Shamanic Elements in Hungarian Folk Tales – An Excerpt from Fairy Tale Therapy
Shamanic Elements in Hungarian Folk Tales – An Excerpt from Fairy Tale Therapy

Summary/Abstract: If we accept that the message of a tale cannot be treated independently of the world view underlying it, we may as well specify the particular world view in which Hungarian folk tales are rooted. We have every reason to believe that based on their motifs, Hungarian folk tales can be traced back to an ancient shamanic tradition, and also that the ancient Hungarian religion contained shamanic elements too. This latter theory was first proposed by Vilmos Diószegi who said that “Most probably a shamanic world concept had been at the core of the world view of pagan Magyars [Hungarians]”. Diószegi studied the system of Hungarian popular beliefs extensively, and he found an amazingly organic system of ideas. In this system, he says, “there is not a single detail that could not be found in the shamanic beliefs of peoples related to us, and vice versa, no element is lacking from it that would be an integral feature of the shamanic religion”. According to Diószegi, throughout the centuries, oral tradition and ethnic folklore preserved the following elements of this shamanic world concept: the world tree with the sun on one side and the moon on the other; the world tree with a magic bird on top; beliefs relating to the lower world (the land of snakes, frogs and lizards); the election and initiation of the táltos [the shaman] (i.e., the climbing of the sky-high tree); the instrumental role of the drum; the use of a head-dress decorated with horns; assuming the form of a fighting bull; and communicating with animalshaped helpers. In Diószegi’s view, the belief in the duality of the soul, that there is a separation between the life-soul and the free soul, also belongs here. The former stands for life, “life-breath” itself, the latter signifies the soul temporarily leaving the body. Géza Róheim agrees with Diószegi in that he sees a connection between the motifs of our flying táltos, their battles fought in the air, their supernatural powers and wonderful birth on the one hand, and shamanic attributes on the other. It is Róheim who calls attention to the antagonism between shamans and witches, to thepractice of appealing to dead spirits in shamanic healing, and to the fact that the elected one “is able to see things hidden”.

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