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Korean mystic shamanism – Methods – Enacting ritual and ceremony
Identifier
027160
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Korean Shamanist Ritual - Symbols and Dramas of Transformation - Daniel Kister
In evoking the presence and power of the gods and spirits, initiatory mudang employ not only mimetic gestures, but feats of wonder.
Since a kut conveys no body of abstract doctrine, it may seem not to qualify as religious activity in the sense of the Korean term, chonggyo, which includes associations of teaching in its root meaning.
It arouses, however, the "blank wonder" that Rudolf Otto identifies as human beings' primal reaction to the sacred (195O:26). Such wonder cannot be taught; it can only be "induced, incited, and aroused', (1950:60); and kut theater is admirably suited to induce it.