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Mudang spiritual experiences – Healing complaints against which medical doctors are powerless, and diseases which cannot be explained completely by medical science
Identifier
027168
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Songs of the Shaman – Dr Boudewijn Walraven
The term Gate of Words (malmun) ….. seems to have a rather more comprehensive meaning, referring to the whole of the "mechanism" through which the mudang are able to communicate with the supernatural. The final lines are about the medical activities of the mudang. The calling of the mudang here is represented as a last resort. Mudang often express resentment over the fact that people do not appeal to them earlier. On the other hand, at least these days, they accept the fact that sometimes it is better to use medicine -either Chinese medicine or Western medicine- and they declare themselves especially suited to treat complaints against which medical doctors are powerless, diseases which cannot be explained completely by medical science, in other words diseases "caused by the spirits."
In this way it is
That we hold the Divine Sword.
165. Through the Gate of Words
Made by the Saints of the past
We too, we mudang, hear and see,
Visiting each and every place,
If there is a house where a kut is held.
170. The people there, [themselves] having tried medicine,
Tried whatever they could,
When [the condition of the patient is so desperate
that) even dying is no cause for regret,
Fetch a mudang:
"Please hold a kut",
175. And when they ask in this way,
We mudang of Kyongsang Province
Go to that house
And hold a kut.