Worshiping the Goddesses of P’albong Mountain: Regional Variation, Authenticity, and Tradition

The mountain gods of P’albong Mountain in western Kangwŏn Province are celebrated in a spring shaman ceremony presided over by a master shaman attached to the village shrine. Several studies of the shrine ceremony made between 1976 and 1990 complement each other at the observational level, but differ as to whether the present ceremony is an imperfectly preserved example of an ideal-typical dualistic purakche made up of a male Confucian ritual complemented by female shamanistic ritual, or a living example of a distinct regional tradition that acquires its authenticity from believers’ inner experience and perception. Mountain worship at P’albong Mountain is documented to be old, yet the current shamans’ ritual is “inspired by the gods” rather than handed down from the past. The article argues for the view of tradition as an interpretive process that embodies both continuity and discontinuity, rather than of tradition as replication of the past.