[Author’s Note: This essay was first included in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, published in 2018 by Mago Books.]
This essay may be called a Magoist study of the Korean foundation myth, also known as the Dangun myth. It reinstates Goma, better known as “Ungnyeo (Bear/Sovereign Woman),” the shaman ruler of pre-patriarchal Korea, who is the main character of the Korean foundation myth. Here “Mago” stands for the Creatrix and “Magoism” for pre-patriarchally originated indigenous tradition of East Asia that venerates the Creatrix.[1] Identifying Goma as the ruler Goddess of Old Korea/East Asia is by no means a new effort. She is, although few in number, alluded to the eponymous Goddess of ancient Korean States (Goma State, for example) in both historical sources and modern research. In fact, “Ungnyeo” is one of the most studied topics by Korean linguists, mythologists, and historians for it concerns the identity of the Korean people. Nonetheless, those studies tend to be monodisciplinary or androcentric in their approaches and consequently fail to assess her full-fledged supreme identity as the ancestor ruler of East Asian nations. This chapter engages in transdisciplinary, comparative, and feminist approaches to elucidating the Goma myth. At the outset, we will rename “the Korean foundation myth” “the Goma myth.” That is corollary in that she is the central figure of the story. Also it introduces Old Korea as the One People of the Creatrix, anciently known as Nine Hans (九桓 Guhan). The Goma myth restores the gynocentric multi-meaning of “Nine Hans” and “Magoist Koreans/East Asians,” which is non-ethnocentric and supra-nationalist in origin. The character, “Han (桓),” in “Nine Hans” and “Hanguk,” is complex in meaning as it connotes “one,” “whole, “great,” “good,” “same,” “bright,” “many,” “correct,” “middle,” “full” and the like. Thus, “Nine Hans” refer to the People of the Creatrix who have those qualities of the character “Han.” Koreanists have designated as Hanism (the Han thought) this inclusive and polysemic nature of the word “Han” characteristic of traditional Korean worldview.[2] Although naming it Hanism is insightful, it may be misleading without a full-fledged hermeneutics of Goma mythology.
Goma, known as Ungnyeo or Gom, remains underestimated and misrepresented among modern Koreans. A common understanding of the Korean foundation myth goes that she was the bear who became a woman and married Hanung, the divine sage ruler of Old Korea, and gave birth to a son, Dangun, the founder of the proto-Chinese Joseon dynasty (2333 BCE-232 BCE). Goma is diminished to the role of a mother of an assumed male hero at best. Consequently, she is redacted from the mytho-historical context of Old Magoist Korea/East Asia (the pre-patriarchal gynocentric people of the Creartrix), and divested of her supreme identity as the dynastic founder of Danguk (3898 BCE-2333 BCE).
Given the immensity and complexity of the topic and its data, it is admittedly impossible to treat them comprehensively within a chapter. While many salient themes are discussed, many others are not treated. Among the untreated are Nine Numerology and its cross-cultural manifestations beyond East Asia. This essay aims the following: (1) It provides some pivotal background discussions as well as overall characteristics of the Goma myth. (2) It introduces and delineates the four narratives of the Goma myth selectively chosen from various written texts. The fact that the topic of Goma has rarely been brought to light in its own right in the West adds to the difficulty. This has to do with the fact that pre-Chinese Korean/East Asian history is deemed heterodox, if recognized, in mainstream (read Sinocentric and patriarchal) East Asian Studies. Not only her supreme identity but also her Magoist mytho-historical context remains as non-data in the institutionalized practice of Korean Studies. Our task necessarily involves a controversial feminist methodology, debunking conventional interpretations as a product of Sinocentrism. Mainstream Koreanists have endorsed or internalized the Chinese ethnocentric worldview that is patriarchal and imperialist. Reversing the multiple reversals, the current work, as a result, exposes what is written out of the official East Asian mytho-historiography.
Goma had a great spirit from birth. Because of her vision of “benefiting the human world widely,” she was entrusted by the last shaman queen, Hanin of Hanguk (桓國 State of One People, c. 7199 BCE – 3898 BCE), with the task of restoring the Reign of the Creatrix. Toward the end of the Hanguk confederacy, clan names and their customs grew apart. And a belligerent tiger clan rose. They raided and plundered neighboring tribes. Goma conceived a will to pacify a social problem caused by this unruly patrilocal clan. Determined to constrain the tiger clan, she requested Hanin to send her to the troubled region. Hanin granted her wish and sent her to the region, Mount Taebaek (Great Resplendence).
Leading the royal bear clan of 3,000 people, Goma arrived at Mount Taebaek and settled adjacent to the tiger clan. Rather than a military solution, she proposed a covenant for both the bear clan and the tiger clan to observe. Both clans underwent a trial, which was to dwell in a cave hall and endure 100 days without seeing the sunlight, living on mugwort and chive.
I call her proposal the cave initiation, a socio-spiritual pledge to undergo the ordeal of the cave environment in order to tap into one’s innate power of restoring true human nature. The cave is a physical and metaphorical place for the womb of the Primordial Mother, the sacred space/time of unity, wholeness, and rebirth, wherein everyone once dwelt. The cave initiation represents a returning to the knowing of the common origin of all beings, the Crearix.
Goma proffered the tiger clan an option of changing their predatory behaviors but they could not endure the cave initiation. The bear clan endured for three seven days (21 days) and attained the female character, the true human nature. The tiger clan was expelled to a remote designated land outside Four Seas, the territory of Old Magoist East Asia, by verdict of the law that Goma legislated. Thereupon, Nine Hans (九桓the Nine People of the Creatrix) began to prosper.
She was enthroned as a new dynastic founder by people. She was given the title of Hanung (Hero of Han, the People of the Creatrix). By inheriting the Heavenly Emblem of Three Seals from Hanin, she performed the rite of succession and preserved the linage of her ancestor Magoist shaman rulers. Following this, Goma and her women officials went out to the Divine Goma Tree (神壇樹 Sindansu) atop Mount Taebaek daily and aspired ceaselessly for the conception of a child. She reenacted the Magoist cosmogony, the beginning story of all beings from the Creatrix, through the living tree once and for all. Like the Triad Creatrix who alone gave birth to HER eight daughters in the beginning, Goma succeeded in giving birth without a male partner. She was deified as Holy Queen Mother who reenacted the teaching of the Triad Creatrix on earth.
Goma foresaw the coming of the degenerative era, to be brought by the establishment and expansion of patriarchal rules. She consolidated female sovereignty and taught people the Way of the Triad Creatrix, the prime representation of Nine Numerology. Her government put into practice the Magoist mandate of bringing all beings to the common origin of the Creatrix (麻姑復本 Return to the Origin of Mago). Her councils administered about 360 affairs of the human and natural world. Goma designated women of the bear clan as rulers, inaugurated matrimony, endowed men with the right of fathers and provided the elderly and children with care. Having invented new technologies including building palace/shrine chambers, ships and vehicles, she traveled the world by sea and land to remind the human race of the common origin of all beings. Upon return from her journeys, Goma learned a number of spoken languages and written languages. She established calendar and numerology, trained in medical and medicinal cures, composed books on astronomy and geography. She elevated the standard of the human life unprecedentedly across cultures. The custom of cultivating human intelligence through studies began from her rule.
(To be continuned. Full article is available in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture.)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.
Notes
[1] Read “Ma” in Mago as in mama. “Mago (麻姑)” is an East Asian term also known as Magu (Maku) or Mako whose logographic characters mean the Hemp Goddess. “G” and “K” can be interchangeably used in romanizing the logographic characters.
[2] Gyeongsuk Yi, Jaesun Bak, and Oksung Cha, Hanguk Saengmyeong Sasang-ui Ppuri (Root of the Korean Thought on Life) (Seoul: Ewha Women’s University Press, 2001), 42-4.
Comment from Swami Pujananda Saraswati:
“This is a remarkable groundbreaking essay. I am fascinated and questions keep coming up, as I read. How did Magoism, How did Ungnyego, the Mago Creatrix relates to the Goddesses of India, at a time when the world did not have the geographical divisions it has today? Why do we keep forgetting that the Wise ones, some monastic groups from antiquity and even self-motivated individuals, walked through
extensive territories, and it is very possible that just as in more recent Buddhist lore, the Buddha traveled through India into China, just as well, Women pilgrims and their male disciples also traveled resulting in the merging of some elements in the Goddess spiritual lore, while demonstrating particular cultural distinctions every few hundred miles. By this I mean, that there might be some underlying cohesion in Goddess spirituality and practices throughout Korea’s Bear Woman/Goddess narratives all the way to India, which remains to be further explored. This essay invites me to enter the ethos of the time, from Korea in ancient times, extending as far west as the Goddess traditions of India in ways that reveal to us the depth of cultures of great tolerance and appreciation for differences in the midst of similarities.
My gratitude goes to Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang for her in-depth research and monumental efforts to bring us out of patriarchal ignorance.”