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. Fastener

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

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.

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”.

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