1. Introduction

Although Korea's Maitreya faith and Dangun faith are representative religions with a long tradition and history recognized worldwide, under the influence of colonial historiography and a culture of servile deference to great powers, academia has, unusually, approached them chiefly from the standpoint that they are irrational faiths. In particular, as scholarly exchange among Mongolia and other parts of Central Asia and East Asia has grown active today, it has emerged that Korea's Maitreya faith and Dangun faith share common elements that connect not only Korea but also Central Asia and, further, West Asia—such as Turkey—and Europe; and although Korea is virtually the only country in which both the Maitreya faith and the Dangun faith survive together, there is almost no research on the relationship between the two faiths, and no relationship has been inferred at all. The understanding of Korea's Maitreya faith and Dangun faith as irrational religions, mutually unrelated, and merely local in character—an understanding formed under the influence of colonial historiography and a servile-deference culture—persists to this day.

By contrast, the amateur (non-establishment) scholarship that stands opposite the mainstream academy argues, conversely, that Korea's Maitreya faith and Dangun faith embody a modern scientific rationality in the form of a cyclical astronomy, that the two faiths share one another through the lens of the Seven Stars, and that they are the root of the Maitreya faith and Dangun faith distributed throughout the world. The two sides criticize each other as colonial historiography and ethnonationalist historiography, respectively, and remain in a state of rupture rather than dialogue.

The confrontation between the mainstream academy and the amateur academy surrounding Korea's Maitreya faith and Dangun faith began together with the revival of national culture that started in 1984 and has continued for over nearly thirty years. Recently, noteworthy studies capable of mediating the confrontation between the two schools have been appearing at home and abroad. Since such noteworthy research capable of mediating the confrontation between the two schools has been rarer domestically than abroad, we first examine the domestic research: at home, one may cite Manaism as opposed to Animism, and the astronomical reinterpretation of the Mago myth and the Dangun myth; abroad, one may cite research on the linkage between the Maitreya and Mithra faiths and

research on the scientific character of the monomyth.

In fact, the global research trend on myth had formed one of its mainstream currents in the methodology of monomyth studies centered on Campbell. Campbell's theory of the monomyth holds that myth is not merely the superstition of primitive people but a crystallization of the highly developed science and unconscious of ancient peoples, and that the world's diverse myths, though outwardly different, possess an identical structure at a deep level. If Campbell's monomyth theory is applied to Korea's Maitreya faith and Dangun faith, one can naturally infer that the Maitreya faith and Dangun faith likewise possess global universality and scientific character, as well as a commonality between the two. In particular, at a time when the global universality of the Maitreya faith and Dangun faith is being researched through today's advanced archaeology and artifacts, it is necessary to examine the common mythic meaning that the Dangun faith and Maitreya faith share.

The global universality of the Dangun faith and Maitreya faith recently being discovered means that the problem of the Dangun faith and Maitreya faith is no longer confined to Korea alone but is a global problem; moreover, Korea, where the Dangun faith and Maitreya faith have been preserved in their original form to a degree unparalleled in the world, may hold the key to solving a long-standing puzzle of the world's religious scholarship. On the basis of recent research achievements at home and abroad, this article seeks to examine Korea's Maitreya faith and Dangun faith centered on the creation principle as myth found in Campbell's monomyth. In particular, this article seeks to draw attention to the fact that the meaning of the numbers 3 and 7 appearing in the Maitreya faith and Dangun faith is identical to the meaning of 3 and 7 appearing in Campbell's monomyth. Through this, it seeks to show that the Dangun faith and Maitreya faith, like Campbell's monomyth, commonly possess the creation principle of cosmic circulation and thus form a very closely related structure, so that common elements such as the Three Gods (Samsin) and the Seven Stars appear in them.

The structure of cosmic circulation found in Campbell's monomyth appears still more clearly in the mythological theory of Nakazawa Shin'ichi, the recent Japanese structuralist mythologist. Whereas Campbell's monomyth was explained mainly on the basis of Jung's theory, Nakazawa Shin'ichi introduces Freud and Lacan, and further the mathematized psychoanalysis of Lacan developed by Matte Blanco.

Turning to prior research from the mainstream and amateur academies relevant to this article, which seeks to compare the Maitreya faith and Dangun faith centered on the creation principle of 3 and 7 found in Campbell's monomyth: with respect to Dangun and the Maitreya faith, one may cite the research of Noh Jung-pyeong, who has studied the Dangun faith in relation to astronomical thought, and the research of Park Yong-suk, who has studied the Three-Gods faith of Dangun and Maitreya in relation to the trifunctional system. In a series of books on the Seven Stars and Dangun, Noh Jung-pyeong has argued that the Dangun myth is a myth related to the Ziwei Enclosure, the Taiwei Enclosure, the Tianshi Enclosure, and the Big Dipper, and his recent research is supported by natural-scientific studies of Gojoseon astronomy. Park Yong-suk, moreover, together with Japanese scholars, early raised the similarity between the Three-Gods faith of Dangun and Maitreya and Georges Dumézil's trifunctional system in relation to the trifunctional system, and his work is recently supported by overseas research on the universality of the trifunctional system inherent in the Mithra faith and by research on Manaism as the basis of the trifunctional system.

Campbell's monomyth has argued for the three stages and the seven-character structure inherent in the hero's cycle, and the monomyth has become the textbook structure for films and games. Furthermore, the connection between Dumézil's trifunctional system and Campbell's monomyth is also being studied, through the commonality between the heroic myth appearing in the creation principle and the trifunctional system visible in the creation principle, with respect to the trifunctionality inherent in the hero's cycle. In fact, Campbell's myth is regarded as a pioneering postmodernist thought, and the identical heroic narrative structure appearing in Korea's Jumong myth and in Celtic myth has also been studied.

The prior research above, however, has not been able to connect comprehensively the Dangun faith and Maitreya faith, which may be called Korea's representative popular faiths. The Maitreya faith and Dangun faith show almost the same regional distribution as the Mana faith and others, and the being of the Seven Stars appears commonly in them; yet because preconceptions rooted in existing research were strong, it may be said that the fact that the two faiths share a common root has not yet been revealed as it is in this article. This article seeks in particular to apply the fractal principle to study the connection between the Eastern Seven-Stars faith and Campbell's seven-character structure.

On the basis of existing prior research, this article seeks first, in Chapter 2, to clarify the creation principle of 3 and 7 found in Campbell's monomyth; in Chapter 3, to examine the theory of Nakazawa Shin'ichi, who clarified the structural principle of Campbell's myth. On that basis, in Chapter 5, it seeks to bring out the creation principle of 3 and 7 found respectively in the Maitreya–Mithra faith and the Dangun faith, and to compare the three. Through this, it seeks to confirm the global universality possessed by Korea's Maitreya faith and Dangun faith and to find its meaning.

Whether the Maitreya and Mithra faiths can be connected to each other is not yet a settled question, but the two possess a commonality, and since this article examines them on the assumption of a monomyth, it seeks to discuss the Maitreya and Mithra faiths simultaneously in order to make the discussion concrete.