ํ๊ตญ์์๋ ์๋ ๋ถํฐ ๊ฐ์ข
์ ์ ๋ํ ๋ฏฟ์์ด ์์๋ค. ๅคฉ็ฅ, ๅฑฑ็ฅ์ ๋ฌผ๋ก ์ด๊ณ ๅฐ็ฅ, ๏ง็ฅ, ็ฅไธ็ฅ, ๅ้็ฅ ๋ฑ์ด ์์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฌ๋ ์ด๋ค ์ ๋ค์ ์ผ๋ฐ ์ฌ๋๋ค์ ๋์๋ ๋ณด์ด์ง ์๋ ์กด์ฌ์๋ค. ๋ฐ๋ผ์ ์ด๋ค ์ ์ ํน๋ณํ ์กด์ฌ๋ฅผ ๋งค๊ฐ๋ก ํ์ฌ ์ธ๊ฐ๊ณผ ์ ์ดํ์๋ค. ์ด๋ค์ด ๋ฐ๋ก ์ค๋จผ(Shaman) ์ฆ ๅทซ่ฆก์ด์๋ค. ์ด๊ธฐ์ ์ด๋ค์ ๅธ็ฅญ๋ก์์ ์ญํ ๊ณผ ์ ์น์ ์ง๋ฐฐ์ ์ญํ ์ ๋์์ ์ํํ์์ง๋ง ์ ์ฐจ ์ ์ฌ๊ฐ ์ ์น์ ๋ถ๋ฆฌ๋๋ฉด์ ๊ณ ์ ํ ์์ญ์ ์ง์
์ธ์ด ๋์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ค์ ๋ฌด๊ฒฉ์ด ๋๋ ๊ณผ์ ์์ ๊ฒช๋ ๋ณ์ ์ํ๋ฅผ ๊ทน๋ณตํ ์ ์ ์ ์ธ ์ธ๊ฐ ๋๋ ์ข
๊ต์ ๋ฌธ๊ฐ์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ค์ ๋ํ ๋ณดํต ์์คํ์(Ecstasy)์ ๊ธฐ์ ์์๋ค. ์์คํ์๋ฅผ ํตํด ์ ๊ณผ ์ธ๊ฐ์ ์ตํฉ์ํค๋ ๊ธฐ์ ์ ์ต๋ํ์๋ค. ๊ทธ๊ฒ์ ๋ณดํต ๆญ่์ ํํ๋ก ๋ํ๋ฌ๋ค. ํ๊ตญ ๊ณ ๋์ ์์ด ์ถ์ ๋ ์ ๋ก๋ฅผ ํํ ๋ ์ข
์ข
้ฃฎ้
ๆญ่๋ฅผ ๋๋ฐํ ๊ฒ๋ ๊ทธ ๋๋ฌธ์ด์๋ค. ์ด๋ฌํ ์์คํ์๋ฅผ ํตํด ็ฅ้๊ณผ ๊ต๊ฐํ๋ฉด์ ๊ตญ๊ฐ๋ ์ธ๊ฐ์ ๅๅถ็ฆ็ฆ์ ์ ์น๊ณ ์กฐ์ ํ๋ ๊ธฐ๋ฅ์ ์ํํ์๋ค. ์ด๊ฒ์ด ๋ฐ๋ก ๋ฌด๊ฒฉ ์ ์์ด์๋ค. ํํธ ๋ฌด๊ฒฉ๋ค์ ์ญํ ๊ณผ ๊ธฐ๋ฅ์ ๋ค์ํ์๋ค. ์ฐ์ ์ฐ์ ์ฌ๋ ์ฑํฉ์ฌ ๋ฑ๊ณผ ๊ฐ์ ็ฅ็ฅ ๋ฅผ ๊ด๋ฆฌํ๊ณ ์ ์ฌ๋ฅผ ์ฃผ๊ดํ์๋ค. ์ด๋ ์ ๋ น๊ณผ ์ธ๊ฐ๊ณผ์ ๋งค๊ฐ ์ญํ ์ ํ๋ ๊ทธ๋ค์ด ๋น์ฐํ ํด์ผ ํ๋ ์ผ์ด๊ธฐ๋ ํ์๋ค. ์ ์ฌ์ ์ค๋ ์ฌ๋๋ค์ ์ํด ๋ณต์ ๋น์ด์ฃผ๊ณ ์ ๊ธฐ์ ์ด๊ฑฐ๋ ๋น์ ๊ธฐ์ ์ธ ์ ์ฌ๊ฐ ์์ ๋ ์ด๋ฅผ ์ฃผ๊ดํ์๋ค. ๋น๊ฐ ์ค์ง ์๊ณ ๊ฐ๋ญ์ด ๊ณ์๋ ๋๋ ์ด๋ค์ ๋ชจ์ ๋น๋ฅผ ๋น๊ธฐ๋ ํ์๋ค. ็ฅ้จ ํ์ฌ๋ฅผ ์ฃผ๊ดํ์๋ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค. ๋ฌด๊ฒฉ๋ค์ ํตํด ์ฒ์ ์ ๊ฐ๋์ํค๊ฑฐ๋ ๊ฐ์ ํ ๋น์ด ๋น๊ฐ ๋ด๋ฆฌ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋ฐ๋ฌ๋ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค. ๋ ๊ทธ๋ค์ ์ด์ฉํ์ฌ ์๋ ์ ์๊ฒฌํ๊ณ ๊ฐ์ธ์ด๋ ๋๋ผ์ ๊ธธํ์ ์ ์ณค๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฌ๋ ๋๋ก๋ ์๋๋ฐฉ์ ์ ์ฃผํ๊ณ ๋ฌด๊ณ ํ๋ ์ญํ ๋ ๋ด๋นํ์๋ค. ์ ์์ ์ด์ฉ๋๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค. ์ด๋ ํนํ ์ ๊ฐ์ญ๊ธฐ์ ์ฌํ์๋ค. ์๋น๋ค๋ผ๋ฆฌ์ ์งํฌ๋ ๊ถ๋ ฅ๊ฐ๋ค๋ผ๋ฆฌ์ ์ ์์ ์ด๋ค์ด ๊ฐ์
๋์๋ค. ๋ณ์ ์น๋ฃํ๋๋ฐ ์ด๋ค์ด ์ด์ฉ๋๊ธฐ๋ ํ์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฌ๋ ์ด๋ ์ค์ง์ ์ธ ์๋ฃ ํ์๋ผ๊ธฐ ๋ณด๋ค ์ฌ๋ฆฌ์ ์ธ ์์ ๊ณผ ์น๋ฃ์ ๊ธฐ๋๋ ๊ฒ์ ๋ถ๊ณผํ์๋ค. ๋ ์ด๋ค์ ์์คํ์๋ฅผ ์ํด ๊ฐ๋ฌด์ ์๋ฆฌ๋ฅผ ๊ธฐ๋ณธ์ผ๋ก ํ์๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ฆฌํ์ฌ ์์ค์ด๋ ๊ท์กฑ์ ์ํ์ฌ ๊ฐ๋ฌด๋ ์์
์ ํ๊ณ ์ค๋ฝ ํ์ฌ์ ๋์๋๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค. ์ด๋ฌํ ๋ฌด๊ฒฉ๋ค์ ์ญํ ๊ณผ ๊ธฐ๋ฅ์ ๊ทธ๋ค์ด ์ ๋ น๊ณผ ํตํ์ฌ ๋ฌดํํ ๊ธฐ๋ฅ์ ๊ฐ๊ณ ์๋ค๊ณ ๋ฏฟ๋ ์ฌ์์ ๊ทผ๊ฑฐํ ๊ฒ์ด์๋ค. ์ด๋ฌํ ๋ฌด์ ์ ์์ ์๋ฏธ์ ๋ฌด๊ฒฉ๋ค์ ์ญํ ์ ๊ณผํ์ด ๋ฐ๋ฌํ ํ๋์๋ ์ฌ๋ผ์ง์ง ์๊ณ ์๋ค. ์ด๋ ์ธ๊ฐ์ด ์์ง๋ ํด๊ฒฐํ ์ ์๋ ๊ฒ์ด ๋ง๋ค๋ ๊ฒ์ ์๋ฏธํ๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค.The sky which covers the earth like a veil, is infinite, immovable and awe-inspiring. In a time long ago, it was considered much more. It was a sensation, and by its very essence it emanated power. So from this overwhelming sensation of sky, the ancients made the heavenly value their model of order and the highest deity. Cheonsin (ๅคฉ็ฅ) , the โGod of Heaven , is believed to have descended from the high mountain and became the Sansin (ๅฑฑ็ฅ), the God of the Mountainsโ. In connection with farming Jisin (ๅฐ็ฅ), the โGod of Earthโ, Yongsin (้พ็ฅ), the โGod of Seaโ and others were created. In order to worship dead ancestors the faith in Josangsin (็ฅไธ็ฅ), the โAncestor Spirit Godโ had begun. The โmuโ (ๅทซ่ฆก) are not self-ordained priests, but they come as media, intermediaries between the highest forms of being and humans. At the beginning mu as priests(ๅธ็ฅญ) were also acting as a political rulers, however gradually the veneration for the ancestral rites and politics were separated and indigenous domain of professionals started to form. To became a new shaman-priest a person must have go (should have gone) through a process called Sinbyeong (็ฅ็
), โself-lossโ (shamanistic illness), which is the state of being possessed by a god that had chosen mu. It is said to be accompanied by physical pain and psychosis. Through singing and dancing (ๆญ่) the mu begs the gods to intervene in the fortunes of men. The shaman wears a very colourful costume and usually speaks ecstatically. During a rite, a shaman changes his or hers costume several times. In ancient times in Korea there was a custom of drinking alcohol (飲้
ๆญ่) during the festivals and ancestor worship formalities. While performing in ecstasy the mu were able to connect with their a guardian spirit (็ฅ้) and united they were able to provide fortune telling for the nation or for an individual and they were simultaneously able to fulfil their function as the โcontrollersโ of political situation. All of this is a picture of beliefs concerning mu. Shamans roles, tasks and functions varied widely. Firstly they supervised shrines (็ฅ็ฅ ) like Sansinsa (ๅฑฑ็ฅ็ฅ ) and Songhwangsa (ๅ้็ฅ ) and oversaw the ancestral rites. As media, intermediaries of the highest forms of being mu were standing in-between spirits and humans. Those who visited a shrine could have their fortune told. Occasionally or sometimes regularly, shamans were overseeing ancestral rites. Therefore through granting individual requests shamans were able to receive protection from the officials or government. When there was no rain, or a drought, shamans would perform the sacrificial rain dance ceremony. By eager prayers, using their powers as a medium mu were supposed to affect the heavenly gods and cause rainfall. The mu were supposed to possess powers which allowed them to see into the future, bad or good, wishing one for individuals or the whole country. They were supposed to prevent a course, a false accusation or even a political strife, which were extremely common during Yuan Intervention Period. Accordingly, when queens or men of power were fighting in their groups mu were supposed to intervene. When Korea was under Yuan(ๅ
) rule, the authority of a sovereign was weakened and the countryโs autonomy badly damaged, shamans were treating sicknesses. More than a traditional treatment, the mu provide healing on physical, psychological and spiritual level. What set shamans apart from other healers and priests is their ability to move at will into trance states. During a trance, the shaman s soul leaves his body and travelled to other realms, where helpful spirits guide him in his work. To get to this state of ecstasy they need to sing, dance, and utterances. Using it to their advantage they prepared events for the royal family and aristocracy as a form of entertainment.