I knew Elizabeth and also Nina Graboi, her very dear, very close friend-- met them both (at the same sitting!) back in Santa Cruz in the early 1990's. Nina was my neighbor for 4 years, and I became part of a group of people that used to meet regularly over at Elizabeth's home to share experiences of life and learning about spirituality, psychedlics, and the like. The group was called "The Fog" group, and we used to joke that it was called that because we were all "Friends of Gips".

At the time I met Elizabeth, I was a very young, inexperienced "neophyte" in many of the psychedelic and spiritual "ways" that she had already come to know, but I was never excluded from participating any of the many gatherings that Elizabeth organized to bring people together-- people from all walks of life, and of all ages, old, young, etc. -- on the contrary! I found myself being chaperoned, invited and welcomed by this light-bringing, truly magickal woman in order to open the doorways to many exciting avenues of psychedelic, philosophic and otherwise alternative nature than I had ever known before.

Elizabeth was a warrior of love, a high-priestess of OM. She was a teacher, a mother-figure, a sister, a friend.

I often wonder to this day what my own meager existence might be like without having run into her. The experience of knowing her has notably changed me forever.

I owe a great deal of my own self-exploration and metaphysical understandings to both Elizabeth Gips and also Nina Graboi-- her longtime friend and soul-sister, who was also my friend and neighbor.

In the afternoon of the day Elizabeth passed, I found myself knocked to the floor by a wave of psychic force. It was both a sweet and bittersweet wave and I knew somehow exactly where it came from. Elizabeth was traveling.

A friend phoned me a day later and told me of the news, but I already knew.

Elizabeth, who I always called my 'cosmic grandma', taught me many, many things, as she did for others who knew her.

Through my many meetings with her, and through introductions to others who knew her, I learned many lessons which will be with me always and forever.

I am grateful for those times.

Her essence at the time of her passing was felt strongly by many of us who knew her.

I reach out to her across the brilliantly-coloured OM as it travels and spins throughout the mystery we are all a part of.

Thank you Elizabeth.

Merry meet again someday.