Elisabeth Haich (born Erzsébet Haich; 20 March 1897 – 31 July 1994) was a Hungarian

spiritual teacher This is an index of religious honorifics from various religions. Buddhism Christianity Eastern Orthodox The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Protestantism Catholicism Hinduism Islam Judaism ...

and author of several books on spirituality.

Life

She was born and raised in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

. In 1941 with Selvarajan Yesudian, who arrived in Hungary from India in 1937, they founded Europe's first

yoga Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consci ...

school in Budapest. After the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

in 1948, due to the communist regime, they had to close their school and flee to Switzerland, where they founded a new

school.Jean-François Mayer, ''Les nouvelles voies spirituelles : enquête sur la religiosité parallèle en Suisse'', Nationales Forschungsprogramm 21—Kulturelle Vielfalt und Nationale Identität, L'Âge d'Homme, 1993, , p. 195. In her best known book,
Initiation
', Haich describes early experiences of her life in Hungary, as well as details of her supposed past life during which she claimed to have been initiated as a priestess of Ra by her supposed uncle,

Ptahhotep Ptahhotep ( egy, ptḥ ḥtp "Peace of Ptah"), sometimes known as Ptahhotep I or Ptahhotpe, was an ancient Egyptian vizier during the late 25th century BC and early 24th century BC Fifth Dynasty of Egypt. Life Ptahhotep was the city administ ...

, in what she refers to as ancient

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

. The book also describes a little of a more recent claimed previous life in which she was a washing-woman, was abandoned by her lover, lost contact with her daughter, and ended up a beggar on the streets. Her book ''The Wisdom of the Tarot'' is based on the Oswald Wirth deck's images (but some colors are different, for some details), and it is about the archetypes of human development, each Tarot card identifying one archetype and its meaning. Her book ''Sexual Energy & Yoga'' identifies how sexual energy, when contained, builds among one's chakras, boiling the ignorance resident among them, eventually awakening them, and making possible enlightenment. Elisabeth Haich claimed to have attained "ego-death". It was described by her followers (mentioned in the introductions to her book) as visible in her gaze: "her gaze wasn't the gaze of a person, it was the gaze of infinity, and it wasn't blind to one's unconsciousness or ignoring: a gaze that cut right through one's unconsciousness, a gaze very difficult to bear."

Books by Elisabeth Haich

*
Initiation
'. * The Day with Yoga * ''Sexual Energy and Yoga'' * ''Wisdom of the Tarot'' (co-authored with Selvarajan Yesudian) * ''Self Healing Yoga and Destiny'' * ''入門- 古埃及女祭司的靈魂旅程''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haich, Elisabeth 1897 births 1994 deaths Hungarian spiritual writers Women mystics Women yogis 20th-century Hungarian women writers 20th-century Hungarian writers