Pásztor Emília (szerk.): Sámánizmus és természethit régen és ma - Bajai dolgozatok 23. (Baja, 2019)
Soós Rita: Honfoglalók hidelem világa
Our ancestor's belief system We know quite little about the belief system of Hungarians from the era of the Conquest period. The small number of written sources form that time are calling our ancestors fire-worhipersl and infidels. However, the sources don't give us a more precise definition than that. However, researchers interested in the 10th- 11th century history of the Carpathian Basin more or less agree, that the belief system of Hungarians mostly shows similarities with Siberian shamanism. The central person of this system is the shaman, or the Hungarian equivalent of it the "táltos" as the research of Vilmos Diószegi shows. Depending on the cultural believes the shaman was born as such, for example with spare bones, more fingers or teeth or because of a near-death experience - mostly during childhood - they got in touch with the underworld and from that time on they had no choice, they had to serve the spirits of the underworld. The shaman's main task was to maintain the connection between our world and the underworld. Most likely they had additional tasks as well. Healing and presenting sacrifices were their obligations just as well as conducting ceremonies. This raises the question whether we can view the shaman as a "religious" leader in general, or during the Hungarian Conquest in particular. The term "religious" is in quotation marks as we cannot speak about true religion before the rule of Stephen I of Hungary, whose father, Grand Price of the Hungarians started the church organization - which was done parallelly with the creation of the state itself while strengthening each other's influence along the way. This religion was Christianity, which had dogmas and a hierarchical structure as well, that is the different elements of this organization (as vicarage, episcopate, archbishops) and the religious leaders (vicar, episcope, bishop) were in a subordinate relationship. To familiarize ourselves with the belief system of the Hungarians of the Conquest period we have to look at their burial rituals, the archeological findings and the ornaments placed on those finding as well as the ethnographic analogies. Different amulets played a significant role in their worldview as they assigned them guarding-protecting and helping-healing attributes. These objects were found mainly in tombs of women and girls, one reason might be that women were viewed to be more superstitious than man. Amulets could be made of animal teeth with a burred whole or of small animal bones which show similarity with the Siberian ongon cult (fig. 1). They believed that the teeth or the small bones of the animal are possessing the soul/spirit of said animal giving protection to the wearer of the amulet. Just as in many other archeological eras, amulets made of cowrie shells8 were popular among people of the 10th century. These amulets were 131
