Fairy lore and shamanism at first appearance may seem to have little direct connection. The traits they do share on a cursory examination include the basic elements of magic and the supernatural. Fairies appear universally across cultures from Mesoamerica to the Balkan countries and beyond. In strictly academic terms, there is no clear agreement that fairies as supernatural beings exist or ever existed outside of cultural belief systems and folklore — whatever their actual reality may be. Shamans, on the other hand, also appear almost universally in one form or another as religious or magicoreligious intermediaries of the sacred and supernatural. The shaman as an ethnographic or anthropological figure is a human being who appears to possess supraordinary abilities to enter by means of trance a kind of psychological state in which, whatever the measured reality may be, to all appearances the shaman leaves the physical plane in order to communicate with the realm of the spirits.  

Ethnographers have documented the diversity of shamanic figures and beliefs extensively across human cultures. Folklorists and mythographers have done as much with respect to fairy figures and beliefs. Yet few scholars have sought to connect the two in a meaningful analysis. Hungarian ethnologist and anthropologist Éva Pócs of the University of Pécs is one of the few scholars who has examined this issue. In addition to extensive work on Hungarian shamanism and the figure of the táltos, Pócs has looked more directly at the connection between shamanism, and specifically Hungarian shamanism, and what she calls fairy magicians. This column will summarize some of this work as discussed in a 2009 article published in Acta Ethnographica Hungarica: ‘Tündéres and the Order of St Ilona: Or, Did the Hungarians Have Fairy Magicians?’ Most commentary in this column will be limited to the article, with closing remarks and directions for further research at the end.

Pócs begins her article with a definition: “Fairy magicians is a term I use, based on Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Greek, Albanian and Sicilian examples, to denote magicians who sustain a mediating connection with the fairy other-world” (Pócs 2009: 377). This is a topic that Pócs began investigating at least as early as the 1980s. Pócs is concerned here with Hungary and specifically what information in the historical, ethnographic, mythographic, and folkloric records might support the idea that the Hungarian shaman, or táltos, is connected with and influenced by the figure of the fairy magician — attested strongly in data from the Balkan countries. Her article is a summary statement of the research conducted towards this inquiry for at least thirty years. “The question,” Pócs writes, “is whether along with the fairy beliefs and narratives the Hungarians also appropriated the various methods of mediating communication with the fairies” (378). 

Drawing on the Balkan sources, Pócs emphasizes key structural parallels between shamanic initiation and that of the fairy magician. In both instances, the initiate is “carried away” or “swept up” by supernatural entities that may be variously described as spirits or gods or fairies. In the case of the shaman in particular, almost all ethnographic records indicate that the shaman is born to be a shaman because of some ancestral connection (i.e., it is an inherited, biological calling). The shaman may be “made” a shaman but he or she is also born to be a shaman. It appears from Pócs’ research that a similar principle operates with the fairy magician. The other key structural connection between the shamanic initiation and that of the fairy magician is the healing function of both. That the shaman gains healing powers from the supernatural tutelary spirits by means of trance and ecstatic ritual is common ethnographic knowledge. That the fairy magician — or just to come out and say it, fairy shaman — does likewise is something of a novel anthropological point.  According to Pócs, “Fairy magicians, as protégés and initiates of the fairies, were active mostly in healing (primarily ‘fairy sicknesses’ that afflicted people who had violated fairy taboos) and learnt this art from their fairy protectors” (378). Certainly, supernatural healing abilities of the fairy folk is widely attested (as is their great powers to curse and bring about sickness if offended or simply given to general mischief). Yet such healing appears to take place primarily through means of magic, and acts as a narrative device in the fairy tale in order to effect the “happy ending” or plot resolution. Indeed, the breaking of an evil spell or curse (malefic magic) is one of the fairy tale plots par excellence. The structural elements are evident, but the shamanic element of the fairy magician is perhaps less obvious. In the case of the shaman, control over the spirits is a primary task to achieve in order to be an effective healer. With the fairy magician, the matter of spirit control is a little less clear. Fairies curse or cure their charges with less discernible reason.

Pócs’ analysis draws also on records from witch trials in the Balkan region as well as in Hungary from the 16^th through the 18^th centuries. One example Pócs offers is a trial held in 1646 at Nyárádiszereda, in Hungary: “a woman called Anna Orbán was charged with adultery, murder and witchcraft and was eventually convicted (she was tied to a horse’s tail and dragged about, then quartered). She may well have had,” Pócs continues, “some fairy-like traits, too. In the summary on the front cover of the documentation she is referred to as Tündér Anna (Anna the Fairy)” (382-83). A list of “fairy-like” traits named in which trial records of the period include the ability to transform into birds, to fly, and to appear as wind or a whirlwind. Curiously, such women accused were also referred to as cifra asszony, szépasszony, which Pócs translates as “fancy woman” and “fair woman.” A second example from a witch trial held between 1744 and 1745 further emphasizes the connection between witchcraft and fairy magic — or the perceived link between the two: 

According to the minutes of the trial of Mrs Péter Letenyei, née Judit Edvi, 1744-45, held at Páli and Kapuvár, she and two others flew about as warm wind (cf. the wind demon traits of fairies in the Balkans), and is guilty of bringing on fairy sicknesses (atrophy, paralysis, muteness). As a healer she remedies the harm done by the evil ones. Some of the women clearly speak of participating at fairy feasts. Under torture they usually colour their narrative to be more like a Witches’ Sabbath, the journey to the other world taken in the company of the fairies (for initiation?) turns into a devilish convention. (383)

What is noticeable in these accounts according to Pócs is a conflation between fairy initiates and witches as such. Pócs makes the point with these accounts and other examples that the fairy traits existed first (perhaps as vestiges of early pagan fertility cults) and that the accusations of witchcraft arose against a complex set of circumstances, the most obvious of which being the ongoing, total, and often violent Christianization of Europe. Indeed, Pócs suggests that one function of witchcraft accusations may have been to discredit the practitioners of fairy magic, the chief function of which, as indicated earlier, was the healing of various kinds of sicknesses, including but not limited to fairy sicknesses. Needless to say, the governing ideology that stimulated the witch trials left little sympathy either for those who might have been accused of consorting with the Fae. Whether the cult was of Diana or the Dagda, all such magic was seen as unsanctioned, anathema, and in short as the art of the Devil. Though not at all mentioned in this article, it could hardly go unmentioned that persecutions of shamans also were widespread — consider the case of the Sami in Scandinavia (notably in the same time period as Pócs’ examined witch trials, the 17^th through the 18th centuries, the so-called “end of drum time”). Scandinavia is notable also in this connection for being the European region that ultimately held out the longest against Christianization.

But to return to Pócs, her reading of the witch trial records suggests a division and even an opposition between fairies and witches — and between those initiated into the cults of each. She recounts further examples of witch trials in which the accused not only denied being a witch, but explicitly claimed to be part of a secret group engaged in battle with witches, quite often over control of the weather. The point Pócs is making with reference to her original question — did Hungarians have fairy magicians? — is that many of those accused of witchcraft not only showed signs of but actively aligned themselves with the cult of fairy magicians. Essentially, Pócs’ argument is that if records from the witch trials and folkloric evidence can establish the existence of fairy magicians or fairy shamans among the Hungarians, the witch hunts were in part an effort to eradicate that older cultural pattern. But the basic and somewhat vexing question remains: What came first, the fairy magician or the shaman? Are ethnographers and folklorists to regard shamanic helping spirits and fairies as ultimately one and the same? And what cultural forces set members of witch cults and fairy cults against one another — already so fiercely threatened by Christianization? This is an important ethnographic inquiry, and one which is hinted at but far from solved in this summary article.

***

By way of concluding remarks, I would like to note that the connections between shamanism and fairies is a fascinating field of inquiry, and one which was neither started nor summarized by Eva Pócs. Pulling out from my shelves, I looked through the two-volume Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture (edited by Mariko Namba Walter and Jane Neumann Fridman, 2004) in search of an entry on “fairies” and was not disappointed. Ann Ferlat authored an entry on “Fairies and Shamanism,” and in it she notes: “The role of fairies in the various European traditions has many shamanistic features, providing support for the existence of a European version of shamanism. Actually the central theme of European folk traditions is the relationship to spirits, such as nature spirits or spirits of the deceased; the central figure in this tradition is the fairy” (Ferlat in Walter and Fridman, 2004: 484). And of course it is no great hermeneutic strain to identify shamanic figures and narrative elements in any number of Celtic, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Slavic fairy tales. The Balkans, too, as Pócs makes clear in her analysis, have more than their share of fairy magicians and fairy shamans. That Hungarian folklore too presents such evidence at this point should go without saying. Hungarian shamanism has deep and diverse roots indeed (subject at least for an extensive treatment in itself, quite apart, too, from any discussion of fairy shamans — though such discussion is clearly worth engaging). It is worth noting that evidence for shamanism goes back to the Palaeolithic. Fairy cults came later.

Odin resonates as one key and powerful shamanic figure, and I would like to close this column with a personal recollection which I believe applies very much entirely in the case of shamanism. During my graduate work at the University of Minnesota, I had the good fortune to meet Anatoly Liberman, the great Germanic linguist and folklorist of international renown. He gave a lecture on Odin that I was lucky enough to attend, the title of which was something like “Why Is Odin Feared?” Beyond the obvious reasons having to do with Odin’s fearsome reputation as a warrior and indeed as the Norse god of war (along with witchcraft and magic), Professor Liberman joked that after having spent some forty years of his life or more in the deep and sustained study of the folklore and languages of the Scandinavian countries (in addition to Russian, Germanic, Dutch and other philological work), he came to realize not only how staggering was the existing body of information on Odin, but how staggering the scholarly production continues to be from many investigatory angles. This somewhat reserved yet evidently strikingly learned man quipped that it is in recognition of the insurmountable nature of the scholarly task that he has had, and would at that point continue to have, every conceivable reason to fear Odin. I feel something very much of a similar trepidation at the thought of how much work has already been done on shamanism and on European folklore — and never mind the fact that so much of it exists in languages other than in English. One could learn to read Hungarian, Russian, Romanian, other languages besides, and still have a ways to go to getting comprehensively acquainted with the extant scholarly literature. Nobody can hope to read it all — not even a shaman, not even a fairy shaman.

Nevertheless, I also recall the salutary admonition of Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1096-1141), who advised any monastic charge to adopt the reading method of the cloister: to read wide and diverse but deep. “The number of books is infinite,” he advised, “so do not pursue infinity.” Focus here is the key. And so in that spirit I set the books aside for the moment, recognize the enormity of the task ahead as I continue to chart a course for my own scholarly investigations. The question of the fairy magician and the shaman as such, Hungarian or otherwise, connections between them, origins of each, common soil in which each must have at least to some extent grown — all seem ripe for an invocation to the gods, a quiet retreat to the study, and a happy tip of the hat to Odin. 

[Image: A dramatic picture, filled with rich symbolic, shamanic, and folkloric resonances. The central figure is a pagan priest, or the ritual specialist (fairy magician / shaman?) in this intimate woodland ceremony. The colors are bright and vivid of the dress for all participants — vibrant purples and blues, greens and reds, flaming hints of orange — a complementary palette and lovely contrast against the subtle white of the snow. The deep glow of the fire gives further alchemical life and power to the gathering — warmth, too, as it is obviously winter, or at least a snowy scene. Photo caption: The community of the Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities celebrating Mokosh, a Slavic goddess. (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)]

[Christopher Greiner has studied shamanism and folklore for over 25 years and his publications include poetry, fiction, book reviews, and peer-reviewed articles. His work has appeared at Eternal Haunted Summer, Indie Shaman, and IK: Other Ways of Knowing. Previous work on shamanism includes an article on Sámi poetics and cultural ecology and another on the shamanic origins of the Sámi joik. He is a contributing reviewer at Facing North. Somehow, he finds time also to maintain his 9 to 5. Christopher has a BA honors degree in English from Penn State University, an MA in English and Cultural Studies from the University of Minnesota, and completed doctoral work in Anthropology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. His doctoral research focused on shamanism and cultural ecology with special emphasis on the Sámi. The present column will be expanded into a book-length study looking at shamanism, folklore, and conceptions of the sacred. Occasional posts will appear at his new Substack page: substack.com/@taltopedia. Whether he also is himself a shaman of sorts is a point that, being loath to incur certain wrath of the fairies, he can neither confirm nor deny.]