• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.36
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• pp.299-331
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• 2020

In Daesoon Jinrihoe, the Supreme God descended into the mortal world by incarnating as Kang Jeungsan to save the world from imminent disaster. Daesoon Jinrihoe is regarded by some Chinese scholars as a new Korean Daoism, and Jo Jeong-san, the Lord of the Dao in Daesoon Jinrihoe, revealed the Supreme God's name to "Gucheon Eungwon Noeseong Bohwa Cheonjon Kangseong Sangje." Comparative studies are often conducted to highlight the similarities between this god and the nearly identically named god in Chinese Daoism. However, this Chinese god is only a god of natural phenomena and has no previous connections to descension into the world via human incarnation. My research has determined that the closest basis for comparison would be Emperor Huizong within the context of Northern Song Dynasty Daoism. In the Daoism of that time period, he was understood to be the Supreme God who incarnated as a human to save the world. Borrowing Eliade's Phenomenology of Religion, this paper has discovered that core archetypes of these two godheads are different due to their different soteriological missions. In order to solve the grievances among humans, divine beings, heaven, and the afterworld, Kang Jeungsan actualized the Earthly Paradise of Later World. Drawing on the archetypal notion of an Original Time, he reshaped the world into the beginning of chaos to completely eliminate the past, and to create a fundamentally and qualitatively new era. On the other hand, Emperor Huizong tried to absorb what he viewed as heretical Buddhism into something sacred that could be used to save people from its harm. He established a hierarchy radiating from the archetypal notion of the Center of the Universe, and he cosmosized Buddhism, which he viewed as barbaric, into that order. Their core godheads mainly show differences in terms of time and space. Additionally, their extended sub-godhead symbols are quite different. Emperor Huizong, like the common supreme gods of other religions, established law of order, and then retreated as the symbol of heaven, the abdicated god. His divine power was specialized as Lin Lingsu's symbol of natural phenomena. Kang Jeungsan was completely different. He always proved his power over the three realms through different symbols. The main symbols he used were the moon for healing and resurrection, water for establishing order from chaos, and light for enabling secular individuals to experience sacred profundity.