But things usually go smoothly, and on being allowed to have her own way the first thing she does is to go into a vacant room and fill it with flowers as an offering to the dæmons. Then she must obtain the clothing and professional paraphernalia of a deceased mu-tang. The clothing may be destroyed after the dæmon has taken full possession of his new recruit, but the drums and other instruments must be retained. After the possessions of the deceased mu-tang have been bestowed on the new one who claims them, she proceeds to exorcise such bad spirits as may be infesting the donor’s house, so as to enable his family to live in peace, after which she writes his name on a tablet, and placing it in a small room invokes blessings on him for three years.
After this ceremonial has been observed the mu-tang, fully possessed by a dæmon, begins to exercise her very important and lucrative profession. Her equipment consists of a number of dresses, some of them very costly, a drum shaped like an hour-glass, four feet in length, copper cymbals, a copper rod, with tinklers suspended from it by copper chains, strips of silk and paper banners which float round her as she dances, fans, umbrellas, wands, images of men and animals, brass or copper gongs, and a pair of telescope-shaped baskets for scratching, chiefly used in cases of cholera, which disease is supposed to result from rats climbing about in the human interior. The scratching sound made by a peculiar use of these baskets, which resembles the noise made by cats, is expected to scare and drive away these rodents.
The preliminaries of exorcism are that the mu-tang must subject herself to certain restraints varying from a month to three days, during which time she must abstain from flesh and fish, and must partially fast. Before an exorcism ashes are steeped in water and the sorceress takes of this, and sprinkles it as she walks round the house, afterwards taking pure water and going through the same ceremony.
The almost fabulous sums squeezed by the mu-tang out of the people of Seoul are given in a previous chapter. It will be observed that in Korea sickness is always associated with dæmoniacal possession, and that the services of the Pan-su, or mu-tang, are always requisitioned. European medicine and surgery are the most successful assailants of this barbarous and degrading system which holds the whole nation, in many respects highly civilized, in bondage, and the influence of both as practised in connection with “Medical Missions” is tending increasingly in the direction of emancipation.
It would be impossible to say how far the mu-tang is self-deceived. In some of her dances, especially in one in which she exorcises “The dæmon of the Yi family,” one of the most powerful and malignant of the dæmon hierarchy, she works herself into such a delirious frenzy that she falls down foaming at the mouth, and death is occasionally the result of the frantic excitement.
The “Dæmon of the Yi Family” is invoked in every district once in three years by the mu-tang in a formula which has been translated thus—“Oh Master and Mistress of our Kingdom, may you ever exist in peace. Once in every three years we invoke you with music and dancing. Oh make this house to be peaceful.” If this malignant spirit arrives at a house he can only be appeased by the death of a man, an ox, or a pig. Therefore when the mu-tang becomes aware that he has come to a house or neighborhood, a pig is at once killed, boiled, and offered up entire—the exorcist takes two knives and dances a sword dance, working herself into a “fine frenzy,” after which a box is made and a Korean official hat and robes are placed within it, as well as a dress suitable for a palace lady. The box is then placed on the top of the family clothes chest, and sacrifices are frequently offered there. This dæmon is regarded as the spirit of a rebellious Crown Prince, the sole object of whose dæmon existence is to injure all with whom he can come into contact.
A man sometimes marries a mu-tang, but he is invariably “a fellow of the baser sort,” who desires to live in idleness on the earnings of his wife. If, as is occasionally the case, the mu-tang belongs to a noble family, she is only allowed to exorcise spirits in her own house, and when she dies she is buried in a hole in a mountain-side with the whole paraphernalia of her profession. Some mu-tang do not go abroad for purposes of exorcism. These may be regarded as the aristocracy of their profession, and many of them are of much repute and live in the suburbs of Seoul. Those who desire their services send the necessary money and offerings, and the mu-tang exorcise the spirits in their own houses.
The use of straw, ropes, and of pieces of paper resembling the Shinto gohei, during incantations, with a certain similarity between the Shinto and the Shaman ceremonies, might suggest a common origin, but our knowledge of the Dæmonism of Korea is so completely in its infancy, that any speculations as to its kinships can be of little value, and it is only as a very slight contribution to the sum of knowledge of an obscure but very interesting subject, that I venture to present these chapters to my readers.
The Koreans, it must be remarked, have no single word for Dæmonism or Shamanism. The only phrase in use to express their belief in dæmons who require to be propitiated is, Kursin wi han-nan Köt (the worship of Spirits). Pulto is Buddhism, Yuto Confucianism, and Sönto Taoism, but the termination To, “doctrine,” has not yet been affixed to Dæmonism.
FOOTNOTES: