Hungarian mythology

Much of Magyar mythology is believed to be lost. However, in the last hundred years scholars of the history of Hungarian culture have tried eagerly to recover a significant amount of Hungarian mythology.[4] The most important sources are:

• Folklore, as many mythical persons remain in folk tales, folk songs, legends, also special traditions linked to special dates, unknown elsewhere
• Medieval chronicles such as codices and manuscripts
• Secondary sources such as accounts about Hungarians by other authors (mostly before 850 AD)
• Archaeological research

The World Tree carved on a pot

Amongst the modern religions, Hungarian mythology is closest to the cosmology of Uralic peoples. In Hungarian myth, the world is divided into three spheres: the first is the Upper World (Felső világ), the home of the gods; the second is the Middle World (Középső világ) or world we know, and finally the underworld (Alsó világ). In the center of the world stands a tall tree: the World Tree / Tree of Life (Világfa/Életfa). Its foliage is the Upper World, and the Turul bird dwells on top of it. The Middle World is located at its trunk and the underworld is around its roots. In some stories, the tree has fruit: the golden apples. In Hinduism and Buddhism, there are very similar beliefs in the Trailokya and Kalpavriksha.

Research about the ancient Hungarian religion has led to the conclusion that it was a form of Tengrism, the ethnic Turko-Mongol religion which was probably picked up from the Turkic peoples the Magyar came into contact with, but was influenced by Hindus and Buddhists whom the Huns and Avars had encountered and converted to during their westward migration. Another theory ties the religion to that of the Huns and Scythians of Central Asia who converted to Buddhism in the largely Buddhist populace of Central Asia of those times due to similar or even identical legends to the Hungarian origin myth.

The shamanic role was filled by the táltos ("wise man / blessed scholar"). Their souls were thought to be able to travel between the three spheres via révülés (meditation). They were also doctors. A taltos was selected by fate; their slight abnormalities at birth (neonatal teeth, caulbearer, white hair, and additional fingers) were believed to be the sign of a divine order. The steps of their introduction:

1. Climbing up on the "shaman ladder / shaman tree" symbolized the World Tree;
2. Drenching the ghosts: drinking the blood of the sacrificed animal.

They had the ability to contact spirits by specific rituals and praying. Thus, they interpreted dreams, mediated between humans and spirits, cured and removed curses, and had an ability to find and bring back lost souls. They directed animal sacrifices and guessed the reason of an ancestor's anger.

After death, the human soul leaves the body. The body is buried by relatives on the other bank of a river, looking towards east.

Comparative methods can reveal that some motifs of folktales, fragments of songs or rhymes of folk customs preserved pieces of the old belief system. Some records tell about shaman-like figures directly. Shamanic remnants in Hungarian folklore was researched among others by Vilmos Diószegi, based on ethnographic records in Hungary and comparative works with various shamans of some Siberian peoples.[10] Ethnographer Mihály Hoppál continued his work of studying Hungarian shamanistic belief remnants,[11] comparing shamanistic beliefs of speakers of Finno-Ugric languages related to Hungarian[12] with those of other Siberian peoples.[13][14]

• Érdy-codex
• Finnic mythologies
• Hungarian neopaganism
• Hungarian shamanism
• Komi mythology
• Magyar invasion legends
• Onogurs
• "Pole, Hungarian, two good friends"
• Tengrism

• (in Hungarian) Zoltán Pintér: Mitológiai kislexikon. Szalay Könyvkiadó és Kereskedőház Kft., 1996.
• Diószegi, Vilmos (1998) [1958]. A sámánhit emlékei a magyar népi műveltségben (in Hungarian) (1. reprint kiadás ed.). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. ISBN 963-05-7542-6. The title means: “Remnants of shamanistic beliefs in Hungarian folklore”.
• Hajdú, Péter (1975). "A rokonság nyelvi háttere". In Hajdú, Péter (ed.). Uráli népek. Nyelvrokonaink kultúrája és hagyományai (in Hungarian). Budapest: Corvina Kiadó. pp. 11–43. ISBN 963-13-0900-2. The title means: “Uralic peoples. Culture and traditions of our linguistic relatives”; the chapter means “Linguistical background of the relationship”.
• Hoppál, Mihály (1994). Sámánok, lelkek és jelképek. Budapest: Helikon Kiadó. ISBN 963-208-298-2.
• Hoppál, Mihály (2005). Sámánok Eurázsiában (in Hungarian). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. ISBN 963-05-8295-3. 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) Archived 2010-01-02 at the Wayback Machine
• Hoppál, Mihály (1975). "Az uráli népek hiedelemvilága és a samanizmus". In Hajdú, Péter (ed.). Uráli népek / Nyelvrokonaink kultúrája és hagyományai (in Hungarian). Budapest: Corvina Kiadó. pp. 211–233. ISBN 963-13-0900-2. The title means: “Uralic peoples / Culture and traditions of our linguistic relatives”; the chapter means “The belief system of Uralic peoples and the shamanism”.

• Dömötör, Tekla. Hungarian folk beliefs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

• Hungarian Mythology I
• Excerpt of the legend of creation from the Hungarian saga