Back in the days when Chi-Woo lived with his mentor to follow his mentor’s teachings, Chi-Woo begged his teacher to do a spirit possession ritual for him because he had an unfounded conviction that if he received a god and became a shaman, he would be able to escape this cursed fate by even a little. He had failed several times before, but he hadn’t completely given up on hope yet.

And his mentor always gave the same answer, “Stop pestering me. You think it’s easy to receive a god?”

“Ah, come on. You know you can do it for me.”

“This punk? Even if you receive a god, that’s a problem by itself. Who the hell are you going to take in?”

“Well, you know, someone like ganglim doryeong[1] or maiden bodhisattva.”

“Geez, what are you going to do after accepting them?”

Chi-Woo tilted his head at his mentor’s reprimanding tone because it felt somewhat like his mentor was belittling his choice of gods. Why? When he pointed this out, his mentor snorted.

“In our society, we divide humans into different ranks. Do you think gods would be any different?”

“There are ranks for even gods?”

“Of course. The gods you just mentioned are at the 4th or 5th celestial rank at best. Well, it’s no wonder those gods are famous because out of 100 shamans, 99.9 percent are only capable of receiving gods at those level.”

“What’s up with 99.9 percent instead of just 99 percent?”

“Because exceptions are very rare. I’ve only seen one shaman in life who received a god higher than 5th celestial rank, and that was a very long time ago.”

How could there be only one case in the history of shamanism that someone received a 6th celestial rank god? Even that was only possible because the shaman originated from Jeju, and the...