Hungarian shamanism is discovered through
comparative methods in ethnology, designed to analyse and search
ethnographic
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...
data of
Hungarian folktales
''Hungarian Folk TalesAz egyes epizódok főcíme, és stáblistája alapján.'' ( hu, Magyar népmesék) is a Hungarian animated series and one of the first and biggest successes of Pannonia Film Studio, based on studio head Ferenc Mikulás' orig ...
, songs, language, comparative cultures, and historical sources.
Research
Studies of files of
witch trial
A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. The classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America took place in the Early Modern perio ...
s reveal that some features of Hungarian folklore are remnants of
shamanistic
Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiri ...
beliefs, maintained from the deep past, or possibly borrowed from
Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members speak languages belonging t ...
with whom
Hungarians
Hungarians, also known as Magyars ( ; hu, magyarok ), are a nation and ethnic group native to Hungary () and historical Hungarian lands who share a common culture, history, ancestry, and language. The Hungarian language belongs to the Urali ...
lived before wandering to the
Pannonian Basin
The Pannonian Basin, or Carpathian Basin, is a large basin situated in south-east Central Europe. The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense, with only th ...
;
[Diószegi 1998] or maybe is an effect of Eastern influence thereafter (
Cuman
The Cumans (or Kumans), also known as Polovtsians or Polovtsy (plural only, from the Russian exonym ), were a Turkic nomadic people comprising the western branch of the Cuman–Kipchak confederation. After the Mongol invasion (1237), many so ...
immigration).
These remnants are partly conserved as fragments by some features of customs and beliefs, for example
*
refrains of certain
folksong
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...
s accompanying some customs;
* certain motifs of folktales, e.g.
sky-reaching tree,
[ which was a specific belief among several central Eurasian peoples, having some resemblances to the world tree concept, but it was also related to the shaman's tree and had some other peculiarities as well.
]
Characteristics
There were also people who filled similar roles to those performed by shamans among other peoples: fortune-telling
Fortune telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. Melton, J. Gordon. (2008). ''The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena''. Visible Ink Press. pp. 115-116. The scope of fortune telling is in principle identical wi ...
, weather magic, finding lost objects. These people are related to shamanism (in contrast to the cunning folk
Cunning folk, also known as folk healers or wise folk, were practitioners of folk medicine, helpful folk magic and divination in Europe from the Middle Ages until the 20th century. Their practices were known as the cunning craft. Their services a ...
of non-shamanistic cultures), because the former are recorded to go through similar experiences to those of many shamans: being born with physical anomalies such as a surplus amount of bones or teeth, illness, dismemberment
Dismemberment is the act of cutting, ripping, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise disconnecting the limbs from a living or dead being. It has been practiced upon human beings as a form of capital punishment, especially in connection with ...
by a mythological being and recovering with greater or increased capabilities, or struggle with other shamans or beings.[
Related features can be recognized in several examples of ]shamanism in Siberia
A large minority of people in North Asia, particularly in Siberia, follow the religio-cultural practices of shamanism. Some researchers regard Siberia as the heartland of shamanism.Hoppál 2005:13
The people of Siberia comprise a variety of e ...
. As the Hungarian language
Hungarian () is an Uralic language spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighbouring countries. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary, it is also spoken by Hungarian ...
belongs to the Uralic family, we can expect to find them among other peoples who speak Uralic languages. Some of them maintained shamanism until modern times; the isolated location of Nganasan people made it possible that shamanism was a living phenomenon among them even at the beginning of 20th century. The last notable Nganasan shaman's seances were recorded on film in the 1970s.
The original location of the Proto-Uralic
Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give different ...
peoples (and its extent) is debated. The combined results of several sciences suggest that this area was north of Central Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
and on lower and middle parts of the Ob River
}
The Ob ( rus, Обь, p=opʲ: Ob') is a major river in Russia. It is in western Siberia; and together with Irtysh forms the world's seventh-longest river system, at . It forms at the confluence of the Biya and Katun which have their origins ...
. This approach combined ecological, namely phytogeographical and paleobotanic
Paleobotany, which is also spelled as palaeobotany, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments (paleogeogr ...
(including palynological
Palynology is the "study of dust" (from grc-gre, παλύνω, palynō, "strew, sprinkle" and ''-logy'') or of "particles that are strewn". A classic palynologist analyses particulate samples collected from the air, from water, or from deposit ...
) data together with linguistic ( phytonymic and comparative
general linguistics, the comparative is a syntactic construction that serves to express a comparison between two (or more) entities or groups of entities in quality or degree - see also comparison (grammar) for an overview of comparison, as well ...
) considerations: the distribution of various tree species in Siberia and Eastern Europe (changing over time) was matched against the distribution of the respective tree-names in various Uralic languages (filtered with comparative methods, so that only names of Proto-Uralic
Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give different ...
relevance be taken into account).
Artifacts
Some artifacts, see online available pictures and descriptions:[Magyar Néprajz]
list of figures
/ref>
* Sky-reaching tree standing on a hill, with a celestial body top left, and cattle on both lower and upper levels. Aso, Diószegi Vilmos identified a shamanic ladder on the image. Decoration of a horn saltcellar, collected in Biharnagybajom
Biharnagybajom is a village in Hajdú-Bihar county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary. It has a population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, ...
village of Hajdú-Bihar county. The figure about the artifact (together with other related ones) is drawn by Szűcs Sándor ethnographer
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...
. See online.[Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon, item “Világfa” (world tree)]
/ref>
/ref>
* Combat of two ''táltos'' people (both in the guise of bulls). Decoration on corn saltcellar, collected in Sárrét. The artifact is drawn by ethnographer Szűcs Sándor. See online.
/ref> Another image depicts táltos people fighting as black and white bulls, one of them helped by a man. Drawn by Dudás Juló, Galgamácsa. Not online.
Soul dualism
Soul dualism can be observed in several cultures in many variations: people are believed to have more than one soul. Examples can be found in several north Eurasian cultures and in some Inuit groups as well as Hungarians.[ Some of the many examples distinguish two souls: a body soul for maintaining bodily functions, and a free soul which can leave the body (even during life), with great variations on this theme among cultures.
In some cultures, it may be related to ]shamanic
Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiri ...
concepts.[Hoppál 1975: 225] In shamanistic beliefs of some Inuit groups, the shaman's " spirit journey", with his helping spirits, to remote places is explained with such soul concepts. It is the shaman's free soul that leaves his body. According to an explanation, this temporal absence of the shaman's free soul is tracked by a substitute: the shaman's body is guarded by one of his/her helping spirits during the spirit journey,[Oosten 1997: 92] also a legend contains this motif while describing a spirit journey undertaken by the shaman's free soul and his helping spirits.
As mentioned, it was also observed among Hungarians. The body soul, ''lélek'' was related to breathing (shown by etymology). The shadow soul called ''íz'' was related to the roaming soul of the dead. Its feared nature can be seen, as it features also in curse
A curse (also called an imprecation, malediction, execration, malison, anathema, or commination) is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particula ...
expressions: “Vigyen el az íz!” (= “the shadow soul take you!”).[Dienes 1975: 83] This curse is unknown for most people nowadays, and word "íz" (in this meaning) is also unknown, or felt as an archaism with forgotten meaning.
See also
* Táltos
The táltos (; also "tátos") is a figure in Hungarian mythology, a person with supernatural power similar to a shaman.
Description
The most reliable account of the táltos is given by Roman Catholic priest Arnold Ipolyi in his collection of fo ...
* Hungarian mythology
Hungarian mythology includes the myths, legends, folk tales, fairy tales and gods of the Hungarians, also known as the Magyarok.
Sources of knowledge
Much of Magyar mythology is believed to be lost. However, in the last hundred years scholars o ...
Notes
References
* The tale title means: "The land of the dead in the sky"; the book title means: ''Eskimo tales''; the series means: “Tales of World Literature”.
* The title means: ''Uralic peoples. Culture and traditions of our linguistic relatives''; the chapter means “The Hungarians at the time of entering the Carpathian Basin, and their ancient beliefs”.
* The title means: ''Remnants of Shamanistic Beliefs in Hungarian Folklore''.
* Hungarian translation of the original: Vie et coutumes des Esquimaux Caribous, Libraire Payot Lausanne, 1944. It describes the life of Caribou Eskimo and Padlermiut groups.
* The title means: ''Uralic Peoples. Culture and traditions of our linguistic relatives''; the chapter means “Linguistic background of the relationship”.
* The title means: “Uralic peoples. Culture and traditions of our linguistic relatives”; the chapter means “The belief system of Uralic peoples and the shamanism”.
* Title means: “Shamans, souls and symbols”.
* The title means “Shamans in Eurasia”, the book is written in Hungarian, but it is published also in German, Estonian and Finnish
Site of publisher with short description on the book (in Hungarian)
*
* Translation of the chapter: "Our ancient homes and wanderings", translation of the title: ''Finno-Ugric guide''.
*
*
* The title means: “The belief systems of our linguistic relatives in Siberia”.
Further reading
* Ildikó Boldizsár. "Shamanic Elements in Hungarian Folk Tales – An Excerpt from Fairy Tale Therapy". In: ''Hungarian Review'' IV/2013, n. 06, pp. 92–101.
* Fazekas, Jenö (1967). “Hungarian Shamanism, Material and History of Research”. In: ''Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis'' 1 (August): 97-119. https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67026.
* Hoppál, Mihály. “Shamanism and the Belief System of the Ancient Hungarians”. In: ''Ethnographica et folkloristica carpathica'' 11 (1999): 58-68.
*
*
*
External links
* See als
homepage of author with other publications
Terebess Ázsia E-Tár:
* Bartha Júlia
* Lux Éva
Magyar Néprajz:
* ttp://vmek.oszk.hu/02100/02152/html/07/361.html Magyar Néprajz, chapter “Világkép” (world view)* Magyar Néprajz
:
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shamanistic Remnants In Hungarian Folklore
European shamanism
Hungarian mythology
Hungarian prehistory