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Ecological Thought & Healing Function of Korean Shamanism

  • Korean Language & Literature
  • 2014, (91), pp.115-146
  • Publisher : Korean Language & Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature

Lee Young Geum 1

1안동대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Korean shamanism, an organic integration with gods, human beings and nature closely bound, forms a world view. That is, it, not separating the relations between heaven and earth, man and woman, man and god, and man and nature by means of dichotomy, regards them as organic coexistence-relations. Furthermore, it looks upon mediumistic spirit as a key link to the whole creation, and that mediumistic spirit can be categorized into yang energy and yen energy. Heaven, man and human being belong to the former and earth, woman, god and nature the latter. In other words, these two energies lie in the organic relation where these two energies interact with each other very closely. They may conflict or concord with each other. When they conflict to break the balance, the shamanistic exorcism is needed to recovering their harmonious relation. Korean shamanism thinks of the relation between god and man as that of yen and yang along with emphasis of their harmony and balance. God and mand are considered to be yen and yang respectively. When yen and yang conflict to reach an incompatibility, the discord between man and god causes an inharmony. When the yen energy of god is powerful enough to suppress man’s energy, the relation between god and man gets unbalanced. If yen energy is so strong that it stunts yang energy to generate the incompatibility, the yen energy of god becomes the energy of killing. What is important is that the cause of killing energy lies not in the yen energy itself but in the feeling of anger which belongs to the yen energy. When any god happens to have the feeling of anger. it becomes the killing energy which causes human beings disasters. The way of healing by shamanistic exorcism is Shinmyungpuri. Originally god and man have healthy Shinmyung, which is thought to have been murkier due to god’s grudge. Since it is caused from the relation between god and man, Shinmyungpuri is applied to both god and man. That is, the yen energy of god gets murky enough to generate the killing energy and also the yang energy of man which has been suppressed by the killing energy, both god and man are trying to recover the intrinsic wholesome Shinmyung through Shinmyungpuri. Shinmyungpuri by shamanistic exorcism is the way to get rid of the grudge between man and god by the emotion of crying and laughing. The shamanistic exorcism employs a singing method and melody inducing cry and laugh, when god and man cry or laugh in the course of expressing their emotion of grudge which has been accumulated so that they may be healed. Through this ritual, god and man recover their wholesome shinmyung.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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