newfangled or old-fashioned form of healing. But by then it was too late. He was beyond reach, and it was dangerous to approach him.
They say that these wise women, these mudang , are themselves mad, or possessed. And Prince Sado was now mad. Can one mad person cure another? I suppose it may be so. Some say that one cannot understand the ways of our country without understanding the ways of the mudang . But you must understand that, although a woman, I was a member of an educated elite, and I believed in reason. The madder Sado became, the more I believed in reason. I took refuge in reason and in the life of the mind. Posterity is witness to my rationality.
I say I am not superstitious, and I have always been suspicious of these conveniently auspicious dragon dreams that we claim to have. I have never dreamed of a dragon in my life, despite the dominant dragon imagery of our culture. I think most of these dreams are politic fictions or literary conventions. The father of the ill-fated and faithful Lady Inhyŏn, of whose sad story Pingae was so fond, claimed that he saw shimmering lights hovering like a rainbow over her washbowl when she was an infant – a more original conceit than a dragon, I concede, but I fancy just as retrospective. My father even admitted, in later years, that he had embroidered the black-dragon dream he claimed to have had before my birth: he had based its graphic details on an old painting that used to belong to my grandfather, and which mysteriously reappeared in the Bridal Pavilion when I became betrothed to Sado. The reappearance of the painting was rather strange, I admit, but I am sure it owed more to human than to supernatural agency. Valuable objects did tend to wander round the palaces, disappearing and resurfacing without much official explanation, but we need not credit ghosts with these removals.
I must, however, confess to one common though by no means universal (nor indeed Korean) superstition, to which I have been subject all my life. I am afraid of magpies, and I say secret childhood rhymes to placate them whenever I see them. I think of them as birds of ill omen. I do not know why. I now know that in some cultures the magpie is feared, whereas in others it is treated with respect. Fear of magpies is neither innate nor universal, but it certainly afflicted me. Maybe I was already foreshadowing the Western superstitions of my Western ghost. In our culture, the magpie was seen as a harbinger of good fortune, as a herald of guests. It is strange that I felt this fear. Was I already moving out of the conditioning of time and place? Had some process of ghostly permeation already begun? It seems a trivial and harmless phobia, but it is not without its interest, and I have devoted some posthumous time to its study. I have not finished with it yet.
Magpies are a very adaptable species and, I note, increasingly widespread. Pica pica has colonized the world. They have become dominant in many neighbourhoods, including the one that my ghostly representative now inhabits. They have driven out many other species, including the small songbirds. I always feared them, in whatever numbers or manifestations they appeared. I know that in some parts of the East they were regarded as wise birds of good omen. They were famed in Korean legend for their benevolence in forming the Magpie Bridge that linked those star-crossed lovers, the herd boy and the weaving maid, on the Seventh Night of the Seventh Moon. I know that in China they are called the ‘birds of joy’. But from early childhood, I believed they were unlucky. Maybe a magpie threatened me in my cradle. They are large birds, and can be aggressive. Naturally, I cannot remember any such incident. I am somewhat ashamed of this small irrationality. I wonder what superstitions besieged Voltaire. None of us is immune to such weaknesses.
Even as I composed those words, one of these ill-omened birds came down and landed on the window ledge. It had its evil
They say that these wise women, these mudang , are themselves mad, or possessed. And Prince Sado was now mad. Can one mad person cure another? I suppose it may be so. Some say that one cannot understand the ways of our country without understanding the ways of the mudang . But you must understand that, although a woman, I was a member of an educated elite, and I believed in reason. The madder Sado became, the more I believed in reason. I took refuge in reason and in the life of the mind. Posterity is witness to my rationality.
I say I am not superstitious, and I have always been suspicious of these conveniently auspicious dragon dreams that we claim to have. I have never dreamed of a dragon in my life, despite the dominant dragon imagery of our culture. I think most of these dreams are politic fictions or literary conventions. The father of the ill-fated and faithful Lady Inhyŏn, of whose sad story Pingae was so fond, claimed that he saw shimmering lights hovering like a rainbow over her washbowl when she was an infant – a more original conceit than a dragon, I concede, but I fancy just as retrospective. My father even admitted, in later years, that he had embroidered the black-dragon dream he claimed to have had before my birth: he had based its graphic details on an old painting that used to belong to my grandfather, and which mysteriously reappeared in the Bridal Pavilion when I became betrothed to Sado. The reappearance of the painting was rather strange, I admit, but I am sure it owed more to human than to supernatural agency. Valuable objects did tend to wander round the palaces, disappearing and resurfacing without much official explanation, but we need not credit ghosts with these removals.
I must, however, confess to one common though by no means universal (nor indeed Korean) superstition, to which I have been subject all my life. I am afraid of magpies, and I say secret childhood rhymes to placate them whenever I see them. I think of them as birds of ill omen. I do not know why. I now know that in some cultures the magpie is feared, whereas in others it is treated with respect. Fear of magpies is neither innate nor universal, but it certainly afflicted me. Maybe I was already foreshadowing the Western superstitions of my Western ghost. In our culture, the magpie was seen as a harbinger of good fortune, as a herald of guests. It is strange that I felt this fear. Was I already moving out of the conditioning of time and place? Had some process of ghostly permeation already begun? It seems a trivial and harmless phobia, but it is not without its interest, and I have devoted some posthumous time to its study. I have not finished with it yet.
Magpies are a very adaptable species and, I note, increasingly widespread. Pica pica has colonized the world. They have become dominant in many neighbourhoods, including the one that my ghostly representative now inhabits. They have driven out many other species, including the small songbirds. I always feared them, in whatever numbers or manifestations they appeared. I know that in some parts of the East they were regarded as wise birds of good omen. They were famed in Korean legend for their benevolence in forming the Magpie Bridge that linked those star-crossed lovers, the herd boy and the weaving maid, on the Seventh Night of the Seventh Moon. I know that in China they are called the ‘birds of joy’. But from early childhood, I believed they were unlucky. Maybe a magpie threatened me in my cradle. They are large birds, and can be aggressive. Naturally, I cannot remember any such incident. I am somewhat ashamed of this small irrationality. I wonder what superstitions besieged Voltaire. None of us is immune to such weaknesses.
Even as I composed those words, one of these ill-omened birds came down and landed on the window ledge. It had its evil
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