Olivia Clementine has recorded a marvellous conversation with Andrea; informative and truly intriguing. “You will hear about Andrea’s path from being a 19-year-old student in Paris, to journeying to the Himalayas to study with yogic masters, including her teacher the 16th Karmapa, to becoming one of the few Western women to live and practice at Indian cremation grounds. Andrea speaks with the directness of someone who has spent decades facing what most avoid—death, darkness, and the dissolution of the boundaries between pure and impure at what she calls: the gates of liberation.”

Andrea talks about skulls. I remember seeing skulls when I was seven years old placed in the porch of a church in Galtür in the Austrian Alps. Andrea is Austrian. I find it interesting how a quantum connection seems to link Alpine and Himalayan ritual.

I wrote my very first story inspired by these skulls when I got back from that holiday. It was a ghost story. I stayed in the church one night, and I watched as a ghost rose from his tomb, collected his skull in the moonlight and returned to his tomb. It was very badly spelt and my hand-writing was awful (still is), but my English teacher praised the story. I will try and find it. I think at some point it was typed out.

Andrea is the sister of Gwendolyn Leick – the mother of my son. Gwendolyn was a well-known scholar as well, and two of her literary works are published by Grey Suit Editions

PS About the skulls in the church, Andrea comments, “Anthony, that’s what we call a carner. Skulls digged up from abandoned graves kept in the church sanctuary. It also fascinated me a child.”