you this because it's getting so imperative!" And I gave him the name and I said, "I've been told to tell you that when your time has reached its peak, I'm here to take on your work, and I'm ever so sorry, but you know I don't mean it the way it sounds." And he stopped and turned around and said, "You took time coming!" and no more. And I thought, "I've put my foot in it."

But on his way home, as the train pulled out he pushed his head out the window and said, "And by the way, Dolores, you'll be the new director of studies after me." And then sat back again, and I stood there with my mouth on the platform thinking, "I can't handle this."

And I got all the way to Jersey, and he rang me up and said, "I meant what I said - think about it!" For two weeks I used to go down to the beach and walk up and down in the evenings, and always I'd be followed by this contact which would say to me, "You will say yes," and I would say no.

Then finally, on a very special evening when there were both lights in the sky, a new moon and the sun as well, and the sky was the most wonderful color of turquoise and gold, I stood there - and by now I'd gotten to the point where I was actually having conversations with this thing. And I said, "Isn't it a pity? In another few moments all this will have gone, the moment will have passed." And it said to me, "No! Nothing ever passes, it's all held in the mind of the One, and at any moment you can reach back to it." And he said, "That is part of what you will teach." I said, "I have nothing to teach, I have not the expertise." He said, "You don't have to, you only have to open your mouth. I will do the teaching. You will say yes." And I rang Ernest up and said yes.

Donnola: Wasn't Chiron also a contact of Butler's?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: That was our pet name for Ernest. In fact it was my daughter Tamara who named him that. We took the children over to see him one day, and she stood there, all of nine years old, in front of this man, and said to him "You remind me of Chiron the centaur - he was a teacher as well." The name totally delighted Ernest, and from that time on we always called him Chiron.

Michael and I took on the SOL. It was in a bit of a state, and we began to build it slowly but surely. And we continued to do this until 1975, when Ernest decided that it was getting too much. By this time he'd had angina, he was very deaf, his diabetes was acting up, and he had hardening of the arteries to the point where eventually they took his leg off. He decided to retire, and, typically, the first thing I knew about it was when somebody rang me up and said, "Congratulations!" I asked what had I done and they said, "You're the new director of studies. It's in a letter Ernest just sent to me." Nobody told me; I was the last to know. He'd decided that was it, he'd had enough, he needed some time off. I think he knew his time was short.

This was a long time ago; he was 75 or 76, and two years after that, in '78, on August 1, he died. Which is a wonderful time for a great teacher to die, on the day of the sacrificed king Lammas. They'd finally decided to take off the other leg, and Ernest felt that he could cope with one leg and an artificial one, but two legs, no. It was time to hand in the rest of the body.

Donnola: There is a book of transcribed lectures he gave addressed to the Ibis Fraternity. Was that another organization he started at the end?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: The Ibis Fraternity was started by one of our supervisors from the Helios Course, who'd been my student: a very able woman and great ritualist. She asked to leave and start out her own group, which was the Ibis Fraternity.

After he retired from the SOL, Ernest said he would lecture to the Ibis Fraternity and began to help them build it and put it together. And those lectures were part of the teaching he was to give. I think he felt that for the last few years of his life he'd established the SOL, so he was now turning his attention to a new and younger fraternity and starting that one on its way as well.

Donnola: He was a real founder of many schools, then?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Yes, and in many ways, because out of the Inner Light has come a similar school in Greece, which was running very well. And we hope other schools will eventually come out, because that is what Ernest felt a good school should do: it should leave children behind, as a man or a woman leaves children behind.

It's not a question of saying we've got the contact and nobody else can have it. It's a question of passing it on and making sure that it grows, that it puts down roots, and that those roots grow.

Donnola: To spread the Light around as much as possible?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Yes! That's the way the Light grows. I have no patience with schools who refuse to hand on what they have. Although sometimes there's a good reason for it - when there's a certain curriculum within the school designed for a certain purpose. Rather like a withdrawn order in the Roman Catholic Church, where they have a specific purpose, where the research they're doing or the way in which they pray and visualize helps the inner, subtle levels of the world and humanity. In those cases it may have a right to be withdrawn. But from the Inner Light, many others have come, not only ours.

Gareth Knight has put up several schools of different kinds. Another one is called the London Group, which I believe is still going on. The Ibis Fraternity is still working. So the thrust that Dion Fortune started continues. Men and women have come after and made their own schools and carry on her work, as Ernest did.

Donnola: I know in her writings, Dion Fortune often spoke about bringing the old and formerly hidden knowledge to the fore.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: There's too much of this attitude of "I've got the only piece of the truth and you're not going to have it." We've seen this happening with the orthodox churches; it mustn't be allowed to happen with the hidden knowledge. It was hidden for a purpose, because the times in which it needed to be were dangerous. But that is not so now.

Donnola: There's always something private in any esoteric school, but so much of it can and should be brought out.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: All schools have or should have an Outer Court, and through it comes what goes out to the people. And if they are the right kind, they come seeking at the doors of the Inner Court.

And that is the way it works! You have an Outer and Inner Court and the Adytum. The knowledge first comes into the Adytum from the inner levels. But as you know, you can fill something to capacity and then it has to go somewhere. So the stuff that no longer needs to be kept absolutely withdrawn goes into the Inner Court, which it fills up. And that which is not needed in the Inner or does not need be to kept secret moves into the Outer Court. So there is this continual flow from the inner levels to the outer, and that's the way it should be.

Donnola: Somebody has likened the old Golden Dawn to a seed pod: periodically its internal tensions and troubles caused it to explode, and then some of the people would go off and start up a new version of it, a new branch; that this is a process that keeps happening. And while it's quarrelsome and contentious on the surface, yet there's a purely occult function to it, a purpose of simply expanding outward, making schools available to more and more people.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: This is quite true. It is the tension within the pod that causes it to split open, and the resulting explosion scatters the seed. It's a perfect analogy. It's what happens to any school worth its salt. Every now and then some kind of inner turmoil occurs, and it goes to hell and back, seemingly. But if the school's balanced, if it is well-rooted, it will survive that. Perhaps it'll be a little smaller, but what comes out of it goes on and expands.

It is the way of the world! Look at children: they boil out of a family, they leave home, and all of a sudden a home which used to be filled with children's voices is suddenly silent. And the two people left in it look at each other and think, "Where did they all go?" But the next generation comes along and suddenly the house is full again, not only with returning children, but with grandchildren as well. Occult schools are exactly the same.

Donnola: If I may change the subject here to Dion Fortune's system of rays, each color being a different tradition with its own flavor, its own slant and temperament. I remember your saying that Ernest Butler was very much on the Violet Ray (the way of devotional mysticism) with his involvement in the Liberal Catholic Church, whereas you yourself were "pure Green Ray through and through," which is more the Pagan path, the earth mysteries.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: It's also the power ray, the creative ray. The Violet Ray is very much of an establishing ray, the ray of love. If something is founded on love, it has a good chance of growing. If it's established on the Green Ray first, the chances are it will only last one generation, because to grow on power is not a good thing. You can establish something on a wisdom ray and that will persist quite a long time. But it does need the other two, love and power.

We were lucky. Butler established us on the Violet Ray, the love ray. The second one after that, the power ray, the creative, spreads the love out. Whoever comes after me will need to be Blue Ray, the wisdom ray, to establish and consolidate. I'm hoping that we will see three generations.

Donnola: Does the Blue Ray of wisdom get into things like Hermetics and Kabbalah?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Yes. But it is also the consolidating ray. It's the blue of Chesed on the Tree of Life. Chesed is organization. I can make things grow, I can create things. But whoever comes after me needs to establish that, make it firm, organize it.

Donnola: So a succession of directors whose approaches and orientations are different doesn't disrupt the SOL? Whereas to stay on one ray all the time would give you consistency, but -

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Yes, you would get a surplus of whatever. With too much love you get weakness, you get to a place where anything and everything is allowed, because everyone must be allowed to do exactly as they want, otherwise they will not feel loved. This is not good in an occult sense, because the mysteries depend on discipline. Discipline can be a nasty word these days, but it is self-discipline that is encouraged. Discipline that is applied externally is not half as good as if you are taught to apply discipline to yourself.

Donnola: What I remember from Dion Fortune's writings is that her idea was that people would eventually work all three rays, and gradually, as the Inner Light developed, each person would grow into all three equally. But people do tend to specialize in one, don't they?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: They do. Speaking for myself, I have always avoided the Violet Ray like the plague, thinking, "All this overpleasant Christianity and love thy neighbor and what have you." Green Ray people don't think like this. However, there was a kind of gentle insistence that was building into this force, and into this job that I took on. And much to my, I suppose the word is dismay, I have found myself getting a little violet edge around my Green Ray.

People who have been working on this for a long time will have what is almost a braid of the three. You will have one predominant one, your basic ray, and if you work intensely, then the other two will color the edge and invade it a little.

So willy-nilly I've acquired a little of the Blue Ray, because I've had to learn organization to a certain extent. I'm not very good at it; the Green Ray is seldom good at organization. I've had to allow the Violet Ray into my life, because that is what I've inherited from Ernest. To the extent that two years ago I took ordination from a bishop in the Liberal Catholic Church, because, as he pointed out, I was not keeping to my promise of bridging the traditions: I was leaving one out!

Donnola: The SOL also calls itself the Fraternitas Alexandrae. I've always felt a strong connection with that ancient city since I was a kid - the library, the light-house, Heron's early steam engine. And now the Egyptian government has announced it is going to build a modern version of the Great Library. Could you say something about the meaning of Alexandria and its place in the Western tradition?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Tradition holds that the basis of the library at Alexandria was the one at Heliopolis (which is Greek for "city of the sun") or Onnu, the great Egyptian center of learning and initiation. When Alexander created his city by the sea, books and scrolls and even priests were brought over from Heliopolis to become teachers in Alexandria.

There's no doubt that over the centuries the idea of Alexandria has caught the imagination, the heart and mind of humanity. In fact you could say it became the first Shangri-la. It was the place where wisdom was started and where teachers talked without fear or favor. Where the Druid walked with the Viking sage, and where men from far Cathay taught the secrets of acupuncture, perhaps, to the Therapeutae of Egypt. Where knowledge was shared, where anybody, so long as they were willing to learn and accept discipline, could come and be taught, and eventually teach.

It has provided a kind of template for temples of learning since that time. And I think that the burning of the great libraries, any of them (there were others that were burned - Carthage and Persepolis - many others), the burning of books, is a crime. The destruction of knowledge is always a point of danger.

When Alexandria was lost to us, we lost more than just books. We lost knowledge, yes, but we lost a dream. And there have been many people trying to recapture that dream.

That secondary name of the SOL was taken because for one thing our founder taught us that we were, as a school, pendant to the school of Alexandria. In other words we came down in that tradition. Not necessarily meaning we have apostolic succession all the way down, in the physical sense. But we had that mental line: that is where our inspiration comes from. That is the place in time we look to for this wonderful tradition, where everything came together.

It's why our main task is to bridge the traditions. We started out merely as a kabbalistic school. We have made connections with other traditions, so we now work in Egyptian or Celtic or Greek or kabbalistic or whatever traditions.

Donnola: I recall you brought most of those together in an early book, First Steps in Ritual, where there was one ritual based on each of these several traditions.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Yes, that's right. That book is being enlarged and reissued, and I hope to bring other traditions into it. Alexandria was and still is an ideal, for this and future generations to look up to.

If the Egyptians really are going to "rebuild Alexandria," I would be the first to applaud that. However, knowing the area and the difficulties that would be faced with that sort of enterprise, I would certainly not hold my breath that it would be happening in my lifetime. But I really do, hand on heart, hope that it will happen.

But for us in the school, Alexandria remains the goal in time and space. We teach, and believe, that on the inner dimensions it is still there and that material and knowledge can be recovered from it.

Donnola: In the same way that the Rosicrucians had their temple not built with hands, which they would visit once a year on the inner planes. You mean that likewise the museum and library still exist for us somewhere as the storehouse of knowledge and power?

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Yes, I really see that and I really believe in it. I think all great ideas that embody the best in humanity take their place in the inner dimensions and remain there, no matter what happens to the physical.

Donnola: The Invisible College.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Exactly. And that of course is a tradition far older than we know. It must have been a wonderful sight to see, coming in from the Mediterranean to this beautiful city of white stone. Equally I do sometimes wonder what happened to Heliopolis. There must have been a time when the last temple was closed for the last time, and the last priest or priestess left it, and perhaps simply walked away. A very poignant sort of vision, I think.

And yet Alexandria kept it going, whatever "it" was. But of course, you also get greed and misapprehension and the misuse of knowledge and power. You get the desire to destroy simply because you can, and it goes. However, in my more optimistic moments, I wonder: if Alexandria and her teachers were so learned, surely they must have foreseen what would happen.

Donnola: And put something aside, to hide and protect for future use.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Yes. Remember they had a great tradition for copying. Anything that was written and came into the city was copied. And I can't help thinking that somewhere, somehow, most or part of this has been saved in some form.

Donnola: Perhaps that was a source for the Arab culture, helping it thrive during Europe's Dark Ages, keeping a lot of the old wisdom and knowledge alive there while they were lost in Western Europe.

Ashcroft-Nowicki: Indeed, and that is more than possible. The Kabbalah suddenly appeared in Spain in the Moorish period. So that possibly is where it has come from; maybe it is all a remnant of Alexandria, suddenly reappearing. And if that can reappear, surely others can, I hope.

Frank Donnola is a poet and student of the mysteries living in San Francisco. He wrote "Reconciling One and Many" for GNOSIS #28.

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Copyright 1995 Gnosis Magazine
Used with Permission