Rituals or gut (굿)
The gut is a shamanic ritual during which the shaman offers a sacrifice to the spirits. Through singing and dancing the shaman begs the spirits to intervene in the fortunes of the humans in question. The shaman wears a very colourful costume and normally speaks in trance. During a gut a shaman changes his or her costume several times.
There are three elements of a gut. Firstly, there are the spirits as the object of folk beliefs. Secondly, there are the believers who pray to those spirits. Finally, there is the shaman mediating between the two.
The actual form of gut varies between regions. The unfolding and style of the shamanic rite depends largely on the objective of the ceremony. The individual character and abilities of the shaman bring a unique character to the respective ritual to be performed.
The main variations of gut are naerim-gut, dodang-gut and ssitgim-gut and shamans are either of hereditary lineage or spirit-possessed.
Read more about this topic: Korean Shamanism
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