Remembering Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki
Written by author and journalist Heather Greene.
Image via Caitlin Matthews.
“This is my chance to say to all those who have touched my life Thank you, you have given me more than you will ever know.”—Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, 2016
The Pagan community said farewell to one of its most cherished elders, Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki. She was an author, teacher, mentor, advocate, and performer. Dolores died January 8, 2026 surrounded by loved ones after 95 full years of exploration and experience.
“Dolores was a grand dame among magicians…a beautiful soul who spiritually mothered many, a fluent and high-minded teacher whose clear teachings and personal example set the pace for all her students. We will not see her like again,” said good friend Caitlin Matthews in tribute.
Dolores was born June 11, 1929 in Jersey in the Channel Islands. It was there she spent her early childhood until she, along with thousands of other school children, were forced to flee in 1940 due to war.
Dolores and her family wound up in Wirral Peninsula and, according to the story, this is where she was first introduced to the Romani people.
Her paternal grandmother had Roma heritage and was “as psychic as they come,” Dolores said in 2016. “A witch to her fingertips.” She was eager to learn more about this family background and sought out the Roma community.
It was this experience, according to Ashcroft-Nowicki’s own accounts in a 1977 Quadriga
Ashcroft-Nowicki eventually moved to London to study with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and then with London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and the Trinity College of Music. She was fond of performing, another talent that she inherited from her paternal grandmother.
While there she met her husband Michael. As she recounted in 2016, Dolores decided to join a fencing club. The director assumed that she was a beginning student and assigned her an appropriate teacher. After a “full on bout,” that teacher ended up with a “gash on his arm.” He said, while bleeding, “You are a dangerous woman, I think I’ll marry you.”
And he did. Michael and Dolores married in 1957 and went on to have two children and moved back to Jersey, where she lived from that point forward.
In the 1960s, Dolores and her husband enrolled in the Fraternity of the Inner Light (eventually renamed the Society of Inner Light) with Dion Fortune and then studied with the Servants of the Light School of Occult Science (SOL) with W.E. Butler and Gareth Knight.
In 1976, Dolores took over SOL as Director of Studies. A few years earlier, Butler had told her that she would be the next director, Dolores recounted in 2016. “Like that was going to happen,” she responded. She declined the offer for a couple of months. Then Butler made it clear that she had no options. “That was it, like it or not, I had been born for this and would I please stop arguing.”
She remained SOL’s director through 2018.
During those many years as director, Dolores did not sit idly behind a desk. She traveled to 28 countries teaching an expansive array of topics from basic magical techniques to quantum physics.
In addition to teaching and lecturing, Dolores wrote books and articles. In 1982, she published The First Steps of Ritual followed by The Shining Paths in 1983 and Highways of the Mind in 1987. That was only the beginning. She also authored several decks, including The Servants of the Light Tarot in 1991.
In 2024, Dolores finished her last book, novel Johnny Nova, with the assistance of author and long-time friend John Matthews.
Both John and his wife Caitlin were not just Dolores’ friends; they were also her students. “We never felt we had even come close to all the knowledge Dolores had to share,” John wrote in a private email to Llewellyn. “Her humour—often deliciously spicy—was second to none, and she could be sharp and eagle-eyed with students who misunderstood her instructions. But we always felt safely held in her hands, and we shared many laughs as well as wonders over the years.”
While Dolores was a celebrated teacher, she also considered herself a life-long student. “I am, if you like, a cauldron of knowledge bequeathed to me by every person I have ever known,” she said in 2016. She believed in learning and passing on what you have learned.
Dolores stayed in her mother’s nineteenth-century home in Jersey until it became too difficult for independent living. She was moved to a special care unit and eventually into hospice. She died January 8 at the age of 95, exactly 80 years after her forerunner Dion Fortune.
“The world will be a less exciting place without her,” wrote John, “and I know that every one of her students and friends will miss her and remember her for a long time to come.”
The family will be holding a private ceremony and asks for restraint and consideration in contacting them or sending tributes to Dolores’ home. For students who wish to honor her legacy, Caitlin Matthews suggests spending “some time quietly reflecting on what she taught you and how you can best implement that now in your life, which would be the greatest complement to her teaching.”
