Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/517

 of luck-bringers, just as our American negroes carry rabbits' feet. In Korea there are the Luck-snake, the Luck-pig, the Luck-toad, the Luck-weasel and the Luck-man. There are places in the country where people worship the Luck-snake, and the presence of a large snake near a house is welcomed as a good sign.

Each year, about New- Year's time, the Koreans make little straw manikins, stuff a few cash into their bodies and then throw them into the streets, where small boys seize upon them and tear them to pieces for the sake of the money. In this way the spirit of ill-luck is supposed to be dismembered and rendered innocuous. Some people hang a hat and a coat at the entrance of the house as a fetich of the Door-spirit. Others hang up old shoes, bunches of grass and fishes' heads as fetiches of their various household divinities.

Among all the spirits of disease, that which represents the smallpox is the most dangerous, and elaborate ceremonies are gone through to keep him out or, if he has already entered, to get him out again.

Such is a list of some of the many spirits which swarm about the Korean, keep him under constant espionage, and are ready at any moment to fall upon him in wrath. If he goes among the mountains, they are there; if he goes into his inner room, they are there; if he travels to the remotest corner of the earth, they will follow him. It remains, therefore, to examine the ways in which he can keep on good terms with these figments of his imagination, which are still very real to him.

Korean society is blessed, or cursed, with two handicrafts whose aim and end it is to deal with these occult powers with which the Oriental imagination peoples all space. The people who follow these vocations are called mudang and pansu, the nearest approach to which in English is "sorceress" and "exorcist," but they might be broadly termed witches and wizards. The word mudang means "deceiving crowd," and pansu means "decider of destiny." The former name is specially appropriate. The mudang is always a woman, and is considered at