The Cultural Conceptualisation of the Ancient Hungarian magician Preserved in Folk Tales

Folk tales give readers the opportunity to obtain an insight into the past of a given cultural and linguistic community. Thus, folk tales help people to learn about and communicate with their past. Although they have gone through significant modifications since the oral tradition was replaced by written collections from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and their function has also changed, they still keep some ancient rituals alive. Now we can witness a revival of them as people have realised what rich knowledge has been preserved in folk tales for centuries. As a result, they more often turn to them for guidance as individuals or for finding their roots as communities. The ancient Hungarian shamanic belief system is also being rediscovered these days. The central figure of this religion is the magician, whose character and features originate from the Ural-Altaic shamanic tradition. This religious tradition goes back to the times before the Hungarian tribes conquered the Carpathian Basin around the beginning of the tenth century. Although Christianity banned all these pagan practices, ten centuries later folklorists could find traces of the tradition related to the magician among Hungarian nomadic herdsmen. The chapter will establish links between Hungarian shamanic traditions and Hungarian folk tales using cultural linguistics as a new approach. As Sharifian (2017) argues, it is a suitable tool for examining religious systems, or as Mihas (2012) has proved, it can be used to disclose cultural metaphors in myths and folk stories, because they preserve the cultural heritage of a linguistic community. Furthermore, the chapter aims at investigating the cultural concept of the Hungarian magician (táltos) and its magical horse (táltos ló) through cultural metaphors and schemas which reflect their unique features and practices originating from the shamanic traditions of ancient Hungarians. At the same time, the analysis of the representations of the male hero of the Hungarian folk tale Beautiful Nicholas (Szép Miklós), collected by Elek Benedek can prove that the figure of the Hungarian magician has been preserved in folk tales.