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It’s the day earlier than the ceremony and forty folks from completely different components of the world will converge in Copenhagen to expertise a shamanic ceremony facilitated by 46-year-old Helena Soholm, a Korean American shaman, referred to as mudang in Korean.

In eager to know extra about shamanism, I got here throughout Helena’s work. Now we’re collectively in North Zealand, Denmark, together with conventional Korean musician Dong-Gained Kim, 58, who will accompany Helena throughout the ceremony.

Once we arrive on the seashore, it’s nonetheless a little bit overcast and the earth is frozen underneath a thick, white carpet of snow. Dong-Gained seems out and pronounces, “The ocean welcomes us.” I say to Helena, “Sorry, I needed to do extra analysis about shamanism earlier than the journey, however I simply did not have time.” She responds, “Arin, that is a colonial method of shamanism. You study it by experiencing it.” Helena and Dong-Gained bow to the 5 instructions throughout a pre-ceremony ritual. Heart is the fifth course.

When Korea was an agrarian society, villagers would march to neighboring villages, taking part in their distinctive music to assist one another work throughout the harvest season. Based on Dong-Gained, “Working in rice fields is back-breaking work, and so singing and drumming had been concerned. Because the labor obtained harder, the drumming would get quicker and extra thrilling. And that was the primary second I discovered the idea of empathy in music.” He begins taking part in a 200-year-old gong and immediately the sky opens up.

Trendy healer

Helena is a transpersonal psychologist along with being a shaman. In her work, she integrates Western theories of psychology with Indigenous techniques of information to facilitate therapeutic and development in trendy, technologically superior societies.

Shortly after her initiation as a shaman in 2018, she says she obtained a imaginative and prescient the place she noticed the ancestors of Korean adoptees who had been adopted into Western international locations, longing to attach with their descendents. She says she believes “clearing and honoring ancestral power is achieved via the restoration of the Indigenous thoughts, which may deepen an individual’s connection to self, others and land,” and so she facilitates ceremonies and pilgrimages for adoptees and others wanting to attach with their ancestral roots.

Helena is married to a Dane and has developed many connections in Denmark. She says her village is now world, “so wherever we go, my philosophy is we will create sacred area.”

Contributors

Among the many adoptees to take part on this ceremony in Copenhagen is Jannie Jung Westermann, 45, who introduced the providing for the intestine ceremony on behalf of Korea Klubben, an affiliation of Danish Korean adoptees. She was one of many first folks concerned in gathering data for the investigation into the corrupt practices behind the worldwide adoptions of Korean kids, which amounted to a billion-dollar trade between the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Eighties.

In 2001, Jannie labored with a Korean social employee to do a household search. She discovered that adoptees are sometimes not given their full recordsdata. Jannie was in a position to find her beginning dad and mom despite the fact that her preliminary data indicated that she had been deserted. Years after assembly her organic father, she labored with a non-public detective and located her organic mom.

On a visit to South Korea, Danish Korean adoptee Mai Quickly Younger Øvlisen, 41, heard Korean conventional music for the primary time. “I heard that voice of ache and of the folks’s historical past and previous, as a rustic, and it was, like, ‘That is my voice. My voice is Korean.’ ” Now, she incorporates conventional Korean people music and shamanism into her musical observe together with her band, Meejah, which suggests “medium.” On discovering her beginning dad and mom, Mai says, “I simply make room for it and open area for it to return collectively, if it desires to.”

Unethical and unlawful adoption practices had been a systemic drawback in lots of different international locations, together with Greenland, which was colonized by Denmark. Kâlánguak Absalonsen, 53, was taken from her organic household after her father dedicated suicide when she was 3 years outdated. Her mom signed adoption papers with out realizing that she was giving up her baby as a result of, in her Inuit tradition, there isn’t a phrase or idea for adoption, pondering, “when the snow disappears, they’ll come again.” However her kids didn’t come again. She despatched Kâlánguak letters, however her adoptive mom hid them from her. After I ask Kâlánguak what she remembers of Greenland, she speaks in regards to the sound of snow: “When it is actually chilly, it has a particular sound.”

Tom Pyun, 46, a Korean American author and consumer of Helena’s, flew from Los Angeles for the ceremony. His father died when he was 13, and his mom handed away immediately in 2021 from COVID-19. He had been looking for various strategies of therapeutic when he got here throughout Helena’s work: “There was no probability to actually say goodbye or get any closure, and I believed that perhaps a shaman would possibly assist me discover closure — what might have been mentioned or ought to have been mentioned.”

Anne-Marie Hansen, 44, is a Danish professor of design whose household lineage in Denmark will be traced again to the 1400s. She is interested by rituals and discovering extra about her connection to Nordic pagan tradition. She mentioned she hoped the ceremony would assist her get well conventional data, revive cultural reminiscence and join with nature.

Ceremony

On the day of the ceremony, many individuals put on one thing from their native cultures to assist join them with their ancestors. As they trickle in, many add particular objects and mementos to an ancestral altar. Materials in pink, blue, white, yellow and inexperienced, representing the 5 instructions are laid out. Everybody selects a couple of items of torn cloth and, in a sluggish procession, transfer to the rhythmic drumming of Dong-Gained and Hendrikje Lange, a Western shaman initiated within the Korean custom, towards a tree on the entrance of BaneGaarden, the location of the ceremony. Based on Helena, “Since there are lots of people there who’re from completely different cultures, we want some form of exercise to tug us collectively so that everyone’s already setting themselves up, at their unconscious stage, to set off one thing deep in our minds.”

Helena creates a circle with white cloth and invitations completely different teams of individuals in, beginning with adoptees. They begin leaping to enter a trance-like state. There are maternal cries of longing, deep ache and remorse. Within the Indigenous circle, the power and air shift. When the phrases, “Aya, aya,” come via Helena, Aká Hansen, an Inuit filmmaker from Greenland, bursts into music. With the European group, Helena has a tough time getting via, so she asks the opposite individuals to ship their power to this group. Many shut their eyes and place their fingers. “There may be quite a lot of blockage right here. A number of masculine power,” Helena says. Lastly, a small group of diaspora members enter the white circle and there may be speak about damaged desires. On the finish, everybody jumps collectively and Helena blesses every particular person. The ceremony is adopted by a dialogue the place we be taught that the music Aká sang was the primary time she had ever sung it. It’s a music of Aká’s ancestors.

The day after the ceremony, I ask individuals how they’re processing their experiences. Kâlánguak speaks of maternal power within the adoptee circle: “It was big to listen to the moms calling after us, ‘It is okay. I am right here. I really like you. I really like you. I really like you.’ And, for me, it was a launch. I’ve heard all my life that my mom could not deal with me. However that was not the case. Helena opened my coronary heart to obtain my mom with love.”

“I’ll take into consideration the ceremony for a very long time,” says Mai Quickly Younger. “It gave me a way of not being alone.”

This reporting was supported by the Worldwide Girls’s Media Basis’s Lauren Brown Fellowship.

Arin Yoon is a Korean American photographer based mostly in Kansas Metropolis. See extra of her work on her web site arinyoon.com and her Instagram @arinyoon.

Photograph edit by Grace Widyatmadja. Textual content edit by Zachary Thompson.