A STUDY OF THE CONSTELLATION MAPS IN MT. TAEBAEK'S HARVEST CEREMONY FLAG

Gaecheonjeol is the National Foundation day of Korea when people hold a harvest ceremony. Nowadays, two representative harvest ceremonies of Korea are performed at Mt. Mari (摩利山) and Mt. Taebaek (太白山) on Gaecheonjeol (October 3rd). We study 28 flags with constellations appearing in the ceremony of Mt. Taebaek. These flags are lying in the outer of the circular stone wall during the ceremony. They represent an oriental heavenly star chart. We examine the shape, the connecting-pattern, the name, and the number of constellations drawn in the flags, and find several errors, such as, a wrong position, a typo of name, an irregular size, an omission, and so forth. Traditionally, the 28 oriental constellations are usually divided into four groups and each group has its own colour for each direction: Blue (E), Black (N), White (W), and Red (S). For the constellation flags in Mt. Taebaek, the colour of the flags is painted based on geographical directions, but the constellations are arranged followed by the direction of the celestial sphere. Thus, constellations in the northern and southern parts are counterchanged. Finally, we suggest some possible criteria for constellation map of the flags in this paper. CheonSangYeolChaBunYaJiDo (天象列次分野之圖) and CheonMunRyuCho (天文類抄) can be essential references for correcting constellations drawn in the flags of Mt. Taebaek.