[Editor’s Note: This article was previously published and is now available for a free download in S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies in Volume 1 Number 1. Do not cite this article in its present form. Citation must come from the published version in S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies 1,1 (2022): 115-138 (https://sheijgs.space/).”]
This essay undertakes the task of introducing, exploring, and discussing the Magoist infant-rearing custom of traditional Korea known as Dandong Siphun (檀童十訓 단동십훈 Ten Instructions for Dan Children) in its oral and written sources.[1]
Dandong Siphun (Ten Instructions for Dan Children) refers to a series of nurturing interplays between the mother and her pretoddler infant, “the Home Interplay,” a concept that this essay entertains. Engineered to care for an infant in the stage from womb to walking, Dandong Siphun (hereafter DDSH) employs such foundational human actions as talking, chanting, cuddling and hugging for the task of providing developmental care for the infant. During this period, a child is prepared for an ability to speak and a mobility to walk around independently. Walking freely marks the developmental goal of infanthood in DDSH. And it does not just mean an ability to use legs for the child’s mobility. It means a walking on the Way of the Creatrix. Implications of DDSH are multilayered and multifaceted. Through DDSH, traditional Magoist Korean mothers have maintained and transmitted the matricentric socio-cultural-spiritual way of living from one generation to another. For new readers of my research concerning Mago, the Creatrix, Magoism refers to the consciousness of the Creatrix expressed through the socio-historical-cultural customs of traditional Korea/East Asia and beyond.[2] Concerning the significance of pretoddler childcare, DDSH’s pre- and proto-linguistic developmental conventions are doubtless foundational in the formation of matricentric personhood. A newborn is newly born as a toddler through DDSH plays. The DDSH interplay, tailored by Magoist mothers, awakens the babies to the matriversal consciousness in the process of growing into an adult human being.
DDSH is a practice that shapes the body-mind-soul of an infant. Crystallizing matriversal motherhood, DDSH comes to us moderns as soteriology. Humans must stand on matriversal motherhood for the survival and welfare of all beings. I have recently coined the word, matriverse (the maternal universe), to convey pre-patriarchally originated Magoist motherhood and its worldview. “Matriverse” rearranges the reality with the Creatrix at the center. Matriversal motherhood is not just an expansion of motherhood into outer space. It goes downwards and sidewards too. Matriversal motherhood concerns a total state of life in the matriverse. Its root lies in the inter-cosmic bond between matricentric humans and the natural world headed by whales. Why whales? Humans do not stand alone or outside the natural world cared for by whale mothers. Matricentric humans are backed by matricentric whales from within the natural world. To be noted is that DDSH is aligned with other Korean cetacean folk practices including the postpartum diet of miyeok-guk (the sea mustard “birthday” soup), the podaegi (a baby sling) custom of carrying a baby on one’s back, Samsin-sang (Dinner Altar offered to the Triad Great Mother) for the one hundred day and one year birthday of a baby, all of which comes under Magoist Cetaceanism,[3] which requires an extensive discussion elsewhere. I mean to say that DDSH is not a single isolated peculiar practice of traditional Korea. Ultimately, DDSH is a specific expression of the Magoist belief in which a baby’s birth and mortality are determined by the “decision” of Mago Samsin Halmi, the Mago Birth Great Mother, and in which all beings, upon death, return to where they came from, the Home of Mago the Creatrix, the northern center of the universe.
The DDSH custom underwent a brief period of oblivion among the public in the early 20th century. In recent decades, Koreans have rediscovered that DDSH was the traditional infant-rearing custom of their ancestors. Although the term, Dandong Siphun, may still be unfamiliar to many Koreans, some individual instructions such as do-ri do-ri (도리도리), jaem jaem (잼잼), and jjak-jjak-kung (짝짝꿍) would be too easily recognizable for them to mention. That is because those forms of mother-infant play are commonly practiced among Koreans to this day. Almost all Koreans were likely taught them at one point in their infanthood or saw them in dramas and films as well as within the family.[4] Both women and men in Korea are increasingly voicing the benefits of the DDSH custom with a sense of amazement and pride. Young mothers have consciously adopted DDSH techniques. Yet, no one has articulated matriversal motherhood embodied in the DDSH custom. In praising DDSH, male advocates attribute DDSH to the Korean indigenous thought of viewing infants as heaven-given. They don’t seem to see the mother as a representative of the Creatrix or Heaven. In fact, patriarchy does NOT want to see mother as a divine representative. If the mother is not divine, no infant could be deemed divine. Because an infant is issued from its mother. My task in this essay is to provide the Magoist context to DDSH practices. I investigate relevant lore, language, mytho-history, and thought of traditional Magoist Korea.
The Dandang Siphun custom of Magoist Korea reenacts the reality of matriversal motherhood through mother-infant interplays conducted during the pretoddling period, creating a postnatal foundation for an infant to grow into a healthy, intelligent, and happy matricentric person. With its semantic origin in the pre-patriarchal times of the Danguk confederacy (3898 BCE-2333 BCE),[5] DDSH has been transmitted primarily by mothers and grandmothers throughout generations.[6] To be completed within an approximately one year scheme, DDSH mothers implement a series of progressive interplays stage by stage in a timely manner. The mother guides her infant to mimic her crafted actions and vocalizations, which are to induce an optimized developmental (physical, cerebral, linguistic, emotional, and spiritual) growth in the latter. DDSH mothers see the period of infant’s dependency as a crucial time to begin a time-old matricentric socio-cultural-spiritual education. During this period of childhood dependency, Magoist mothers intend to lay the foundation of a matricentric personhood in her child. In that sense, DDSH plays are the first building blocks for the edifice of traditional Korean Magoist culture. Taking place in a postnatal home, which is a symbol for HER Home (the matriverse), the DDSH Home Interplay solidifies the continuous bond between the mother and her infant. In short, DDSH is a mother-made collective home drama about matriversal motherhood. In the matriversal reality unfolded in DDSH, mothers are presented as an envoy of the Cosmic Mother, Mago, and play the role of a teacher, priest, and philosopher to the infants, Dan Children, the descendants of the Great Mother.
[1] In this essay, I have many of Korean words unitalicized. There are too many transliterations to italicize. Sometimes a single Koreanword is made into two words in English. Hyphens are used, as need, to indicate particular syllables in Korean. I also have not italicized the principal texts of Magoism, the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem Capital City) and the Handan Gogi (Old History of Han and Dan) in this article and beyond.
[2] All of my current and forthcoming researches stand on the premises of Magoism. I have defined Magoism: “In a narrow sense, Magoism connotes the trans-patriarchal cultural tradition of the Creatrix, developed and propagated by ancient East Asian Magoists. In a broad sense, it refers to the worldwide manifestation of gynocentric cultures that embody the consciousness of the Great Mother.” See Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “Mago, the Creatrix from East Asia, and the Mytho-History of Magoism,” in Goddesses in Myth, History, and Culture, edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books, 2018), 4. Also see Chapter One, “What is Mago and Magoism and how did I study HER?,” in Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books, 2015), 8-27.
[3] These customs are adopted from the bio-socio-environmental behaviors of matricentric whales. On miyeok-guk (sea mustard soup) and podaegi (a baby sling), see my essay: Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “Magoist Cetaceanism: Why do we listen to the call of whales and dragons?,” in Return to Mago E-Magazine (March 16 2021). https://www.magoism.net/2021/03/magoist-cetaceanism-why-do-we-listen-to-the-call-of-whales-by-helen-hye-sook-hwang-ph-d/. The custom of Samsin-sang (Dinner Altar offered to the Triad Great Mother) is still pervasively practiced among Koreans today. Samsin-sang comprises three kinds of three color-coded dishes (three bowls of white rice, thee bowls of dark miyeok-guk, and three bowls or one bowl of transparent water). It is usually prepared in celebration and commemoration of major events in the family including a baby’s one hundred day and one year birthdays as well as ancestral rituals.
[4] My younger brother told me that, when his son was an infant, our paternal grandmother enjoyed the bul-mu bul-mu play with his son. According to my brother, she chanted the phrase, while holding the child by the waist with her hands and gently rocked him left to right and right to left. She explained that was a traditional method to enhance the infant’s walking. Conversation with my brother in 2021.
[5] The discussion of the semantic origin of DDSH in the nine-state Danguk confederacy comes in the last section of this paper.
[6] DDSH is not exclusively practiced by mothers and grandmothers. Fathers conduct some plays. I remember my uncle playing “seom-ma seom-ma” to his infant in my twenties.