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ljwritesI'm reading a book called Ancient Korean Conceptions of Life and Death (고대 한국인의 생사관), which turns out to be a little bit of a misleading title--in fact the author Na Huira frankly admits that we can't know for sure how ancient Koreans viewed life and death. We have a better idea once they took on more cosmopolitan (and better-documented) beliefs, most prominently Buddhism. This doesn't help me a whole lot, though, since my story takes place centuries before Koreans became Buddhists. Besides, culture probably played a role even after the changes in religious faith, differentiating a Korean Buddhist's beliefs from, say, those of her Vietnamese co-religionist.
To tease out the cultural elements, the author takes the sparse records of ancient Korean practices surrounding life and death and compares them to other cultures near and far, discussing the rationales and extrapolating from there. For instance, in Goguryeoh there was a practice of preparing a shroud for the bride's wedding. The author compares this to other cultures where death and sex were intertwined, such as the funeral courtship rituals among Turkic tribes. She then discussed the role these rituals of romance played in completing the circle of death and rebirth, and surmised that the preparation of the wedding shroud was probably a remnant of a more extensive death ritual during weddings, with the participants (though let's be honest here, it's really the bride) symbolically dying and being reborn to a new existence.
That gave me some neat ideas about the heroine's wedding in the first book. One of her people's major mythological figures is the Bear Woman, a bear who spent 21 days in a cave eating nothing but mugwort and garlic to emerge as a human woman. She joined with a scion of Heaven under a god-tree and bore a son, Dangun, who was the first of the great Korean kings. Perfect model for a wedding rite that simulates death and rebirth? I think so!
There will be no outdoor sex, though. If that part was ever a literal part of the ceremony, I can safely handwave it as something that became sublimated and symbolic since then. The wedding ceremony might take place under a tree that's holy in the community, or the newlyweds' bedroom might be decked out with a tree symbol. And the cave part doesn't have to be literal, either--maybe the heroine was confined to a dark room for three days on a restricted diet. It must feel like the worst grounding ever for a teenage girl, and I'm sure she wheedled a few items of more substantial food from family members or household staff.
So this book, while slender and speculative out of necessity, is providing me with some good material. More than the information, though, I like the feel for the ancient Koreans I get from reading. The discussions give me the means to knit together information I already know, like with the Bear Woman myth and marriage as death-rebirth. For some reason I never thought of the myth in terms of a wedding ritual before, though the connection is obvious once I think about it. I look forward to what more I can learn.
Also I dug up a whole bunch of books on the details of Goguryeoh life, and I'm hitting the library so hard once I get a free day. Snoopy dance!
To tease out the cultural elements, the author takes the sparse records of ancient Korean practices surrounding life and death and compares them to other cultures near and far, discussing the rationales and extrapolating from there. For instance, in Goguryeoh there was a practice of preparing a shroud for the bride's wedding. The author compares this to other cultures where death and sex were intertwined, such as the funeral courtship rituals among Turkic tribes. She then discussed the role these rituals of romance played in completing the circle of death and rebirth, and surmised that the preparation of the wedding shroud was probably a remnant of a more extensive death ritual during weddings, with the participants (though let's be honest here, it's really the bride) symbolically dying and being reborn to a new existence.
That gave me some neat ideas about the heroine's wedding in the first book. One of her people's major mythological figures is the Bear Woman, a bear who spent 21 days in a cave eating nothing but mugwort and garlic to emerge as a human woman. She joined with a scion of Heaven under a god-tree and bore a son, Dangun, who was the first of the great Korean kings. Perfect model for a wedding rite that simulates death and rebirth? I think so!
There will be no outdoor sex, though. If that part was ever a literal part of the ceremony, I can safely handwave it as something that became sublimated and symbolic since then. The wedding ceremony might take place under a tree that's holy in the community, or the newlyweds' bedroom might be decked out with a tree symbol. And the cave part doesn't have to be literal, either--maybe the heroine was confined to a dark room for three days on a restricted diet. It must feel like the worst grounding ever for a teenage girl, and I'm sure she wheedled a few items of more substantial food from family members or household staff.
So this book, while slender and speculative out of necessity, is providing me with some good material. More than the information, though, I like the feel for the ancient Koreans I get from reading. The discussions give me the means to knit together information I already know, like with the Bear Woman myth and marriage as death-rebirth. For some reason I never thought of the myth in terms of a wedding ritual before, though the connection is obvious once I think about it. I look forward to what more I can learn.
Also I dug up a whole bunch of books on the details of Goguryeoh life, and I'm hitting the library so hard once I get a free day. Snoopy dance!
