Korean Shamanism

Korean Shamanism
Author: Chongho Kim
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2018-01-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1351772147

Title first published in 2003. Shamanism has a contradictory position within the Korean cultural system, leading to the periodical suppression of shamanism yet also, paradoxically, ensuring its survival throughout Korean history. This book examines the place of shamans within contemporary society as a cultural practice in which people make use of shamanic ritual and disputing the prevalent view that shamanism is 'popular culture', a 'women's religion' or 'performing arts'. Directly confronting the prejudice against shamans and their paradoxical situation in a modern society such as Korea, this book reveals the cultural discrepancy between two worlds in Korean culture, the ordinary world and the shamanic world, showing that these two worlds cannot be reconciled. This unique study of shamanism offers a significant contribution to growing studies in indigenous anthropology and indigenous religions, and provides a captivating read for a wide range of readers through retelling the stories-never-to-be-told involving shamanic ritual.

Korean Shamanistic Rituals

Korean Shamanistic Rituals
Author: Jung Y. Lee
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2018-02-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110811375

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems– both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

The Mermaid from Jeju

The Mermaid from Jeju
Author: Sumi Hahn
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-12-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1643854410

A POPSUGAR Best Book of December 2020 An AMAZON Editors Pick December 2020 A SHE READS Best Historical Fiction Novel Winter 2021 A BUSTLE Most Anticipated Winter 2021 Read A LIBRO.FM Influencer Pick, December 2020 Inspired by true events on Korea's Jeju Island, Sumi Hahn's "entrancing [debut] novel, brimming with lyricism and magic" (Jennifer Rosner, The Yellow Bird Sings) explores what it means to truly love in the wake of devastation. In the aftermath of World War II, Goh Junja is a girl just coming into her own. She is the latest successful deep sea diver in a family of strong haenyeo. Confident she is a woman now, Junja urges her mother to allow her to make the Goh family's annual trip to Mt. Halla, where they trade abalone and other sea delicacies for pork. Junja, a sea village girl, has never been to the mountains, where it smells like mushrooms and earth. While there, she falls in love with a mountain boy Yang Suwol, who rescues her after a particularly harrowing journey. But when Junja returns one day later, it is just in time to see her mother take her last breath, beaten by the waves during a dive she was taking in Junja's place. Spiraling in grief, Junja sees her younger siblings sent to live with their estranged father. Everywhere she turns, Junja is haunted by the loss of her mother, from the meticulously tended herb garden that has now begun to sprout weeds, to the field where their bed sheets are beaten. She has only her grandmother and herself. But the world moves on without Junja. The political climate is perilous. Still reeling from Japan's forced withdrawal from the peninsula, Korea is forced to accommodate the rapid establishment of US troops. Junja's canny grandmother, who lived through the Japanese invasion that led to Korea's occupation understands the signs of danger all too well. When Suwol is arrested for working with and harboring communists, and the perils of post-WWII overtake her homelands, Junja must learn to navigate a tumultuous world unlike anything she's ever known.

Shamanism

Shamanism
Author: R. W. L. Guisso
Publisher: Jain Publishing Company
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1988
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0895818868

A series of psychological and anthropological studies about the oldest and the most fascinating religious tradition of Korea.

Winds of Spirit

Winds of Spirit
Author: Renee Baribeau
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018-02-06
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1401952755

A practical guide to connect to powerful wind energies that navigate us toward authentic joy, power, and purpose. In this book, you’ll explore the rich mythology and cultural significance of wind, and discover a powerful system to utilize the subtle, healing energies in your life. Winds of Spirit will teach you how to connect with your true inner self, use your body as a compass, and receive life-changing messages from nature. Based on an ancient sacred technique used by farmers, shamans and sailors, this system will show you how to navigate your personal path, providing insight into how to manage the wind patterns and shifting conditions affecting you. You will also learn how to invoke wind deities—gods and goddesses from around the world—and the cardinal winds from the four quadrants of the sky, each of which relate to the inner landscape of your life: mind, emotions, body, and spirit. By working with the omnipresent winds in your life, you can restore harmony and balance, heal the body, and inspire creativity. Experiential practices include wind breath, wind bath, wind knots, and more!

The Shamanism Bible

The Shamanism Bible
Author: John Matthews
Publisher: Hamlyn
Total Pages: 491
Release: 2014-08-04
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0600627888

This evocative guide to Shamanism takes you on a journey from its origins in Europe, North America, Siberia and the Arctic Circle through to contemporary rituals to try today. Illustrated with cultural images, totems and people, shaman John Matthews reveals the rich animistic traditions of this ancient spirituality and reveals how it can empower your life. Discover: The significance of power animals Shapeshifting - moving into different states of being Healing with spirit guides Vision questing - finding guidance in meditation and dream experiences Working with totems Shamanic drumming and trance

Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits

Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits
Author: Laurel Kendall
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1987-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780824811426

“This exceptionally well-written book is good reading, not only for specialists but also for beginning students interested in women, Korean culture, and shamanism.” —Journal of Asian Studies “Kendall maintains a closeness with and respect for her subject that keeps away the chill of academic distance and yet avoids sentimentality.” —Korean Quarterly, Spring 2001

The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion

The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion
Author: Bernhard Scheid
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2015-04-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 113416873X

The Japanese Middle Ages were a period when forms of secrecy dominated religious practice. This fascinating collection traces out the secret characteristics and practices in Japanese religion, as well as analyzing the decline of religious esotericism in Japan. The essays in this impressive work refer to Esoteric Buddhism as the core of Japan’s "culture of secrecy". Esoteric Buddhism developed in almost all Buddhist countries of Asia, but it was of particular importance in Japan where its impact went far beyond the borders of Buddhism, also affecting Shinto as well as non-religious forms of discourse. The contributors focus on the impact of Esoteric Buddhism on Japanese culture, and also include comparative chapters on India and China. Whilst concentrating on the Japanese medieval period, this book will give readers familiar with present day Japan, many explanations for the still visible remnants of Japan’s medieval culture of secrecy.

Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF

Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF
Author: Laurel Kendall
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2009-09-01
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0824833430

Thirty years ago, anthropologist Laurel Kendall did intensive fieldwork among South Korea’s (mostly female) shamans and their clients as a reflection of village women’s lives. In the intervening decades, South Korea experienced an unprecedented economic, social, political, and material transformation and Korean villages all but disappeared. And the shamans? Kendall attests that they not only persist but are very much a part of South Korean modernity. This enlightening and entertaining study of contemporary Korean shamanism makes the case for the dynamism of popular religious practice, the creativity of those we call shamans, and the necessity of writing about them in the present tense. Shamans thrive in South Korea’s high-rise cities, working with clients who are largely middle class and technologically sophisticated. Emphasizing the shaman’s work as open and mutable, Kendall describes how gods and ancestors articulate the changing concerns of clients and how the ritual fame of these transactions has itself been transformed by urban sprawl, private cars, and zealous Christian proselytizing. For most of the last century Korean shamans were reviled as practitioners of antimodern superstition; today they are nostalgically celebrated icons of a vanished rural world. Such superstition and tradition occupy flip sides of modernity’s coin—the one by confuting, the other by obscuring, the beating heart of shamanic practice. Kendall offers a lively account of shamans, who once ministered to the domestic crises of farmers, as they address the anxieties of entrepreneurs whose dreams of wealth are matched by their omnipresent fears of ruin. Money and access to foreign goods provoke moral dilemmas about getting and spending; shamanic rituals express these through the longings of the dead and the playful antics of greedy gods, some of whom have acquired a taste for imported whiskey. No other book-length study captures the tension between contemporary South Korean life and the contemporary South Korean shamans’ work. Kendall’s familiarity with the country and long association with her subjects permit nuanced comparisons between a 1970s "then" and recent encounters—some with the same shamans and clients—as South Korea moved through the 1990s, endured the Asian Financial Crisis, and entered the new millennium. She approaches her subject through multiple anthropological lenses such that readers interested in religion, ritual performance, healing, gender, landscape, material culture, modernity, and consumption will find much of interest here.