It seems to me that the real meaning of shamanism has been confused by even some scholars as well as most people in Korea. They use it as a definition applicable to primitive religion in general, but this doesn't give any full and complete definition of it-some of them confuse it with priests or magicians or sorcerers. In introducing views of shamanism, I tried to confine its concept to shamanistic ecstasy. Shamanistic ecstasy examined in detail is to be similar to that of the shamanism of Siberia as a whole. The patterns of shamanism in Korea can be divided into two-one that indicates only fortune-telling or shaman-medicine whose ritual contents weren't disclosed until after initation, and the other one that developed the contents of shamanistic ritual as well as the function of fortune-telling, and it involved the function of fortune-telling, shamanistic ritual, shaman-medicine and recreation together. The former may be called incomplete dance and the latter the complete one. In short, in the first place, Korean shamanism resembles that of Siberia with the same system. And its ecstasy is also regarded as the core essence. In the second place, shamanistic ecstasy has never been changed even though hard restrictions have been placed upon it. Thirdly, there are other patterns of primitve religion, priests and fortune-tellers apart from shamanism in Korea.
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