Shamanic Journey

My research began after a shamanic journey where the children who had died asked me to visit their grave. Most of this site is dedicated to the historical research, this page is a story in the story telling tradition of Shamanism.

Once long ago and far away there were three sisters, daughters of a soda factory owner in Holland. Two of them married well. Ella married a doctor and Bertha, a professor and both had families. The third rebelled against the bourgeois middle class life and damp climate and moved to Tel Aviv to help with the labor movement. Perhaps it was not as glamorous as she thought for when a distant older cousin, Derek, a traveling salesman, she had never met before visited her in Israel to deliver a package from another family member, she fell in love, returned to Holland and married in July, 1935 and my father was born in April, 1936. She wanted to quickly have a family like her sisters, her friend saying she was hoping for twins.

Derek traveled to Germany and saw what was happening. He had also traveled to California. Caroline, never that found of Holland was not to hard to convince to move to sunny California and both of them convinced their parents to join them. Ella and Bertha would not move. Ella’s husband, the doctor felt that he had a duty to stay and serve his community as a doctor if war was coming. Perhaps it would have been too difficult for Bertha’s husband, a professor in the provincial capital Leeuwarden, to reestablish his career if he moved.

Hitler invaded Holland in 1940. Life became increasingly hard. The first deportations started in Leeuwarden in April 1942. On July 20th, 1942 Bertha gave her youngest son, David Jan to the nurse to take and hide and she and her husband killed themselves and their 4 children, Pauline, Esther, Hanna and Abraham ages 13, 11, 7 and 5. In August mass deportations from Leeuwarden began and almost all of those deported perished in concentration camps.

When Ella heard of her sister’s and family's suicide she made the decision to send her family into hiding. The parents, the 11 year old daughter, Leny, and the 9 year old son Hans were each hidden separately. The parents and daughter survived but Hans was betrayed. A request to the International Tracing Service (ITS) collection held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum yielded the following:

“According to the documents, Hans Fritz Cohen was residing at Keizerstr. 5 and Boedekerstr. 7 at Deventer. He was deported to Westerbork Collection Camp on September 23, 1943. On February 8, 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz where he was murdered immediately after the transport arrived on February 11, 1944.”

Hans was born on Sept 14th, 1932 so he was 11 when he died.

Leny moved to California, married and had children. She has recorded a number of accounts of her time as a hidden child and is active in the peace movement.

Ella, Leny’s mother survived the war, but never recovered from losing her son and the other traumas and committed suicide in 1951.

Caroline, my grandmother, lived with the survivor guilt. She divorced her husband around 1950 and died of cancer in 1959. Accounts from the family were not of a happy person and her children suffered for it.

The baby, David Jan, survived in hiding with his nurse. After the war they went to Canada and then to the US where he joined my father and his two brothers and was raised by Caroline. When DJ was 21 years old he set off to take a trip to Holland. He was killed by a train in NY before he reached Holland. My father Philip writes the following:

“He [David Jan] was at an Amtrak station in Westchester Co. NY where there were four passenger train tracks, 2 each northbound and southbound. He crossed one track behind a train which had just left the station and was hit by a train on the second track. He was apparently killed instantly. The police called it an accident, of course. No one will ever know what was in his mind. He was scheduled to go to Holland, including Leeuwarden, for the first time since he had come to the US after the war. There he would see that his parents and siblings all died on the same day. Did he already know that his parents had killed all his sibling and then committed suicide? Did he suspect something? If his death was a suicide, no one can known whether it related to his family or to something else.”

My family always had kind things to say of DJ and I think his death was very hard on my father. In my research I found the letter he wrote for conscientious objector status for the draft board. Here is an excerpt:

“In War the force of Love, does not prevail. It destroys the potential to Love. A tragedy is that is so often stems from the desire to preserve something such as an ideal. But war can not do this. Recognizing that war—any act which reduces or destroys the capacity to Love—is destructive of something divine in man, I would, by participating in any manner, be destroying something in others and in myself, which I hold as sacred.”

I was born in 1964 and named for my grandmother Caroline. My mother was not Jewish and my father was minimally religious. He lit candles at Hanuka and blessed the first fruits of the garden in Hebrew. We briefly belonged to a synagogue in Massachusetts. Later in life he became more involved in Jewish life through a small congregation in Jefferson City, MO. Philip died in August, 2010.

The journey

The above is what I know of the ordinary reality facts, from here the story continues through my shamanic journey work. I have been doing shamanic journeying since 1999, off and on, increasing these last few years. I had taken the Foundation for Shamanic Studies Basic Class back around 2001 and had often thought that I should take the “Dying and Beyond” class. In September of 2010, after my father’s death, I did.

The class has journeys to see your own death, visiting a dead person, and psychopomp work, assisting souls to a different level. My visits with my dad during this workshop, and my work helping him to transition to the next level during a shamanic journey in Oct were both very healing for me. But as the cold and snowy winter set in I was having difficulties. I noticed that although there were many challenges and changes in my life at that time, the only thing that made me cry was thinking of the four children who had been killed in Holland by their parents. I wondered why that story haunted me and decided to do a shamanic journey to meet them.

In my journey W.B Yeats, one of my spirit guides, meets me and takes me to a European Village where I quickly meet the girl children. They say they are OK. I ask if there is anything they would like? For me to visit them, perhaps bring flowers to their grave. Anything else I can do I ask? They miss their little brother David Jan, perhaps there is a way I could reunite them.

I decide that I should find David Jan’s grave and bring some dirt from the grave to their grave in Holland. I was prepared for a major research project to find these graves but in fact it was quite easy. The Netherlands have a wonderful website and google translate did a great job. I found a database that directed me to a picture of the grave:

My father’s brother, David knew that David Jan had been buried in Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto Califorinia and contacted them to find out the exact grave location.

In March I flew from Massachusetts to California, while in the air I put shamanic drumming on my headphones and journey in my mind to the redwood forest that is my place to begin shamanic journeys. There I see the five children and I begin to spin fire, as my son Amos does, with burning poi.

Afterwards I wrote the following poems about that journey and the one on later during the flight.

Grandmother Earth, Come

While in California I go with my uncle to collect the dirt from DJ’s grave and visit Leny and hear her stories of her time as a hidden child and her memories of her family.

The summer passed full of life with my son home from his first year of college. Reservations were made for a trip to Holland in the end of October.

In early October I attended a Shamanism workshop/ritual called Twilight Covening. It was a workshop for experienced shamanic journeyers and the workshop leaders had an planned agenda of shamanic journeys and so it seemed did the children....

The intent of our first Journey was to goto the lower world to ask what power animals and spirit guides wanted to help with the weekend work and to explore the geography of the lower world we were familiar with and to look for and note new areas we had not previously explored.

When I entered the lower world I saw Mr. Yeats standing at the path that led to the village where he had taken me to meet the children previously. Although I had been there once previously I understood that this was the area that was meant to be explored later in the weekend.

My Wolf spirit guide joined me quickly in my Journey, having just a week or two previously appeared in a Journey and indicated that she would be with me more as the days become shorter and colder. I went to hilltop where my power animals and spirit guides meet to council to ask if there were others who wanted to help this weekend and “Turt-Turt” my childhood favorite stuffed animal, a turtle, said she would be helping. I have seen Turt-Turt a few times in previous Journey’s but had not worked with her much.

The next Journey assigned by our leaders was to the Upper World. I climbed the Redwood Tree in the place where I start my Journeys, and when I reached the top I became the tip top of the tree, a pointed arrow of branches to the tip of the tree. I pushed upwards and upwards and appeared in a land with a big wide sky and farms. The girls were there. I asked what we were to do there and they said “play”. So we played games around the farm and rode around on the blades of the windmills.

Our next workshop mission was to go to the lower world, look for a way down, and explore an lower level of the lower world then we had visited before. I start my Journey at the Redwood Tree as always. The girls are there, they also have a mission for me. Find the Boys.

I went down through the roots of the tree, to the cave and out into the lower world where Wolf joined me. We quickly arrived at the path where Mr. Yeats waited. He leads us down the path to the village. In the village young Abram, a small boy, and DJ a tall young man are waiting for us. There is something they need to show me...

They take me to a gate. Strong, tall, black, cast iron metal. I think its the gate of a castle. It is locked. Abram seems to be upset, a small scared boy and I think to give him Turt-Turt to hold. Abram calms and opens the Gate.

It hits me like a wave, a wave of dis pair, sorrow, unease. Always the 5-Children had told me and communicated to me that they were OK. This was not OK. It was Hans, it was Auschwitz and it was not OK. Behind him seemed an endless number of souls, children although perhaps not all, and they were not OK.

I was not OK. I have been over cliff, through ice, eaten and dismembered and never scared, always felt safe. I was not OK, I didn’t know what to do. I was overwhelmed and tried with my rational mind to figure out a plan. Could I take Hans to the upper world and help him “cross over”? No, there were too many of them I could never do it and I couldn’t leave them. I tried to leave, but I didn’t, I couldn’t want to. Wolf, Abram clutching Turt-Turt, DJ and I walked around the now wire fence of Auschwitz. I remembered the Workshop leaders instructions for the Journey, find a way down to a lower level, perhaps on this lower level I would find the help I needed.

I looked around for a way down and I saw...mass graves full of souls. No, I was too scared, I could not, would not go down this way, through the mass grave. Help! I see Yeats and ask him for help. He rose in full ceremonial magician splendor and began his work. He created a Gyre, using the dark force from the grave and an antithetical force of light. Through the swirling vortex came the Faeries. Yeat’s Faeries, the Shee, are not Disney’s fairies. I didn’t know if what I was doing was right, but the Fairies reached out their hands for Hans and the other children of Auschwitz.

— “The Stolen Child,” W. B. Yeats

This is an except from the longer poem. You can listen to it and read the lyrics in the video description here. The picture is from my trip to Holland, it is a display in a toy store in Deventer, Hans' home town.

The instructions for the next Journey were to go to the lower world and look for a healer to help with the upcoming healing work. When I arrived at my Redwood Tree the Five Children were waiting. I told them of my instructions and they looked at me and said, but we are already here! You don’t need to look for us. They were to be the healers. Since we had the rest of the Journey time we once again began to play. Joining hands and circling around. As we circled a vortex began to form. The workshop leader had mentioned that a good way to go down in the lower world was to sumersault backwards so I decided to try it. We were all still holding hands so the children and I started tumbling down and around other through the vortex. We land thump on our bottoms back in the village. What shall we do I ask them? Play they say! And we went around the village on scouters. Then we climbed an apple tree and the children start playfully throwing apples down the Gyre at the Faeries.

When the return is sounded I bring the children with me as the healers.

During the break I tell the workshop leaders the story of my family and the children. The next exercise is the Spirit Canoe and they offer me opportunity to be inside the canoe and to have the circle journey for my family.

The Spririt Canoe is a method of group journeying for healing. The “patient” lies on the ground and the Shamen knee around them as if paddling a canoe. One shaman is in the bow and the drummers are at the stern.

Our Canoe was formed in the cabin that was our workspace, pointing towards the lake in the camp just outside. Our plan was to first paddle to the lake, then down to the damn at the end of the lake and then over the dam and down into the lower world.

I lay in the bottom of the canoe, Shaman all around me. Also in the canoe were the 5 children. Each person has a different vision of the journey, its energies, symbols and creatures as we went our on healing voyage.

This is my perception of the Canoe Journey.

As we paddle down the River I feel the healing energy, the love, from the shaman, their spirit animals and guides, the universe flowing into the children. The girls start to glow with a golden light. Then they begin to grow, grow into beautiful young women, golden and glowing. Next DJ begins to shrink, to grow younger to become a one-year old baby once again also glowing, golden. Abram holds his brother in his young arms as his sisters come together, strong and tall, and float upward. The three sisters hold Abram and Abram holds DJ. Together they begin to float above the Canoe like a glowing golden star.

Meanwhile on the shores of the river, beyond the canoe I see people. I realize that on the right bank are the ancestors in old fashioned clothing going back into time. On the left are the descendants, those born and those yet unborn going into the future as we travel down the river. As the Canoe passes by they are bathed in the healing energy and love, from the 5 children, from the Shamen in the canoe and from all the healing spirits they have brought with them. Up and down through time the blood line is healed.

Eventually we come to waterfall and the canoe falls down it. Now on the shores are the Faery folk. The throw apples at the canoe, golden apples. The same apples the children had thrown at them but transmuted into gold.

When the drum beat changes we are called back, the Shamen in the canoe paddle very hard upstream to bring us back. As we return the children throw the apples to their relatives on both sides of the bank.

When we return I hear the stories of the other Shamen in the canoe. Stories filled with images of playfulness, piping clovers and playful snakes, acorns and leaves all delighting the children. Images of power, eagles, salmon, wolf and water buffalo. Images of birth, rebirth and transformation; the birthing blood washing us clean, glaciers calving, inflamed cords of life being healed and cords of blackness being fed through a golden funnel to created clean golden thread. Images of nurturing with pumpkin pie and cookies. And always healing, love and light, golden light.

“Love, I believe, is the creative force within man. I see it as the force which unites and creates harmony and wholeness. Be it between man, between man and woman, or man seeking himself, or man working with ideas and materials; everywhere there appears the universal desire to create unity. This I call love.”

David Jan, 1959 — Age 18

This story is incomplete. On Nov 1 and 2nd I plan to visit the graves of the children and their parents and I will add the story of that real world journey to this account.