Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Pathworking
Enter a relaxed inner state and travel a structured symbolic landscape (e.g. a Tree-of-Life path) by following a set narrative — meeting its images and figures — then return and record it, training the imagination as a controlled, repeatable faculty.
Pathworking (set narrative): Study the chosen path’s symbolism first. Have the journey scripted (read aloud or recorded). Relax the body until the mental screen is clear. Open at the fixed threshold and step through. Travel the narrated landscape with all senses; meet its figures and receive what comes. Return the way you came and close it. Record at once and ground. Controlled thought patterns — vivid by design, your own mind by source.
What it is
Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki (1929-2023), Director of Studies of the Servants of the Light (SOL) and successor to W.E.
Butler, did more than almost anyone to turn pathworking into a teachable, disciplined method. In her words it is “a specific kind of guided visualization exercise in which the mind is projected into a series of situations and landscapes that can be viewed on a mental screen” — and, once the mind is trained, “experienced as a participant with full sensory perception.” Her distinctive emphasis is the set narrative: each working is a scripted journey (often keyed to one of the paths of the Qabalistic Tree of Life), preceded by study of that path’s symbolism and correspondences, then travelled in relaxed imagination from a fixed opening to a fixed return.
“Used with purpose and by trained minds, the pathworking becomes a series of controlled thought patterns — and thought is the basis of creation.” This is what separates her form from drifting daydream: a pre-written symbolic landscape the practitioner enters, follows, and exits deliberately.
The Method
Ashcroft-Nowicki teaches pathworking as a prepared, narrated journey. A faithful working method drawn from The Shining Paths and Highways of the Mind:
- Prepare the path. Before working, study the chosen path: its position on the Tree, its symbolism, correspondences, and the “experiences” associated with it. In her books each working is preceded by a discussion of the individual path so the journey has known meaning, not random content.
- Have the narrative ready. Pathworking uses a set script — a written journey, read aloud (or recorded and played back, or led by a companion) so the traveller can keep eyes closed and simply follow. The narrative supplies the landscape, the sequence, and the figures to be met.
- Relax and still the body. Settle comfortably, quiet the breath, and let the body relax progressively until attention turns inward and the “mental screen” becomes clear and receptive.
- Open the journey. Begin at the fixed starting image the script gives (often a doorway, gate, or threshold). Step across it — this deliberate opening marks the move from ordinary awareness into the inner landscape.
- Travel the set landscape. Follow the narrated scene as it unfolds, building it with as many senses as possible — sight, sound, texture, scent. Let the imagery become vivid; early on it is “viewed on a mental screen,” later “experienced as a participant.”
- Meet the images and figures. Encounter the symbolic figures, guardians, or forms the path carries. Observe and engage them as meaningful contents to be received with discernment — not commanded, not blindly obeyed.
- Return the way you came. Retrace the narrative back to the opening threshold and step back out, closing it behind you. A firm, complete return is non-negotiable.
- Record it. Write the journey down immediately in a journal — what was seen, felt, and understood. The Atlas is where the work consolidates and patterns emerge over time. Then ground fully (light, movement, food). (Sourcing note: a faithful synthesis of Ashcroft-Nowicki’s published pathworking instruction — study the path first, relax, follow a set narrated journey from a fixed opening, meet the figures, return and record. Her quoted phrasing of pathworking as guided visualization on a “mental screen” and as “controlled thought patterns” is drawn from The Shining Paths and Highways of the Mind.)
Source & Lineage
Ashcroft-Nowicki set out a full collection of scripted journeys on the paths of the Tree of Life in The Shining Paths (1983), and gave the practice its history and theory in Highways of the Mind: The Art and History of Pathworking (1987), tracing pathworking from cave paintings and the Egyptian Book of the Dead through the Bardic and Irish storytelling traditions.
She learned the lineage from W.E. Butler, within the stream descending from Dion Fortune‘s Society of the Inner Light, and delivered it as graded curriculum through SOL.
Her form is the narrated, scripted sibling of Gareth Knight’s correspondence-led pathworking and of the tattva/doorway scrying taught in the Golden Dawn.
Common refinements
Working without preparing the path. Her first requirement; without studying the path’s symbolism the journey loses its meaning and becomes mere reverie.
- No clear opening or return. The threshold in and out is what makes it a working rather than drifting daydream — never skip the return.
- Reading the script too fast. Narrate slowly, leaving silence for the imagery to build; rushing collapses the experience.
- Forcing the imagery. It works through relaxed, vivid receptivity; if the “screen” is faint, work with felt sense and the other inner senses.
- Treating figures as infallible oracles. Engage them seriously but with discernment; they are not to be obeyed uncritically.
- Not recording. The journal is where integration and pattern-recognition happen — write it immediately.