NEWS

The particularity of Newar society in the Kathmandu Valley is the coexistence of Buddhism and Hinduism for centuries. At the level of the religion of the individual, the Newars define themselves either as Hindus or as Buddhists and employ either a Buddhist priest (vajracarya) or a Brahman.

In Newar society, rites of passage provide social and ethnic identity. Two rites are specific for the Newars of the Kathmandu valley: the marriage of young girls before puberty (ihi) with a God either Vairocana for Buddhists or Vishnu Narayana for Shivaite Hindus. The second ritual is that celebrated by a person as well a man as a woman who reaches the age of seventy-seven years, seven months and seven days, a ritual called bhura jyanko or bhima ratha which ensures the passage of a person from the world of men in the world of the gods.

The evening will be devoted to the description of the wedding ritual (ihi) celebrated by Buddhists in Thimi, a locality located in the east of the valley. The ceremony lasts two days, the morning of the first day is devoted to the installation of the mandala of Vajradhatu and the invitation of the gods who must attend the ceremony. The second part of the first day is marked by taking the measurement of the girl's body with a yellow cord. The marriage with the ritual of the gift of the daughter and the walk around the fire will take place on the second day in the presence of the priest. Only the priest knows the text in Newari and Sanskrit which will be used during the celebration of the ritual. Apart from the priest two other categories, painters and potters play an important role in the unfolding of the ritual. This ritual marriage with a god, before puberty, is followed by a marriage with a human husband, at the age of fifteen.

Hoping you always faithful to these evenings.

Keeryang PARK's lecture will provide answers to the following points:

1 - To have an overview of Korean shamanism,

2 - Knowing its components,

3 - Understand the sequences,

4 - To perceive the meaning of gut Jeseok as an element of Korean shamanism,

5 - Appreciate the value of Jeseok dance.

This evening will take place on

Thursday, April 28 at 06:00 PM Paris

Keeryang PARK will speak from Korea, in Korean. A French translation will be done simultaneously.

This evening will be organized in collaboration with Mr. Denis MEINGAN.

The subject being new compared to our usual center of interest it is perhaps not useless to indicate you some selected publications, by Clémence of the bookshop the Phoenix on the Korean shamanism:

In French:

"The shaman with the fan, a life story of a Korean mudang", Imago, 2015

"Sharing Happiness, Unraveling Resentment, Story of the Shaman with Ten Thousand Spirits" by Kim Kum-hwa, Imago, 2015

Cahier d'Extrême Asie, number 6, EFEO, 1991–1992

"Island of the Shamans" by Jay Kim, Matin calme, 2021

"La Chamane" by DONG-RI K., Maisonneuve & Larose, 2001.

En anglais :

"Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion" de Kendall, Laurel

"Religion in Korea: Harmony and Coexistence" de Koehler, Robert

"Folk Art and Magic: Shamanism in Korea" de Alan Carter Covell

"Mu-Ga : The Ritual Songs of the Korean Mudangs".

You will have the opportunity to participate in the meeting by logging on to Zoom

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85019208352?pwd=bGpKN29hMUIzT3QwMis5eGdkQ1Vwdz09&fbclid=IwAR1En2OHldcBpUYIQAHm7F3hXcXtqPL59rOYANW0ZXIN6EPZbuBBZQ9DKM8

Meeting ID: 850 1920 8352 Secret code: 844433

The couple "Eros and Thanatos", whether we want to characterize it by the opposition of life and death, the association of sexual and death drives, or love and carnal pleasure as opposed to cadaverization and putrefaction, continues to cross space and time in Western Europe. We find a counterpoint to this in East Asia, referring first to Indian traditions that depict the phallus of the god Śiva erected above the yoni, or womb of the goddess. This sculptural assemblage is indeed presented in infinite artistic variety, and symbolizes the ideas of creation and destruction, the powers of life and death, combining in a quasi-organic union the organs of the god Śiva and the goddess or primordial force (shakti). We want to show how, in Tibetan tantric dances ('cham) and many of the ritual celebrations related to the cycles of life and death among the Indo-Tibetan populations of Nepal, similar male and female energies are represented and dealt with around the construction and destruction of a liṅgam (Sanskrit term), a male or female anthropomorphic figure, sometimes bisexual, drawn on a paper support or fabricated to embody evil, the personal enemy, or the enemy of the whole religion. Long and complex tantric and exorcistic rituals are played and replayed in Indo-Tibetan ritual theater, through dances, visualizations and ephemeral constructions (of the mdos type), in which the aim is to destroy the 'demon-obstacles' that attack the person, while letting the 'soul' of these demons exhale, a procedure that reinforces the power of the officiant.

Through illustrated analyses of Buddhist funeral and ancestral rituals in Nepal, we show how the treatment of liṅgam, the fabrication of mdos supports, and the use of a scapegoat, invert the Western philosophical relationship between Eros and Thanatos : in the Tibetan Buddhist perspective, everything happens indeed as if pleasure, love, sexuation and death, all concepts embodied throughout Greco-Latin antiquity in distinct allegorical figures, were on the contrary and always fundamentally indistinguishable in the Indo-Tibetan worlds. We want to illustrate how, in the latter, it is from the destruction of an external enemy that liberation and the exit from suffering comes. This destruction, which is also the deliverance of a 'soul'implies an inverted reading of the relationship between Eros and Thanatos, if indeed liberation from the cycle of existences can only occur with the elimination-liberation of a 'bisexual' liṅgam, the making and destruction of mdos representing the ancestors, and the elimination of a scapegoat. Thus is cancelled the separation of being between Eros as infinite tension and desire, and Thanatos as final death or annihilation.