Elizabeth Jenkins had a mind-blowing mystical encounter in Cusco, Peru, in 1988, while studying for a doctorate in psychology. This initiated a journey into the ancient heart of Andean Nature Mysticism. Since serving for four years as apprentice to a great master of the tradition she has written several books about her experiences, and led people from all over the world to the Hatun Karpay, the Great Initiation Ritual. She spoke to us from her home in Hawaii.
WK: You’ve been working in the Andean tradition of Nature Mysticism for over 30 years now. Can you tell us a little bit about how that came about?
E: I can. I’ve been writing about this – my very first book, of course, is the whole story, well not the whole story, my editor made me leave the very, very wild bits out of course.
WK: Mine too.
E: They do that don’t they? (Both laugh)
WK: They do.
E: So, I was sitting clinical psychology, I was doing my PhD at a school called California Institute of Integral Studies, which at that time had all these wonderful amazing teachers, like Stan Grof, and Stanley Krippner and Angeles Arrien, and all these wonderful people that were really on the cutting edge of the transpersonal psychology movement in the 80’s in California, which has since disappeared or been kidnapped, I don’t know. It’s not here anymore, but anyway, so I was doing my master’s programme, which was fantastic. Everything about it was wonderful; it was very hands on, and then I decided I needed to go further for my PhD. Although in my life I had already had numerous experiences that wouldn’t be explainable by our western structure of reality model, which just wasn’t doing it for me. I was never a psychedelic person; I never needed it. I always had plenty of penetration of the spiritual world. I didn’t even take aspirin. I used to fast when I was fifteen and sixteen, and any kind of altering substances, I couldn’t do it, literally, I didn’t need it. So, basically I was in the middle of this PhD programme, I started to get tremendously bored because it got way too heavy in the statistics and dissected cat brain studies and stuff, you know, just ridiculous things that had no bearing on what I was really interested in, which was real healing, right?
The real stuff, and so my girlfriend, my best, best girlfriend, my soul sister at the time and still today, said “Well this isn’t doing it for me. I’m going to get the answers from the horse’s mouth; I feel a call from South America. I’m going to go study with the shamans in Peru. And I’m like, okay. So, six months later, literally, she calls me up and says I think you better get down here, it’s pretty interesting. So, I went down there, we went to some of the shamanic, coastal ceremonies, and I was like, hmm okay, but I didn’t really feel a connection with that. Then she said, “Well we’re here in Peru, you have to go Cusco, Machu Picchu”, and I literally walked out the plane in Cusco, and just felt chills going through my body; I just kind of sank down in the ground and started weeping and I’m like “Oh my God”. I knew where all the temples were. I had never been to a place where I’d never been, where I felt so at home. It was very strange, it was very unusual for me. I had never had that kind of experience before, and literally in Machu Picchu I said to Cynth, “I think I need to quit my PhD and move here”. And, you know, there was all that noise of the conventional world: “You don’t have a job, you don’t speak the language; what? Quit your PhD? Oh my God! Go rogue? You don’t know anyone”, you know, and all those things were true, but the inner calling was so powerful that I felt like if I didn’t go to Peru I would have missed the entire purpose of my life, and I just couldn’t ignore it. Even though, oh my God, when I got home you can imagine!
WK: I can!
E: My mum, oh my God: “You’re gonna leave your fiancé?”, and, you know, all that stuff. But I did, and I went back to Peru. Two friends came with me, kind of caught on the tail winds of my spiritual drive that was taking me, and I couldn’t really have explained any of this to you at the time. I just knew that I had to go, and I did not have a logical, rational explanation for it; just an inner calling. It was very visceral even. And so I got down there, I got a job teaching English almost instantaneously, I learned the language pretty quick, and I started doing this very fun thing, where I’d just wake up in the morning and, having lived my whole life as a very rational person – my dad was a doctor-level super math professor, you know, head of the math department; his thing was very rational, logical, in the box, or it wasn’t real, right? And so I just let myself out of my cage; I would just wake up in the morning and go “Okay, which street do I walk down today?”, and I’d just let my intuition take me, and Cusco’s an amazing place to do that. And then all these different adventures would happen. And finally after about nine months, I was just kind of saying to the universe “Okay, I’m here, I know I’m supposed to be here, show me what I need to know”, and shortly thereafter, I got a call. I had asked around about the native healing traditions and nothing; it didn’t appear immediately, you know, they test you they make you wait. (Laughs) So, literally about nine months, eight months into the trip, I got a phone call and they said, “Oh there’s going to be a traditional healing ceremony today. It’s this wonderful woman named Feli Moscoso, she’s going to be doing the traditional egg healing.” And I’m like: “What? I’m going. whatever it is, I’m gonna find out.” So, I went there, and they take a large fertile egg, they rub it all over your body with a whole bunch of prayers and then break it into the glass of water and then read your egg, right? And I was with a friend who was a tourist from Argentina, and she looked at his egg, and said something like, “Oh, you’re a tourist, so I’ll give you this and this and this herbal remedy”. And she looked at mine and she said “Oh, oh dear”, and I was like “Ahh, what?” And she said these very personal things. She said “You’ve been alone in your room crying, you feel very confused and uncomfortable, but you know you’re supposed to be here”. She said, “you’ve been invited here by the spirits of this place, but you haven’t greeted them.” And when she said that my whole body responded. I knew it was true, but I could never have said those words at that time, but that described exactly my feeling. And she said, “You need to speak with the owners of the place; it’s as if you’ve been invited to someone’s house for dinner, and you’ve talked to the cook and the gardener, but you haven’t greeted the owners.” “I’m like, oh my God, how rude, you know? What do I do?” And she said, “You’ll need an Andean priest.” And I’m like, “What’s an Andean priest?”, because I was actually teaching English to the assistant of the Archbishop of Cusco at that time. And so I said, “Oh a priest? You mean like a priest from the church?”, and she’s like “No, no, no, an Andean priest is someone who’s been trained in our native traditions, our ancient ways. You need the one who can speak directly to Nature.” I’m like, wow! I was literally so absolutely astonished by what she was telling me that I didn’t have the presence of mind to say, “Well, do you know one? How do I find him, where do I go, what do I do?” I just sort of left, like in a trance, and I spent the next week going all around asking everyone; you know, you look up in the Yellow Pages: Andean priest is not listed. So, she said, “You need to speak to the apus”, and I’m like, you know, “What are the apus?” She said, “They’re the mountain spirits; they are the guardians of this place; they are the ones that invited you”. And up to that point I thought apu was a word for mountain. So, when she said the mountain spirits, that sort of opened another door in my mind and I’m like, oh okay. So, after a week and doing everything I could to find an Andean priest, and not finding one, I thought, well if you can’t find someone to do it for you, you got to do it yourself, right?
So, I thought, okay, I don’t know how to speak to Nature spirits, but I certainly can meditate. So, I bolted my doors and windows shut against the freezing night air, and lit my little candles, and I was lucky enough that my apartment faced Apu Ausangate, the biggest, beautiful snow peak at the end of the valley of Cusco. So, I sat down to meditate; you know, did my little OM, and suddenly I am flat down on my belly, my whole body is shaking and I’m literally bowing, I don’t know how I got in that position, I’m shaking and trembling and weeping and in my mind’s eye I see before me, this huge man sitting on top of the ice peak, right? And I’ve been studying psychology, so I say to myself, “I’m seeing an image in my mind, right? And at that minute he kind of frowns at me, and this blast of freezing cold physical wind comes into the room and blows over my head, and at that point I really bowed down in earnest, and said something like “I’m sorry your lordship, I’m just a stupid gringa; I don’t know the ways of your land; thank you for your invitation. May I please have your permission to live and work here?”, at which point his stern expression changed, he gave this beautiful smile and I literally felt warm lips, a kiss on my forehead and warm breath. I didn’t imagine it, I physically felt it. At that point I stopped trembling. I remember taking this deep breath and relaxing like, “everything’s okay now, you know, everything’s gonna be okay now.” And that discomfort that I’d been feeling for the months, though I couldn’t name it, was just gone. And I literally turned, I don’t know why, to another mountain, Sacsayhuamán, and another being appeared and embraced me, and I turned again to another mountain, called Mama Simona, as I later discovered to be her name. And she looked like a beautiful native woman, with long blue-black hair, and she embraced me and said,” Welcome daughter”, and I came out of this wild state feeling like maybe ten minutes had passed, right? And I look at my watch and an hour and ten minutes had gone by and I’m just like, “Woah!” And the next morning I wake up and I go: “What a crazy dream I had.”
WK: Of course. (Both laugh)
E: Because the rational mind is just relentless. And when you have these numinous experiences, the mind just can’t handle it. So, I said, “Oh gosh, I feel so much better. I guess it must have been that crazy dream I had.” But I knew it wasn’t a dream. I knew that, but I had to imagine that for a minute. But the most amazing part was I go out into Cusco, and everything I want comes to me, it’s like there’s no barriers. I go into the main square; people I’ve tried to contact just walk right up to me. I go to visit the Coricancha (the most important temple in the Inka Empire), which I’d been trying to go in for months and kept being blocked. That day I walk in, and it’s like I’m invisible. I look at the same guys that have been telling me no for days, and they’re just like, “Come in.” But the most crazy thing was, about three days later I go into my school, where I’ve been teaching English for the last three months, and I run into this guy, who I’ve met before, right? I’ve been seeing him at the school for months. And he comes up to me that day, looks at me, and says “Elizabeth, I hear you’re interested in our native traditions. I work with a group of university professors and we work with an Andean priest”, and I look at him and I go “Oh my god! Let me tell you what happened to me.” So, he’s in the middle of giving out a test in his class, literally, this would only happen in Peru, right? So, he’s like, “Okay, come over in the corner”, so he gives out the test, and I start to tell him the story. And as I tell him this his jaw drops and his eyes get huge and he says, “You have to come to my group, but we’ve never had a white person before, so maybe in a month or so I can talk to them, and slowly we can get permission for you to come.” And I’m like, “Oh that’s so too bad; I’m leaving day after tomorrow.” Then he looks at me and he goes, “Then you must come to the ceremony tomorrow.” And I’m like, “Okay.” So, I meet him the next morning, we go walking out of town.
We go down this long, long path and up these stairs and into this little hut, and he knocks like a secret code on the door. And all of a sudden the doors burst open, people come out and they’re all blinking in the sunlight. And he introduces me and he says, “This is the Andean priest, Elizabeth; he calls the apus.” And everyone looking at me was like, “What’s this white girl doing here?” I never felt so bright white, and, being Greek, you know, I’m kind of off white. And he smiles and nods and lets me in. All of a sudden, they’re putting the blankets over the windows, and this one guy is standing up on a stool and he’s unscrewing the light bulb, and I’m like, “What’s going on?” And they make it totally dark, and in the darkness they start saying these prayers. A couple of the university professors are a little more Western dressed, but they’re all native Quechua, and they all speak Quechua, which I don’t. And he’s doing the prayer in Quechua and Spanish, kind of a mix. And suddenly there’s this BOOM! and flap flap flap flap, and BAM! And this being lands on the altar table and he starts walking down, and you hear this. And so, my whole Western mind’s going crazy: “How are they faking this? How is this possible, you know? And then about ten more come and the Pachumamitas come up out of the earth, and the apus come down – it sounds like the ceiling of the room just bursts open and flap flap flap, and you feel the wind from the wings, and you hear them land and you hear them walk up and down on the table. And they say, “Daughter Elizabeth” – very Indiana Jones! “Daughter Elizabeth, we’ve been waiting for you.”
WK: Oh my Lord.
E: Like what? This is crazy, right? What is going on? So, afterwards, and there’s just so much that I don’t understand, on so many different levels, I say to my new friend, the one who took me there, I say “You’re coming with me, we’re going out to lunch and you’re going to explain everything to me, what this is all about.” So, at lunch he says, “Yes, these are the apus; they do healing with the clients; they do all of these different things, and several months ago they told us a psychologist from North America would be coming to join our group, and we all assumed it would be a man.”
WK: Of course! (Both laugh)
E: “But now we know it’s you.” And that was the beginning of the madness. It all started from there basically. But the most important thing, and the reason I tell you the story that way, the most important thing was my personal experience of their mountain deity, right? I had a personal, direct experience with Apu Ausangate, and for them that was better than any letter of recommendation that I could have gotten. I had my own direct experience. And the guy who took me in there, he said “Don’t you see? Don’t you see how this worked? I knew you for months, but I never felt that I needed to come and speak to you until after you had your own direct contact with the apus.”
WK: Amazing! That is a fabulous story Elizabeth. I will be reading your book, because I can tell that’s just the beginning of this extraordinary story which has been unfolding. So, having been recognised straight away as someone who has had this direct encounter with the chief apu, and therefore being accepted into the tradition, how long was it before you felt, or they felt that you could go out as a keeper of this wisdom, as somebody who could share the tradition with the outside world?
E: Well, I was only initiated, at that point, into the third level of the tradition, and it wasn’t until four years later that I received my initiation into the fourth level.
WK: Yes, you’ve talked about the fourth level in your works and in your lectures. You say that human beings are in a third level relationship with the world right now. which is equivalent to a sort of adolescent stage
E: Correct
WK: And the fourth level is the fully adult encounter.
E: Right, as exemplified, I’m very sorry to say, by our current president. I don’t want to say any more than that, but it’s really a glaring example. Kind of the worst of the third level. Now adolescents don’t have to be terrible, but it shows a certain state of mind, a certain way of being, particularly the strong nationalism, which isn’t always a terrible thing, but can certainly become one. And the fourth level is literally, in the Andean point of view, your ability to, if you can imagine this, each level represents your ability in your living energy bubble, your energy field, your aura, whatever you want to call it. To resonate with a certain aspect of our geography, for lack of a better word – in Hawaii they call it the Āina, which is the land, the light, the wind, the air, the whole environment. It’s not like real estate, it’s the whole thing; the animals, the birds, the insects, everything belongs to that place. A biosphere, I think, is sort of the term we have in the West for it. So, if you can resonate your bubble, and imagine, resonating your bubble to your entire nation, okay, that’s no small feat; that’s the level of the kings and queens of old, like king Arthur in the ancient times; they would marry the land. We’re not quite so thorough about it in our point of view but it’s that idea.
WK: So, it’s like your soul as it were, is able to fill the whole space, and be in direct relationship with the whole space and everything that is there in it, and be recognised by everything within that space, because of your ability to recognise everything within that space for what it is.
E: Perfectly said, yes, that’s exactly it, beautiful. But the third level is a spiritual adolescence; so we think of what really characterises adolescence. Well, there’s fear, there’s pushing against authority, right, there’s all these tasks of adolescence. They’re not evil, but it’s just a stage, something that you have to do. You have to go through adolescence to become an adult, we all do. And however, we do it, some of us more dramatically than others, but you have to do it. At the third level the spiritual authority is outside of us, right? We look to the authority like an adolescent looking to the parent, and fear is kind of the emotion that characterises the level; fear and the state of victimhood – authority is outside me, so I’m a victim of, right? So, the transition into the fourth level is where you take that step, there’s literally a ceremonial cave in Peru that you go into, and you do a ritual of releasing all of what they call the hucha. So, the Andean people believe there’s a world of living energies, and there’s no such thing as bad and good energy; and the bad and good is also part of the adolescent state of mind, because there’s bad evil energies that you have to get away from, then you’re a victim of those things.
WK: So that adolescent thing is also caught in this dualistic paradigm. So, the fourth level is where you’re at the balancing point of those opposing energies, so you’re not being knocked about?
E: Correct. The Andean people say, rather than the word balancing, we use the word harmony. Because of their philosophy, their foundational philosophy of yanantin, which means harmonious relationship between different things. They don’t even have the concept of opposite; male and female are a sacred compliment, and it’s all life-giving, so the Sun and the Earth are a sacred compliment that gives life. The difference is the beauty, the difference is what makes it work
WK: So, they have no sense of the conflict of opposites?
E: At the lower levels they do, and that’s why like in places like Peru and Mexico and many parts of the world, the Middle East, you have a lot of this black magic stuff. I’ll not deny that it’s there. It’s there. And that is the third level playing out on the spiritual plane. So, I always tell my students, “You know who your teacher is if they tell you, “Oh, you have a negative entity in you and you need to pay me $500 for this healing ceremony, so I can remove it.” This is the epitome of the third level, that’s the state of mind.
At the fourth level, literally, you go in this cave; you do a ceremony where you release the hucha of your entire lifetime; the heavy energies. Sami is very fine energy. Sami literally means nectar in Quechua. And hucha is just heavy. It’s not evil it’s just heavy, like, if you think of gold. Gold is heavy, is it evil? I don’t know; do you want some, if it’s in front of you? Do you want a bar of gold Guy?
WK: Sure, I like gold
E: I know and its beautiful, so hucha is the same; hucha is part of the force of gravity, keeps us on the planet, yeah? But it also can become like stagnant energy in the body, so it will cause illness because you need to be constantly bringing in more nectar from Nature and composting your hucha. If you’re always composting your hucha, everything’s great; you’re in a state of health, well-being; you feel good; you’re interacting harmoniously with your environment. When we don’t do that, that’s when we get into these hucha states, and troubles and conflicts, and that’s the third level. So literally, you go into the cave, you release your lifetime of huchas and you release your biological mother and father; you let them go. You honour and respect them, and say thank you so much, and you accept Pachamama, Mother Earth and Inti Tayta as your mother and father. And in that moment, when you do that, you resonate your entire bubble with the entire planetary body. That’s the fourth level.
WK: Wow, okay.
E: So, it’s a big thing, it’s not something easy, to just snap your fingers and you’re there; it’s a big transformation, let’s say. Like astronauts, when they’ve left the planet and they saw the planet. Have you heard this thing about the overview effect?
WK: Yes, when it changes their lives. The relationship is never the same after that.
E: Yes, that is the fourth level.
WK: Okay, that is amazing. So, by disassociating yourself, with respect, from your biological mother and father, then in a sense your ancestry, your genetic code becomes subsumed, is less important? Because actually it is your soul that has arrived at this moment of having a new mother and father on a higher level?
E: Yes, but I wouldn’t use the word disassociating, because you don’t disconnect from them, you stay connected, you just recognise a larger father, that all humanity shares. In that moment, every person on the planet becomes literally your brother and your sister, because we all have the same mum and dad. It’s not spiritual platitude in the Andes, it’s an energetic fact.
WK: Thank you so much for sharing that, that is a real pearl, and I am aware of your precious time, so I’ve got a couple of questions down here, we don’t want to be formulaic with these interviews because it’s wonderful when people are able to share from the heart their wonderful stories. But let me ask you a couple of things. This is one question I’ve asked many of the wisdom keepers, and I don’t know if it’s a silly question, because it’s one that has not been easily answered. But I’ve been asking how you might explain to somebody, say, who you might meet at Glastonbury, for example, maybe a teenage kid, very conditioned, urbanised, if they were to ask, “Elizabeth, what does sacred mean?”
E: What a question Guy! It’s a good question. You mean, if the teenager asks me what is sacred?
WK: Yes, if somebody’s coming to you and asking you to explain.
E: Well, I would say it begins with the feeling that you have in your heart, when you feel filled with awe and respect and you… this is a thing very hard for a teenager who is an adolescent, as so many of us still are on Mother Earth. The awe inspires in us patience and humility, and when we feel that patience and humility naturally blossoming out of us, we’re in a moment of the sacred. And it has to be personal; it has to be experienced. No one can tell you what the sacred is.
WK: This is a commonality of understanding amongst wisdom keepers that I’ve been talking to all across the globe, that actually there is no verbal explanation; except what you’ve done is use words to lead towards that understanding; that it is basically something you’ll recognise by feeling it, and that it’s a highly personal encounter in a sense.
E: Yes, and you know, I would say somewhat like my experience with Apu Ausangate, it’s not really fear, more like, you know, complete awe. That’s the moment; and it’s a visceral sense; it’s a felt experience, you know it in your body maybe before you know it with your brain.
WK: Thank you. And how would you say that indigenous culture is particularly relevant to our modern lives?
E: Oh boy, in every way! (Both laugh)
WK: I know. I don’t even know why I bothered asking you that question, because it’s so obvious. Let me put it this way, since that understanding is so clear, what then is the disconnect? What is it about our modern lives, or where we find ourselves, that has led us so far away from that real relationship that indigenous cultures can still have?
E: I think you can say it’s almost absolutely based in our disconnection from Mother Nature. Nature is the contact with the sacred for most indigenous cultures. Nature is where we look at the vast, organised, amazing reality that is the Cosmos and go, “Oh my God! I mean, look at a picture of the solar system or a nebula or something that gives you that feeling of awe. Like, how did this get here? And the beauty of it and the magnificence of it, and all of this is right there in Mother Nature, whether it’s in a blade of grass, whether it’s in a star system, whether it’s in the music of our solar system, our brother and sister planets orbiting in perfect harmony around us. It’s right there in front of us. I mean, the amount that we have pushed Nature away is, I think because we’ve been terrified of Mother Nature, because we cannot control Mother Nature. Try as we might (laughs) we cannot, yeah? And we know, innately, that she is a bigger force, and we need to have reverence. And look at our history, I mean with Mother Nature, I think we are negotiating our relationship with Nature, and in that adolescent way, we’ve pushed her away and said oh that’s just dead stuff in matter, you know, and its chemical composition is blah blah blah. Now I know about it, now I can control it… not! So the risk is right before us; right out in our garden every day, in the sky, in the clouds, in gravity, which we barely understand, the force of gravity, right?
WK: Well I don’t think, even now, any scientist really can properly explain it. Does the Andean tradition have some way of framing an understanding gravity?
E: Specifically, gravity is not a word that is ever used, but hucha and sami are related to gravity.
WK: Okay. I guess in a way gravity is what draws us down towards a central holding point, so it’s got something to do with centrality and something to do with profundity, but beyond that…?
E: And the magnetic forces of the Earth, which we don’t understand too well either, all of these things. I think Nature is where you get the mystery. Nature is the point of disconnection of our culture, as many, many people have pointed out.
WK: How can young people breach that gap? I mean like I was, as you were as well, as a younger person you had a nascent sixth sense; you had a latent ability to connect, but in the way was this scientific, rationalising mind which we’re all so familiar with. Is there any particular technique or advice you could give to a young person, to somehow bridge that gap from looking at Nature as a bunch of stuff in front of you, to actually being able to recognise it and having that real relationship suddenly start?
E: Yes, well, of course, I’m gonna say the Andean practises, because they’re very simple, they’re what I teach all over the planet, for the last twenty-eight years, and that’s what I know as the way for people to tap in to what is there, it’s something you already feel, it’s something you already know, its instinctive its organic, it’s part of us. And to just take that and combine our human intention with the world of living energies and there’s a number of different experiential ways that I teach, for people to have their own direct, visceral experience of that; of participating; and it’s in my books and it’s freely on my website. But the foundation of it, to really transform this key belief that we in the Judaeo-Christian world, somewhere inside of us, even if we’re not raised in that specific religious tradition, we have all absorbed this idea, this false idea of original sin; that “something is wrong with me, and I need to fix it.” Instead of “I love and trust myself, because I’m part of the vast goodness of the universe and God”, or however you want to call that. The Andean people and, I believe, most native and indigenous cultures, believe we come from original virtue. And only when you have that as your point of reference, your foundational reference, can you trust yourself and say, “Oh my God, okay, yes, I am basically part of this amazing creation, I’m a little spark of God. I have a soul; now I can go from there.” You have to start from that situation.
WK: Do you think this is why we in the West have so much trauma, which we’ve maybe exported around the world? Do you think it comes from that association with original sin, or does it go even deeper, further back than that? What do you think? Because, after all that’s only 2000 years old, and we were already a mess before that came along.
E: Well, yeah, it’s hard to say right, and is original sin only 2000 years old? I don’t know…
WK: Well, no, you’re right, the Old Testament is earlier, and in a sense that Gnostic thing goes a lot further back doesn’t it? Goes as far back as Babylon, or earlier, I think, because the earliest Sumerian temples are covered in demons; so, archaeologists at least, tell us that there are very heavy dualistic elements going on, so this idea that life is a battle between the forces of good and forces of evil, and that being recognised on a sort of religious, first principle level. So, you’re right, I guess it goes much further Back. But why did we come up with such an awful fixation so long ago?
E: I think it’s okay if we recognise that it’s a first step in the process, right? Only a step, and there’s another step to go; and when we talk about the fourth level in the Andean tradition…? There’s seven levels.
WK: Oh wow.
E: Four is only adulthood; it goes beyond that. I mean all the Inka prophecies for this time period talk about creating the path for the fifth level beings to appear, who are ultimate healers, who can touch you, and (click) everything is better.
WK: So, in a sense, we don’t even need to explain the history of our trauma. All we need to do is recognise and let go.
E: Yeah, let’s move forward, right? We got this far... I mean look around on our planet, what we have right now we created, so let’s go the next step; can’t we create something better? Course we can. We’re infinite creative genies, you know? Let’s see what better we can do.
WK: Absolutely. Thank you so much Elizabeth. One last thing: what attracted you to join up with the Wisdom Keepers and come to England, and do this marvellous thing that you’re going to do, and what are you looking forward to?
E: Oh my goodness, well, gosh I guess the invitation from ben was just irresistible, I mean first of all there’s fabulous music, right?
WK: There’s gonna be fabulous music.
E: I mean I don’t even know who’s playing, but it’s just gonna be amazing
WK: Well I’m playing on a tiny little stage, because that’s the amazing thing at Glastonbury, about a quarter of the people who are there, if not more, are either performers or people doing stuff, keeping it all going. In fact, I think it’s about a third of the people are directly involved in either running the place, cooking food, sorting people out, or actually performing.
E: That’s amazing. Well another thing; my name, obviously, is Jenkins, yeah? My great granddaddy came here from Cardiff, and I have a very deep connection with this entire magical tradition of the UK and Glastonbury is an amazing, very holy place, I’ve been there before, but the idea of being there with such a massive number of people, and being able to lead them in a ceremonial blessing, which apparently I get to do, and being able to lead them in offering their hucha to compost, and bringing the blessing in to the whole place before we start going, that’s completely irresistible. It’s just an amazing opportunity, and I’m so thankful for the big hearts and minds that are open to doing this, it’s fantastic.
WK: Well I wish you a wonderful trip half the way around the world to join us.
E: Thank you.
