Yeongdeung Halmang (영등할망)

An old woman said to dwell somewhere in the sky. Her name is Yeongdeung Halmang, or Yeongdeung Halmŏni. Goddess of Jeju's seas and winds, she roosts in some high and invisible place through the ordinary months, then descends upon the island without warning when the second lunar month arrives.

If wind accompanies her coming, she has brought her daughter; if rain falls, she travels with her daughter-in-law. Who walks beside her, it is said, determines whether the fishing grounds will be generous or lean that year. People counted the difference on their fingers and looked up at the sky — half in dread, half in hope.

For the whole of the second month — called Yeongdeung-dal, the Yeongdeung month — she moves in quiet circuit along the shore. The depths where the haenyeo dive, the furrows where seeds are stirring open: with invisible hands she sows and presses the breath of abundance into the earth. On the twenty-fifth day she ascends once more, and after that, the fishermen say, the very grain of the wind changes.

In Gwidŏk and Gŭmnyŏng, twelve poles were raised to receive her; in Aewŏl, people danced upon a raft dressed with a horse's-head effigy sewn in silk, to gladden the goddess. While she lingered, going out to sea was forbidden. The Tongguk Yŏji Sŭngnam records that during this month men refrained from boarding vessels.

She does not confine herself to Jeju. In the Yeongnam region as well, rites were offered to a deity known as Yeongdeung-sin in household after household, and when a shaman possessed by the god moved through a village, people vied to welcome them inside. Records survive noting that from the first day until the fifteenth, or even the twentieth, strangers were not permitted to enter the home. Whether this was a fear of intruding upon the paths the god traveled, or whether the god herself disliked unfamiliar faces — no one now can say with certainty.