• The Critical Review of Religion and Culture
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• no.32
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• pp.186-218
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• 2017

The ritual food is one of the indispensable elements in rituals of Korean folk beliefs. This is ascertained by the fact that a very simple ritual cannot be practiced and performed even without offering a bowl of water. In this regard, it is properly claimed that food is an essential medium of communications between man and gods if they spiritually meet and communicate each other by way of various rituals in Korean folk beliefs. It is possible to point out Gut, the typical ritual of Korean Shamanism as an example of serving the ritual foods among Korean folk beliefs. One of the striking phenomena in Gut(Korean Shamanism's rituals) is various ritual foods on the tables for Gut. There is no Gut performances without offering ritual foods, and the ritual food in Gut practices is more than just food offering to the gods. Moreover the ritual food tells that what kind of Gut it is and for what purpose it is performed, for whom it is set up. And even the invited gods of Musok are disclosed according to the ritual food in Gut. Also some parts of Musok's worldview are appeared and actualized through the ritual food in Gut. In this sense the ritual food in Gut is one of the important channels for understanding Gut and Musok, and one of the explanation systems about Musok. Even if recognized the importance of the ritual food in Gut, it still has not been draw proper attentions to deserving its importance in the researches on Musok and Gut. Upon the critical reviews on such tendencies of the previous studies this paper tries to clarify the characteristics and significances of the ritual food in Gut by examining the Jinjuk Gut in Seoul area as an case study. On the basis of this examination, the ritual food in Gut comes up to be one of the important paths to understanding Gut and Musok as an explanatory system on Musok in general.