Heather Freeman: "I'll see you at the crossroads." It's been my sign-off every episode, and maybe you've wondered why.

Crossroads are important symbols with diverse meanings in different magical, spiritual, and religious traditions. For me, they represent big life choices:

Do I take this new job?

How do I have this hard conversation?

Should I start a family?

Facing the crossroads is facing a decision. Whatever happens, you have to choose a direction, and you have to commit to it. And sometimes these big life crossroads are magical, spiritual, or religious.

Jennifer Kim is a 39-year-old New Yorker, and she followed the path of becoming a mudang (무당), an indigenous Korean Shaman.

Jennifer Kim: For about three days and three nights, I was in ceremony receiving my initiation…. 

Heather: Chaweon Koo practices a witchcraft she calls "eclectic Chaos Magic 2.0." For her, an ordinary spell became an extraordinary crossroads, and the path she chose has shaped her life ever since.

Chaweon: As I was doing the banishing spell — and I'm, like, shivering in fear basically. I'm nervous – the clouds, they part. 

Heather: Both Jenn and Chaweon faced crossroads in their lives that took them down new paths in their spiritual and magical practices. And they say their very first steps were guided by their ancestors.

Jenn: Part of the initiation is to be jumping up and down, all day long for three days and nights. And what it really did for me was open the gates to the spirit world, and we let the energies just come in.

Chaweon: And what I see in front of me, that I didn't see as clearly before because it was so dark, was a field of life-size bumps that have been overgrown over the past 100 years. And I realized at that moment: these were the bodies of the Freedom Fighters.

Heather: I'm Heather Freeman, and this is Magic in the United States. In this episode, Future Ancestors: Korean American Shamans and Witches, we'll learn how these two practitioners fit into the rich, religious, spiritual, and magical landscape of the Asian American diaspora and they'll share how they're discovering their own cultural heritages -- as future ancestors. 

We'll be right back.

 [BREAK]

Heather: This is Magic in the United States, I'm Heather Freeman.

Jennifer Kim is an indigenous Korean Shaman today. But when she was a kid growing up in New York City, her life revolved around Christianity. 

Jenn: I went to all the Christian churches, like, on Sundays, the summer school, the afterschools — we were a very big part of the church.

Heather: Then, when Jenn was nine, her parents got divorced.

Jenn: And that's when my grandmother from Korea came into the U.S. to help my dad raise us because we ended up disconnecting from my mom. During that time, my entire family converted to Roman Catholicism. So the family structure I grew up in was super religious. 

Heather: Sometimes, when a family immigrates to the United States, religion can be a source of stability and familiar community. But for second-generation kids like Jenn, this religious devotion can sometimes feel a little excessive. 

In order to understand the background of Jenn's family a little better, let's take a minute to consider the religious history of her grandparents' homeland: Korea. 

The Korean language didn't get the exact word for ‘religion’ until the late 1900s, and even then, the translation is rough: jonggyo (종교) literally means ‘the fundamental teachings in human life'. Some of Korea's oldest spiritual practices include shamanic ones, and the philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism.

There have also been Christians throughout Asia for centuries. But it wasn't until 1784 that Catholicism set down its roots in Korea. Rather than coming from a foreign missionary (which is how Christianity spread in many other parts of the world) it came from Yi Seung-hun, a Korean diplomat's son, who converted while abroad. When he returned to Seoul, he began baptizing his fellow countrymen in an enthusiastic grassroots movement. Yi wasn't himself ordained, and when a formal missionary from China arrived a decade later, he discovered roughly 4,000 converts already in residence. 

Today, roughly 10% of South Koreans identify as Catholic. And from South Korea to Vietnam, individuals often remix Christianity with the indigenous folk practices of their communities – including Jenn Kim's grandmother, who moved in with Jenn's family from South Korea to New York after her parents split up. 

Jenn: Our practice involves working with altars and working with ancestors, making sure that our ancestors are always connected with us every day. And, my grandmother, she believed that she was chosen by God to be his prophet and she was doing things like, she was receiving messages or divination or she might've had a special gift of sight where she picked up on energy. 

Melissa Borgia: Religion has been a really important resource for how people resist oppression and racialization and racism. 

Heather: Dr. Melissa Borgia is Assistant Professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She researches the history of Asian American immigration and religion in the United States. 

Melissa: It's been a source of strength. It's been a way for people to survive in the United States, especially if they are recently arrived. 

Heather: Back in Episode 1 we talked about the word ‘bricolage’: religious, spiritual, and magical remixing. And Melissa says this remixing is a central part of some Asian American families’ practices.

Melissa: A lot of Asian Americans are not Christian. But the thing about Asian Americans is that a lot of their beliefs and practices take place at home, It's not necessarily going to take place in a temple or a synagogue or a church. So it might be the case that you have a Chinese-American family that goes to church every Sunday, but they might also have an altar at home. It's really interesting to note how many Hmong Americans might go to church on Sunday and also see the Shaman on Saturday. So what really matters is finding out what people do, not just how people identify. And then when you focus on practice, that's when you begin to really see the rich, eclectic nature of Asian American spiritual and religious life.

Heather: Jenn didn't know her grandmother was remixing religious and spiritual practices. As a kid, she was just unsettled by what her grandmother did. 

Jenn: My grandmother would see spirits all the time and I, at my young age, I thought of that as her having schizophrenia or mental instability. I didn't know that there was something more spiritual or even supernatural about it. 

Heather: The relationship between mystical experiences and mental health is a big and complex topic. In many cultures, mystical and ecstatic religious experiences -- from hearing the voice of God to trance possession and more -- is not only normal, but it's an established part of community life.

Now, Jenn didn't consider herself personally religious. But she started having her own out-of-the-ordinary experiences in her twenties, and they were reminiscent of a grandmother's.

Jenn: As I got older, I started to have sleep paralysis. Every time I closed my eyes, I would have this feeling of an energy, or I thought it was like a ghost or a demon sitting on top of me, preventing me from moving or speaking. And this was a daily occurrence. I would stay up all night because I was afraid of the dark and so I will only sleep when the sun rose. 

Heather: As these frightening experiences got more intense, and Jenn’s sleep worsened, other symptoms began.

Jenn: I started to have physical interactions with spirits. If I was walking down the hallway someone would push me and I would completely lunge forward, but there was nobody around me. The cupboards in my kitchen would start opening up. These incidents were gradual, but once they started happening, it started snowballing and spiraling into bigger things.

Heather: And then, when she had her first son, things hit a tipping point. Jenn started to wonder whether her challenges might be culturally rooted. So, after the birth of her son and at the end of her rope, she gathered courage and reached out to her estranged mom.

Her mom had maintained connections to the Korean community that Jenn didn't have. Her mother was skeptical that Jenn's problems had a spiritual cause. Still, she agreed to take Jenn to Korean folk spirituality specialists -- mostly to demonstrate that the problems weren't supernatural.

Jenn: She took me around to our, like, we call them Saju (사주) masters. Saju is Korean astrology. A lot of times, we don't call them astrologers, actually, we call them philosophers, like a philosopher, someone who's studying the arts of time and shifting. So we went to a bunch of philosophers. 

But she finally took me to a shaman after I threw a major tantrum because my mom would not accept what was happening to me and what I was saying. So when she finally took me to a shaman, that's when everything changed.

Heather: Let's pause in Jenn’s story for a minute and consider a word: Shaman. 

David Shi: The word ‘shaman’ comes to us from the Tungus peoples of Siberia, who actually used the word saman to refer to a certain type of practitioner. 

Heather: David Shi is Manchurian American, a shamanic worker, and folk magic practitioner.

David: That type of practitioner is someone who was chosen by the spirits, almost always before they're born, to serve as the bridge between the human worlds and the spirit worlds. Those spirits that chose you to become a shaman, they're basically with you for your entire life and so that partnership forms at the birth of the human. 

Heather: Shamanic practices generally include one of two things: spirit possession or spirit flight, in which the shaman travels in a trance-like state to the spirit world. For example, in Korean indigenous shamanic practices, some shamans are more likely to use spirit possession, while others are more likely to use spirit flight. And shamans perform these rituals to serve their communities, both the human and the spirit.

In the United States and much of Europe, the word 'shaman' has become disconnected from its cultural roots, especially after the counterculture movements of the 1960s and the emergence of New Age. In the 1980s, American anthropologist Michael Harner developed ‘core shamanism’, sometimes called neo-shamanism today. This has become a common, modern practice, but it’s also a misappropriation of culturally specific traditions, so it deserves some explanation. 

Core shamanism is an appropriative practice, in which an individual extracts shamanic techniques from other cultures, strips these practices of their community contexts, and uses them for personal spiritual pursuits -- even though these practices are inherently community-focused.

Core shamanism appropriates Native American practices, symbols, and techniques, and combines them with the unique shamanic practices of other cultures that were also historic victims of European colonial rule. Indigenous communities often see core shamanism as the theft and erasure of historically significant, and culturally positioned practices. 

Finally, the word 'shamanism' suggests a universal structure and belief system that really just doesn't exist, and many contemporary American magical and spiritual practitioners have chosen not to use the word 'shaman' at all. Other practitioners continue to use the term 'shamanic' to refer to certain methods of spirit work, but point to the word's historic and cultural origins outside of the Americas.

David: The thing with the shaman is that because they're chosen when they're born, it's impossible to really study to become a shaman because you're a born one. But at the same time, if you are chosen for it, it's not something that you can not do. You have to fulfill the responsibilities or you will be punished. 

Heather: If a shaman tries to avoid these responsibilities, their spirits will keep pushing them until they take that up. And when Jenn's mom took her to the Korean shaman, Jenn’s spiritual reaction came pretty fast.

Jenn: She invited us into her shrine room. Right then and there I just felt my body kind of like have a deep sigh, like almost like a release, and then I lost control. I started shaking, started trembling. Tears were coming out. It was just such a strong response coming from my body. Even though I didn't have words to explain what was happening, I knew that this was where I needed to be.

Heather: The shaman told Jenn and her mother that two spirits had walked in with Jenn: a grandmother and a little girl. And this last part shook Jen to her core.

Jenn: All those years, whenever I had sleep paralysis, I would wake up and always thought that there was a little girl sitting on top of me. She wasn't negative, she wasn't mean. It was a little girl who's just really curious about me, it was like, ‘Who are you? Why are you here?’ But she was the first person to tell me that there was a little girl following me.

Heather: Jenn later learned that her mother’s sister died at the age of five or six to measles. 

Jenn: And that was when everything just, like, ‘oh my God’, everything connected. You know, I thought that I was haunted by ghost and demons, you know, in that Christian narrative. Little did I know that it was my ancestors trying to connect with me.

And my mom was like, ‘My daughter, she's losing her mind. What can we do?’ And the shaman replied that I have something called shinbyeong (신병) and shinbyeong is a shamanic sickness. And the shaman suggested that initiation is the only way that I could settle and I could step into the role of a shaman by learning how to navigate and manage these sensitivities that I had.

Heather: After the break, we'll learn how Jenn became a mudang, a Korean indigenous shaman. And we'll come back to Chaweon Koo and learn how she grew into ‘Witchcraft 2.0’.

 [BREAK] 

Heather: This is Magic in the United States. I'm Heather Freeman. 

A few months later, Jenn traveled to Korea with the shaman, her spirit mother. And for six weeks, they traveled all over Korea, acquainting Jenn with the spirits and ancestors of that land.

Jenn: By doing that we were bringing in the energies of the land, connecting with the ancestral land and the ancestors and the guardians of that place. And then I finally went into Gyerongsan, which is known as the Dragon Phoenix Mountain in Korea. It's a very sacred mountain and it's very well known for their shamanic activities. 

And in that mountain, we have something called kuttang. So kuttangs are basically –  think of Airbnbs for spiritual religious ceremonies. There you have your altars and your ceremony spaces and all the help that you need to do your ceremonies.

Heather: Jenn's initiation ceremony lasted three days and nights and was physically and spiritually exhausting. Part of the ceremony was to determine if Jenn's ‘mouth door’ was open, which is the phrase for the spiritual portal through which she would communicate with the other world.

Jenn: If your mouth door has opened, then that means you are connected to the divine or to the spirits and you possess the skill to channel spirits messages. So those three days was just test after test, and part of the testing is to see how the initiate deals and navigates those energies because we need to know how to lean into our judgment and discernment, and be given opportunities to trust our intuition. And also, learn how to trust our own spirits and our own guides.

Heather: After Jenn returned to New York, it took her a little time to settle into her new role. Her spirit interactions — that used to be challenges — are now the strong core of her work as a mudang, a shaman who facilitates communication between the living and the spirit world. She offers diverse spiritual services and training for her communities.

Jenn: The type of shaman that I am, is a gangshinmu (강신무) shaman and a lot of the things that gangshinmu (charismatic shamans) do is connecting with people's spirits and ancestors or connecting with their own spirits and in ceremony or ritual spaces. There's a lot of trance possession that comes about.

Heather: Trance possession is common in many religious, spiritual, and magical practices and generally involves a spirit partly or completely taking over the body of a practitioner, who is usually an initiate of a particular system dedicated to those spirits.

This happens along a spectrum and might look like a Wiccan priestess relaying an inspired message from the Goddess of the Moon to her coven; or an evangelical Christian being consumed by Holy Spirit and delivering a ministry; or an initiate of Vodun being bodily possessed by a Lwa, and sharing a dance with their community. Spirit possession is a big topic. But, by and large, this is a service to a community. 

And Jenn's average day is busy with her responsibilities as both a mom and mudang, filled with service and care to her human communities, as well as her communities of spirits and ancestors.

Jenn: When I wake up, I'll go to my shrine and altar room and I'll peek my head in and I say, ‘Good morning. I hope everyone rested well’. It's including them in my life in little ways. And, you know, I have kids so I make sure my kids are settled in first, and then I start my day with changing out the water offerings that are given daily. And then I go into my prayers of just meditation and then I work with my clients. So if I have private sessions for that day I help people connect with their ancestors.

Being Korean American and born and raised in New York City, a lot of people like myself are disconnected from our culture. And a lot of my work is to teach our culture and the ways we work so that we could foster a deeper connection with our spirits but also build a deeper relationship with our land like with the earth, like how important soil, water, and things like that is, so that's an important aspect to our spiritual practices.

Heather: Chaweon Koo, who we met earlier, has a magical practice that's very different from Jenn's spiritual one. It includes witchcraft, angel magic, demonology, human design, and even digital technology. 

Religiously, she identifies as an atheist, and has ever since she was a child and spent time in Korea with her Christian grandparents. 

Chaweon: One night, I had a particular nightmare, and I remember waking up and calling out for whoever. And my grandmother comes in and she starts spraying holy water around the room. And even at that age, I was, like, ‘Come on, give me a break’, right? I thought, what I need right now is something different. I needed a hug, I needed some comfort. But instead I saw her doing this thing that I felt was superstitious, and that's crazy coming from like a four- or five-year-old, but I really felt like it was superstitious. And so that's one of my first memories of me thinking that this whole Bible thing, Christian thing, is not for me.

Heather: As she grew up, she started exploring magical practices, starting with astrology.

Chaweon: When I was a young teenager, astrology wasn't what it is today. Back in the 1990s, we were in the throes of the typical woo-woo, pop astrology. Astrology was really looked down upon. You were laughed at if you were into astrology or Tarot cards. So I was like, ‘Oh, I can't tell anybody about it’. But that's what I was really into. 

Heather: But by the mid-1990s, an explosion of new and revised translations of classic Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic texts on everything from astrology to esoteric philosophy started becoming available to English-speaking audiences for the first time. 

This was a game changer for Chaweon as she started digging deeper into magical practices by reading, taking classes, and practicing magic. But at that time, Chaweon was 'in the broom closet' and had to balance her interest in astrology with her atheism on her own.

Chaweon: As an atheist, I was like, no, I can't be an atheist and be into astrology. It turns out that atheism — it really is a one-issue thing. Atheism simply means that you just don't think that there are spirits — right, intelligent spirits — in the world, like a God.

Heather: So Chaweon continued her exploration of the occult in private. But that all changed when she was in her thirties, living and working in Korea. 

Chaweon: My friend and I, we just randomly decided we were gonna make a YouTube thing together and we were gonna do a mukbang (먹방).

And a mukbang is basically — it started in Korea. It's where you just eat a whole mound of food. And Korea was really big into mukbangs at the time. 

And I was just like, ‘We'll call it Witches and Wine,’ because I'm a witch, and my friend was a straight-up Christian, like very Christian. And I was just like, well, you know, Jesus turned water to wine.

Heather: This was a fun project between two friends. The only problem? Chaweon was really nervous about being in front of a camera. At the time, however, Chaweon was taking a beginning witchcraft class online. And she decided her shyness would be a good target for a banishing spell.

Chaweon: And I was like, ‘Oh, you know, like I feel very uncomfortable being in front of the camera, and so I'm gonna do a banishing spell.’ So I was like, all right, this witch class says that I should go to a graveyard. And where's a graveyard that I won't be arrested if I trespass at midnight? 'Cause I'm not doing this spell when everybody's around, that would make me feel weird.

And there was a park called Manguri Park and there was a Manguri Mountain and it was a public cemetery. And I was like, ‘Perfect.’ 

Had I been there before? No.

So I hop on the bus at like 10 o'clock at night with my little supplies and I go to the park. It's completely empty. And it was one of those nights where the clouds were over the moon, so it was dark. So I walk up the path and the entire time I'm questioning my sanity. And so I promise you that I saw things at the periphery of my vision. I would hear things — it was wild animals, as well as what I was convinced were just, you know, murderers waiting to come out and dismember me. I didn't know it at the time, but I was in the perfect mindset for magic because I was a little bit spooked. I felt like I was one foot in the world of like regular, you know, I got on a bus and it's by a baseball field, but also one foot in a world where I was, like, it's mysterious.

So I was in that mindset, that magical mindset. 

But as I was doing the banishing spell — and I'm shivering in fear, basically I'm nervous — the clouds, they part. And what I see in front of me that I didn't see as clearly before because it was so dark, was a field filled with what I knew were graves. 

Heather: The graves that Chaweon saw with those of Koreans who had died in their struggles against Japanese rulership. 

From 1910 to 1940, Korea was occupied by Japan. It was a brutal time for Koreans who were forced to adopt the Japanese language, names, and many women were forced into sexual slavery. At the end of World War II, Korea was divided with the USSR taking over the north and the U.S. taking over the south. After the end of the Korean War in 1954, South Korea went through many decades of political turmoil, with several repressive and dictatorial governments. 

It was really only in the 1980s that the South Korea we know today began to emerge: a global hub of technology, innovation, and rich pop culture. 

All that history hit Chaweon like the brightness of the full moon breaking through the clouds.

Chaweon: And I realized at that point that their sacrifice had meant that I could be free. 

And suddenly the banishing spell wasn't just about looking okay in front of a camera for my mukbang.

It was almost as if the invisible hands of my ancestors came in and they said, ‘Listen, you are gonna be in front of a camera, because we got your back. You are there to represent us. Those of us who died, who didn't have a chance, but we get to live on through you. We're not your direct bloodline, but we're your ancestors.’

And so at that moment, the shaking in my body stopped. I wasn't nervous anymore. And instead there was this feeling of extreme calm when I realized this mukbang is not for me: it's for the ancestors to move through me.

And so I know that this could not have happened in America. It had to be on Korean soil, breathing in Korean spores, and Korean flora and fauna — dirt. Dirt, which is basically created by the bodies, the decaying bodies, of millions of years of ancestors and millions of years of animal ancestors and plant ancestors in the country of Korea. I had to be there to do that. 

And once that happened, I did my banishing spell, burned the petition paper, turned around, didn't look back, walked out. And from that moment on, my life was different.

Heather: Today Chaweon Koo has tens of thousands of followers on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok where she discusses diverse topics in occulture from astrology to cryptocurrency. She's also the author of the book Spellbound which is both a commission by her ancestors and a product of her own will. She talks freely and openly about being both an atheist and a magical practitioner. And she owns the title of 'witch' as a transgressive act, and a title of empowerment.

Chaweon: Whatever is necessary for you to reclaim the groundedness that the world couldn't give you because you are Asian-American – not just Asian-American, just any sort of hyphenated American where your Americanness has been questioned for whatever reason – that's where magic can come in. 

'Cause the magic is so much based upon standing on top of the shoulders of our ancestors. Because the invisible hand of your ancestors: it is powerful. It will shove you, it'll push you, it will jerk you around. It will do whatever it can, but you will feel it. And I think a lot of people would be pleasantly surprised — shocked — to see that this road has opened up for them.

Heather: Ancestors are many things: They're grandparents, culture heroes, favorite artists, and more. And you and I — we too will someday be ancestors. Whether it's through our children, our creative works, our community involvement, or our friendships: We will all have descendants who look to us when we're gone.

Jenn: I don't think that people may think about their impact, that we all have the power to make a difference even if it's small. Whether it's working with the environment or using our voices to protest against the government depending on things that you don't like — but we all have power, and we all are future ancestors. And I hope that as future ancestors we reclaim our power and our healing.

Heather: The road of the ancestors connects with the road of the living. And perhaps these crossroads are the domain of Hekate as well. 

Flawed and fragile, laughing and learning: we're mirrors of those who have gone before us.

So I'm going to put out this glass of water to my ancestors, to my neighbors’ ancestors — and to yours as well. Because someday, we'll all be future ancestors.

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We hope you enjoyed Season One of Magic in the United States and that it sparked your curiosity to learn more about the religious, spiritual, and magical histories of this amazing country. There's more American magic than you can shake a broom at, so we'll be back in April with more stories of the occult, the esoteric, the mysterious, and the maligned, and the amazing practitioners who walk these crossroads. 

Do you have an idea for an episode of Magic in the United States? We'd love to hear about it, and we’d love to hear any feedback as well! And if you’re a practitioner of magic, healing, or participate in a folk spirituality or marginalized religion, we'd like to hear how your practices fold into the complex tapestry of American cultural history.

So give us a ring! Leave a voice memo at ‪(980) 277-4402‬ or at magicintheunitedstates@gmail.com. We might include your story in a future episode!

In the meantime, we'll try to ensorcell you into coming back for Season 2….

Gregory Grieves: Satan was an easy person to blame because he can't really argue back for himself. But I think when it comes to neopaganism, what it really did was it really vilified neopagans and kind of forced them underground.

Rev. Aaron Davis: Because a lot of people, when you see your dead dad, who’s been dead, 40 years in front of you, it's: Okay, am I hallucinating? And I'm like, ‘No, you're not hallucinating. No, your dad loves you and he came back. Let's talk about that.’ So that happens a lot.

Shannon Taggart: The Curies investigated seances, Thomas Edison worked on a device to talk with the dead –  politics, art science, technology and a lot of that has been written out of history.

Heather: There’s a lot more Magic in the United States, so wherever you are –  the east, the west, the north or the south - magic is everywhere.

I'm Heather Freeman. And I'll see you in April for Season Two, right here at the crossroads.

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Magic in the United States is written and hosted by me, Heather Freeman. The show is produced by Amber Walker and edited by Lucy Perkins. Our Associate Producer is Noor Gill and the show is mixed by Jennie Cataldo. Fact-checking by Dania Suleman. The Executive Producer for PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. The show's music is from APM Music and Epidemic Sound, and our project managers are Edwin Ochoa and Morgan Church. Thanks to guests Melissa Borgia, Jennifer Kim, Chaweon Koo, and David Shi. Special thanks also to Ji Hae Robinson and Steven Quach for additional interviews, and to Mimi Khúc and Chenxing Han for very helpful communications. Thanks to episode advisors Abel Gomez and Cory Hutcheson, along with the other Humanities Advisors: Helen Berger, Danielle Boaz, Yvonne Chireau, Chas Clifton, Daniel Harms, Thorn Mooney, Sabina Magliocco, and Meg Whalen. Finally a big thank you to the families, friends, and colleagues of the entire production team, and for your support throughout this project — this includes Swazi the Cat and all our foster dogs. This production was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.