Reading Folk Beliefs as Culture: Korean Shamanism, Totems and 'Spirit Animals', and the Evil Eye

Folk beliefs aren’t just “believe it or not”

Before asking whether folk beliefs are scientifically true or false, they are a cultural record of how people have handled anxiety and hope. Anthropology studies what role these beliefs play within a community.

Korean shamanism: gut rituals and mudang

Musok (Korean shamanism) is an old Korean belief in which a shaman, the mudang, mediates between spirits and people. In the ritual called gut, the mudang uses song, dance and gongsu (the words of the spirits) to resolve a household’s illness or misfortune, or the grief of the dead.

• History: shamans were looked down on under the Confucian order of the Joseon dynasty and suppressed by modern “anti-superstition” campaigns, yet the practice continued among ordinary people (Kim, 1981).
• Women’s ritual: from fieldwork in rural Korea in the 1970s, the anthropologist Kendall (1985) analysed shamanism as a ritual space where women, responsible for household well-being, dealt with family problems.
• Cultural heritage: several gut rituals, such as Jindo ssitgimgut and the West Coast baeyeonsingut and daedonggut, are designated National Intangible Cultural Heritage and continue to be passed on.

Totems and “spirit animals”

The word “totem” comes from the Ojibwe language of North America. It referred to a system in which a clan had a special relationship with a particular animal or plant and used it as the clan’s emblem.

The sociologist Durkheim (1912) saw the totem as the way a community symbolises itself and used it to explain the origins of religion. Lévi-Strauss (1962), by contrast, criticised grouping “totemism” as a single form of religion, explaining it instead as a way of thinking about differences between social groups through differences between natural species.

Today’s self-help idea of “your spirit animal” is different from these traditions. It is closer to a modern metaphor comparing an individual’s personality to an animal, and it helps to know that it differs from the totem, which was originally a community institution.

The evil eye: amulets against envy

The evil eye is the belief that someone’s envious or covetous gaze can cause harm. It appears across a very wide area, including the Mediterranean, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America. The folklorist Dundes (1981) edited a casebook comparing how the belief appears across cultures.

Typical amulets include the Turkish blue-eye glass nazar boncuğu and the palm-shaped hamsa of the Middle East and North Africa. Customs such as deliberately finding fault when praising a child, or “knocking on wood,” are thought to stem from similar ideas.

The belief captures people’s experience that envy can damage relationships within a community. Research on envy as an emotion is covered in the article on dark traits and manipulation.

Summary at a glance

Belief	Origin and role	Research perspective
Korean shamanism	Mudang resolve illness, misfortune and grief through gut rituals	A ritual space for women; intangible heritage
Totems	Ojibwe word; relationship between a clan and a species	Durkheim: a community symbol / Lévi-Strauss: classificatory thinking
Spirit animals	A modern self-help metaphor	Distinguish from traditional totems
Evil eye	Belief that an envious gaze causes harm	An expression of envy damaging relationships

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References

• Kim, T. (1981). Hanguk musok yeongu (Studies in Korean Shamanism). Jipmundang.
• Kendall, L. (1985). Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life. University of Hawaii Press.
• Durkheim, É. (1912). Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Alcan.
• Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962). Le totémisme aujourd’hui. Presses Universitaires de France.
• Dundes, A. (Ed.). (1981). The Evil Eye: A Casebook. Garland.