It's common for people to confuse Hungarian / Magyar Paganism with Gypsy fortune telling and spells. Or, unfortunately, evil personified, such as in the fiction of Count Dracula in Transylvania and a belief in vampires, or even the madness of The Blood Countess who was considered evil and insane, a serial killer. (But read my book review on this Countess!)
It is none of that.
It's about shamanism.
Ancient Pagans believed that the world was flat and covered by a sky dome which had holes in it to let in the light of stars.
The sun and moon were most important celestial deities.
There was an invisible tree that rose up from below the earth and had limbs springing out skyward and through layers of - for lack of a better term - of the universe. At the very top was a heaven - a place of beautiful and blissful existence.
There was more evil the further you traveled down, less as you went up. No surprise that the earth was in between good and evil and it would seem evil had the advantage.
Only special people who were born with innate talent to go into a trance could travel the tree, which was thought to have three divisions / especially strong branches. The tree is called The World Tree. A beautiful carved sculpture of the tree, a modern reimagining, is presently in Godollo.
That person who went into trance was called a Taltos.
It was believed a child was chosen to be a Taltos before birth or by the age of seven by a supernatural being such as God or spirits. A Taltos could be male or female. The ability to be a Taltos was innate and not to be taught.
The word Taltos clearly has multiple cultural evidence.
In Uralic languages it is related to the words meaning to know or understand. Tai haa.
Talt in Turkish means unconsciousness.
Taltos is related to Talt in Magyar. It means open wide.
You might wonder how traveling up The World Tree was thought of. The Taltos could climb the limbs but she or he could also ride a special horse.
How did a typical human know a child was meant to be a Taltos? Such a child liked to be solitary. Perhaps they were sickly. They had extra fingers, teeth, bones. In other words, they were peculiar.
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My meditation on this is that the genetics might indicate that the person meant to be a taltos was the result of inbreeding or, in the case of one of my relatives who had two sets of teeth and an extra rib, according to a physician, might have been a twin in a stage of development as a fetus. The tribe might have found all humans born within it to have value and ways to contribute. Shamans in some cultures took plant potions or used hallucigens as a way to travel. So far I haven't found any reference to this in Magyar shamanism. The emphasis seems to be on natural ability.
Horses were so important to the nomadic Magyar, it makes sense to me that riding a special was a way to "travel" the tree/ universe.
C 2021
Research for these posts comes from multiple sources.
