The priest and priestesses of this “unorganised Shamanism” are blind men called pansus and the women termed mutangs. If you could only forget the horrid meaning of it all, the dancing of the mutang in her worship, in time to the beat of the gong and the drum in the shape of an hourglass, would impress one as quite picturesque. She is supposed to be under the control of a spirit of influence in the realm of darkness, who, for a consideration, can be induced to appease the injured dignity of some malignant spirit who is afflicting a household.
INJURED DIGNITY
She also claims the power to foretell future events. No matte rwhat her position in life, the call of a woman by a spirit to become a mutang is considered irresistible. She will make plenty of money, but at a high price: for she becomes a social outcase, not on moral grounds, but by reason of her vocation.
The pansu deals directly with the evil spirits, which he drives away by repeating exorcisms from a book handed down from the earliest ages, whose words are meaningless at the present time. One of his many pretensions is the bottling of a foul spirit. Under ordinary circumstances it is only necessary to offer some poor food, meanly prepared and offered in coarse dishes, with an order to cease their persecutions, which may be in the form of sickness or mysterious manifestations, such as unaccountable noises, unexplained fires in roofs, the mysterious finding of sieves and articles of clothing in the tops of trees.
If this proves insufficient, the fiend is called and is supposed to manifest his presence by causing the small bit of wood which has been placed on the floor in front of the pansu, to dance in a most extraordinary manner. The pansu chastises him severely with a stick which he grasps in one hand, and drives him into a wide-mouthed, empty bottle which he holds in the other. When this is accomplished, which is indicated by the piece of wood hoppin gin, the bottle is corked, buried at a cross-roads and a fire is built over the spot. These are some of the methods employed by the pansus and the mutangs.
p112 in Every-day life in Korea. A collection of studies and stories. D.L. Gifford. 1897.