The Koryŏ History Account of the Female Spirit Mediums

Record summary

The Koryŏsa and related official histories contain notices about mudang, court rituals, exorcisms, divination, and government efforts to regulate or suppress unauthorized religious specialists. These entries offer unusually valuable administrative evidence for the social presence of mediumship in medieval Korea, while also revealing elite hostility and Confucian editorial framing. They can support comparison of possession, healing, and state control, but rarely provide phenomenologically detailed accounts. Translation, terminology, and retrospective historiography complicate reconstruction of actual ritual practice.