Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/518

 the very lowest point in the social system. She is always an abandoned character, though generally married. She pretends to be a sort of spiritual medium, and by her friendship with the spirits to be able to influence them as she may wish. Kija is said to have brought with him from China the art of necromancy. It is sure that a character closely allied to that of the mudang has existed in China for thousands of years, and if Kija was an actual character, it is more than likely that he brought this form of incantation. We cannot conclude that he brought the spirit worship, but only the peculiar method by which the spirits might be governed. The ceremony performed by the mudang, and without which her services are of no avail, is called a kut. There are ten different forms of service that she may perform by means of this kut.

The service most in demand is that of driving out the spirit of disease. But why should spirits torment people in this way. Well, there are the " hungry " spirits. They come around the door when you are eating, and if you do not throw them a morsel of food they have a grievance against you, and so have power to lay you on a bed of sickness. Of two intimate friends one dies, and his spirit tries to keep up the intimacy after death. This too will make trouble. If a man has wronged the spirits by denying their existence, it is sure to be visited on his head. The spirit that haunts rubbish of various kinds that had lain a long time in one place will follow and injure the man that disturbs them. If you go to the house of a person that has just died, his released spirit is very likely to follow you home and make trouble for you. Such are only a few of the countless ways in which a man may gain the ill-will of the spirits, and from them we can readily see that it will be often through no actual fault of the man but only by pure chance.

Let us then suppose that a man by some such mischance has contracted a disease. He may not be sure that it is caused by a spirit, but if he has reason to suspect that such is the case he will send to the home of a mudang, describing his symptoms and