Dolores Ashcroft-Nowiki Reflects on the Magical Battle of Britain

Due to the kind intervention of a number of magic workers here in the Magical MidAtlantic, I had the opportunity — of a lifetime — to sit down yesterday with Dolores Ashcroft-Nowiki and discuss Dion Fortune’s  Magical Battle of Britain and how that working can — and can’t — serve as a model for the magical #Resistance work that many of us are doing now in the U.S.  Several people helped me to formulate my questions and I am grateful to them, as well as to those who suggested and helped to set up the interview and, of course, to Mrs. Ashcroft-Nowiki, herself, who generously gave of her time and encouragement on this, which she believes may be, her hundredth visit to the United States.

I brought tuna sandwiches and, while we ate, with Mrs. Ashcroft-Nowiki’s permission, I recorded our discussion.  (I’ve made a few very small edits to remove cross-talk and to provide clarity.)  We spoke for nearly an hour and I’ll be sharing bits of our conversation as I can transcribe them.  Expect some interesting changes to our Magical Battle for America workings based on what I learned from Mrs. Ashcroft-Nowiki.

Even before I could begin recording, she began to tell me about how, when her family moved from the Channel Islands to Northwest England during WWII, her grandmother immediately found a coven and began working to save England from the Nazis.

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DAN:  But remember, I was only 11 at that time so my memories are a little bit on the sparse side, but I know that [my grandmother] would leave on the Friday night, quite late, and very often the [air raid sirens] had already gone, and she would say, “The bombers are on their way,” but they would meet on Bidson Hill  and form a circle and then they would begin the charge: “You Cannot Come, You Cannot Come.”  Because although the bombing was meant to soften us up for the physical invasion, it failed.  But the whole idea behind this was:  “We did it in the Armada; we did it in the Napoleonic Wars; we’ll bloody well do it now. “

Me:  And when you say you did “it,” you mean “the magic”?

DAN:  The magic.   The actual “You cannot come, you cannot win.  There is a wall around us.” And they built it, they built it, and this went right through North, South, East, and West , through the entire British Isles.

Me:  So, covens all over worked on this?

DAN:  Dion Fortune managed to touch people.  DF managed to touch people.  Those [whom] she told, told others, told others, told others, and it was usually on a Friday.  There were times when people couldn’t make that, but, you know, Friday was considered to be one of the kind of kind of magical nights, if you like, or magical days.

And that was all that they had to do.  “You cannot come.  You cannot come. The wall is built.  You cannot come.”

Me:   Please eat your sandwich; I don’t mean to keep you too busy to eat.

Let me ask you:   There are some small groups in Washington that are doing similar works — I imagine.

DAN:  /Laughs./  Go ahead

Me:  One of the things that we are dealing with is that you were an island and you could build a wall.  This was an internal takeover, or I think some of it came from Russia, but they certainly got people within the U.S . to do their bidding,

DAN:  Oh, yeah.

ME:  And we’ve struggled with exactly how to deal with the difference between that, that instead of trying to build a wall around an island and tell an external enemy, “You can’t come,“ what do you with an internal enemy?  Do you have ideas about?  Do you know what I’m saying?

DAN:  Yes, I know exactly what you’re saying.  For us it was comparatively easy because it was just one particular whole that we had to protect.  You have people that actually and actively support this thing, you know.  So, this really poses a problem because all you can do, and this is my personal opinion, is to form small groups and to work in small groups, but to realize that each group is one cell of a whole.

Let me think.

You see in what we lightly term as “magic,” — and which really is “quantum physics,” to be quite explicit — you cannot separate one thing from another.  In our school we always called it “the house of the net.”  It is basically a universal – it IS the universe — and because it all came out of one tiny, compacted force, everything that was in that tiny speck is what is there now.   Therefore, everything is connected.   Good, bad, and ugly, it is all connected.  So, we all affect each other in what we do.

But when a group of cells gets together & says, “We’re going to be different,” they can affect a similar group, which can affect a similar group.

You see it mirrored in a physical body when a group of cells gets together and thinks, “Let’s be on our own.”  And, all of a sudden, you’ve got a cancer.  It is the drawing together, the power lies in the togetherness, and once you’ve got a small group working it has to be aware fully that is linked to, psychically and though the net, to another group of a similar persuasion.

They’re like pearls on a necklace.  Each one is separate, but it is linked by the cord that goes though it, and the cord is the whole intention, you know.  But a necklace has to have a clasp.  And that clasp has to keep the whole necklace together so it is essential that . . .  In a way, when you are building the necklace, you begin with the clasp and then you add the pearls.  And the clasp must be strong.  The clasp is what will hold everything together.  It seems to me that that is really the best way to do it, in fact, almost the only way.

However, we were one group of islands bound together.  You, here, in this country, each state is a small country in itself, so what you might have to do is build several necklaces, one in each of these states.  And that’s going to be difficult because some states are utterly convinced that what this [jerk] is doing is right and proper.  God knows why.

Me:  Well, although, even within those states, there are people who don’t believe in him, but we have this ridiculous electoral college system that allowed him to “win. “

DAN:  We watched this with open eyes saying, “Oh, God.”

Me:  You know, there’s a lot of versions out there about what happened in England during WWII, and it’s almost assumed this level of myth, at least over here, I think.  You know, there was Dion Fortune, there was Gerald Gardner, who claims that there were workings in the New Forest, and then certainly there’s a Katherine Kurtz novel  about it, now.   Do you have a feeling for how much of this is myth and how much is maybe accurate?  There are times when I think myths matter as much, if not more, than accuracy but I just wonder if you have . . .

 

/To be continued.

Picture found here.