By Joska Sous, translation in progress by Frank Coppieters and Ness Mountain. Translation copyright 1997, all rights reserved.
Write me at lochness@aracnet.com for permission to use.
I was born on December 20th, 1921, in the town of Apostag, which is about eighty kilometers south of Budapest, on the Donau. At the age of four I was sent to live with my grandparents in the village of Solt, fifteen kilometers further south, where I was apprenticed to the village shaman. When I was ten I had to move to Budapest to attend high school, but starting when I was nineteen, I went back to Solt every summer to stay in touch with the land and the people.
But my connection with shamanism goes much further back than my birth and my youth because I come from a clan of shamans. When the Hungarians came to what is now Hungary in the year 896 AD, they had a shamanistic view of life, like the other Asiatic peoples. They came in clans, one hundred and eight clans. My clan is called the Bacsa, the clan of shamans.
In Hungarian, shamans are called "Taltos", an ancient word whose roots are lost even to the Hungarian linguists. But I can tell you that Taltos is a winged horse; and the shaman is often seen as a winged man, who journeys like a bird. That is the meaning of Taltos: one who journeys between heaven and earth to form a bond between the two.
The Hungarian shaman clan was like the Levites for the Jews or the Druids for the Celts or the Brahmins in India. It is no virtue to be born into the caste of priests, but of course it is useful in a practical way, because for twenty or thirty generations my family has been working on spiritual matters, and this leaves a legacy which is very beneficial. In addition, I was born "with the caul" in the ...... ...I had to come into the world on my own, since at least twenty or twenty-five minutes passed before a woman from the neighborhood came in, and I was still sitting in the placenta, attached to the umbical cord. My mother did not dare cut it off, not knowing if it was allowed. I could have died. In the process my left shoulder sunk away a bit, but it wasn't noticed at the time, and later it grew ??? and this has remained a very sensitive place in many ways.
The village shaman of Solt took me under his protection because I was born with the caul, and because I was of the Bacsa clan as he was. He was a blacksmith and horse trader, but he was also a practicing shaman, and when he heard that a child had been born with the caul, he took me under his wing with four or five other boys and girls who were of the Bacsa or were born with the caul, the two conditions for the shaman's calling. Yes, there were girls, too. There was no discrimination between men and women: all that matters is the ability.
He was called Tamas Bacsi, which was actually a nickname he had gotten when the priest warned the congregation against him in the Sunday prayer: "This man is a doubting Tamas, because he wants to touch God, to touch first before he will believe." Not because he had no God, mind you: because he wanted to have God in his hands.
If you asked Tamas Bacsi about God and salvation, he would answer that you had to seek within yourself to experience it on your own. "I have met my God," he said, "and I am being impregnated with him more and more. I find him extraordinary, endless. I have found this for myself, but I won't try to persuade you. You have to discover it for yourself." ...He was calling on people to discover themselves, to experience themselves, and that's how he got the nickname "Tamas Bacsi", which means, "The one who believes only what he has in his hands."
"Discover for yourself what God looks like, and in what circumstances he appears," he said, "To find this is your treasure. You have to work for it." He also said, "Never imagine that everything came to be all by itself. There is something behind it." This is logical for a shaman: we believe that there is something beneath the surface of life.
I didn't live with him, but I went to see him every day, like a grandfather, even on Sundays and holidays. Often he would take us with him to see a person or an animal he was "working on", healing or relieving pain by laying on of hands and singing. "Just look, just listen," he would say, "Later you will understand." And now, fifty-five years later, those memories come back to me when I am shamanizing, or I will draw on them consciously, and I do understand now, much more clearly than he could have explained it. When he was healing people or animals, he was singing; not words, just articulated sounds. The song does not need words. The meaning is in the sound itself, in the vibrations. That was how it had been passed down to him: that you had to try to get in touch with things through the vibration, the sound. To feel the energies radiating from the person.
Now, you know that things give off an aura, an energy, but they also give off a vibration. Everything that is vibration is also sound and rhythm. Since ancient times, shamans have been using this knowledge to get in touch with their patients' problems.
The problem is usually a tension or a relaxation, that is, a positive or negative vibration. Tamas Bacsi found ways to feel out and understand the nature of the problem in terms of sound. It's a very intuitive process, but you can awaken the ability in yourself. We all have it. Tamas Bacsi taught us our own sound. Our own sound first, because you have to start with yourself, before you can learn to grasp the sounds of things and people.
You must learn to recognize the vibrations of your own problems and questions, and those of other people -- of everything in the world, clouds, stones, cosmic energies, the divine. You can capture everything through sound vibration. There's a Hungarian saying that says that you don't need a prayer to get in touch with God. You make contact through a vibration, and that is what Tamas Bacsi was teaching us.
This is why I use the Tibetan singing bowl when I shamanize. The Tibetan monks were especially involved with sound, treating people on physiological, psychological, and spiritual levels. They learned to observe the sounds in themselves -- without fixed mantras. Mantras are sequences of sounds which are chanted again and again for long periods, but they bring out spontaneous sounds or groups of sounds without images or words. These are the true mantras. A shaman who fills himself with sound lives in a state of inspiration. It works like the breathing or the beating of the heart, totally independent of the will. This ability is native to us, and you can become aware of it, like the heart or the digestive system. It is a human function, not magical except in the way that your blood circulating is magical: we can observe and model it, but we can't create or truly understand it.
This is the key thing which Tamas Bacsi taught us. He taught by example, which is the best way to teach. He was always saying, "You have to be open in a very special way, unconditionally open." Not to judge, as I understand him now. You can truly understand only when you have gathered enough information. This can be a way of life, to live in wonderment, like a child.
Children learn to talk very quickly because they are full of wonder about the way adults can speak so easily, because they listen with such openness to their parents. That is also the mystery of human progress on both larger and smaller scales, that you can ....???...and take part. Then sound is coming into us, because everything that is outside us is also in us. In that way the shaman is trying to experience the vibration, to understand it, and to apply it.
I was very fortunate, of course, that Tamas Bacsi was a spiritually oriented healer and not just someone who worked with herbs and so forth. The spiritual level is the highest level of healing. He would always ask people to feel. He would say, "I do not heal anything. I am restoring the harmony." Of course, it depends on the patient, too. You can't create miracles, but you can create favorable circumstances.
I also restore harmonies. When people come to me for help, I sing their problems, and the songs which come forth in me bring me into a special state between waking and sleeping, a controlled trance, which Tamas Bacsi taught us. Someone sitting next to me might not notice that I am in a different state, a different vibration. It's like sitting next a mathematician -- you don't know what is going on in their head. They may have the most brilliant ideas, but you don't see anything. Artists and other creative people also develop this state of inspiration, but usually they have to wait for it, or they have to arrange it, with a special meeting, or a love relationship, or some such thing, to get their emotions moving. But the shaman does not wait for inspiration. We invoke the inspiration consciously, by beating on a drum, for example, or singing, or by playing the singing bowls.
Then the sounds surge up in me, and I get in touch with the person; I get a psychological picture of them. I focus primarily on the spirit because all problems and changes in the body originate with spiritual changes. This is true even if you break your arm in an accident. Perhaps your thoughts were somewhere else, or you were sad or confused. Most accidents are not truly accidents, but are the result of a certain state of mind. I can feel this, and the sounds rise up in me. It can take only a few minutes, but sometimes as much as half an hour. It depends on the openness of the person and the surroundings.
I ask people to open themselves; not to believe, but not to be cynical. To avoid prejudice. But most people do not know how, so they do have judgments beforehand and afterwards. This makes it difficult to get in touch with the spiritual, which is the purpose of the spiritually oriented shaman: to reach the spirit, raise the consciousness, and activate the spiritual process.
To do this you must become conscious of your androgyny. The duality in us needs to be re-united, men with the anima, women with the animus. This is not a psychological theory. It is a reality. We are androgynous or even tri-polar, because the neutral is there too.
So you have to find peace with your anima or animus. Often conflicts with others are actually conflicts within the self. When a man is not satisfied with his wife, it probably means he really is not satisfied with his anima, and the other way around???. Often we complain about somebody else, but the real problem, the disharmony, is in ourselves.
When we get in touch with the anima or animus, we can find harmony and serenity. In every religion, the saints are depicted in that serene, androgynous state, in which the duality is united. It is possible to bring this about with sound.
By nature humans are harmonious; but we all live in a humdrum human world, not off in the mountains or the desert, so we are acutely affected by the the world around us. We need to keep harmonizing ourselves with the outside world -- not just the inner world. People need to understand this need, and to understand how to use sound and vibration to bring themselves into harmony of body, soul, and spirit. This is what I teach.
I use my instruments, the drum and the Tibetan bowls, to create vibration and openness when I work with others, but when I shamanize for myself, for my own harmony, spiritual development, and awakening, I don't use instruments. In fact, I don't even sing any more. I am working with the problem of a larger harmony, a larger awakening of myself, and of people and things, and I hear the sounds, always different sounds. Sometimes for two or three days, the same sound arises. It might be a sound I couldn't possible sing, like the sound of a hundred big bells. You can't reproduce such a sound, you can only perceive it, not hear it. So I hear it with the tips of my fingers, my back, my chest, my head, everywhere, I hear and feel the vibration and I am not dependent on my ears, because I listen with my whole body, like a radiotelescope.
There is an endless variety of souds, audible and inaudible, but Tamas Bacsi taught us that there are three fundamental sounds: the androgynous, long- held sound; the feminine, undulating sound; and the masculine, the broken or fire sound. I teach people to observe these sounds in themselves, in each other, in the cosmos. You must learn to feel in harmony with yourself, with others, with the planet, with the cosmos, and to feel this harmony while you are going about your day, doing practical things, so that everything you do contributes to your awareness of yourself or your surroundings.
When I sing or shamanize, I am in a subtle trance state, the vibrations are very fine, this is the same state of inspiritation an artist might make use of, or a businessperson, a politician, a religious person. It is a high vibration, much higher than the vibrations most people experience. This vibration is more closely connected with the original sound. This is why I teach people the original sound, so they can feel the vibration of it, and use it consciously.
The vibrations work like homeopathy. It is not a medicine, but it brings out medicinal powers in us. How it works I don't know, but it works. That's the different between the How and the What. Philosophers ask "What?" and technicians ask "How?". We need to seek the means, rather than the origin of what we will experience as we experiment. The means are so simple, actually, that people have a hard time believing it, but the greatest wisdom is to think simply. All great things are simple.
This is what sound teaches us, teaches by experience. Being a shaman is not a title but a state. As a Hungarian saying puts it, "A true minister studies all life and dies a fool." without knowing anything."
The word, "shaman", comes from the Sumerian. It goes back six thousand years. It was the name of the demigod Sjamas, and the priests were also called Sjamas, which means "in the service of the light." A shaman is someone who has received the light -- the knowledge -- and spreads it. Knowledge of oneself, of people, of all things. The first rule of shamanism says, "Sound is the essence." That is the key, the knowledge and application of sound.
One of the things which Tamas Bacsi would have us do was journeying. "Boys and girls," he would say, "come here now to me in the shadow of the tree, and we will go on a journey. Close your eyes softly; or not, they will close by themselves anyway."
Then he would start to sing, to vocalize, and to clap his hands in time, and we had to join in and move a little. The movement was very important because through it we could experience our prenatal state, the movement of the breathing of the mother, and through and behind that prenatal state, we experienced our origins as water beings in the original ocean, and even the ancient harmony of the cosmic vibrations. In that way we could find our own rhythms. We have at least a hundred rhythms in us.
He didn't explain all of that to us, we just had to join in, and only later did I come to understand it. He would just say, "Join in as if you were a frog."
Then as he went on, we would enter a special state. We were still conscious that we were sitting there under the tree, but at the same time, images would be arising in us. After half an hour or an hour, he would say, "Now be quiet and stop singing. It is time to share what you have sung. You have seven sources of knowledge: the five senses, the emotions, and the thoughts. Tell us what happened for you in the singing. It may be a feeling or a thought or a series of thoughts, but just tell it."
The we would tell our experiences. The remarkable thing was that we had discovered all kinds of archetypal images. Of course I didn't understand that at the time, but you can be affected by an experience even when you don't understand it. That's why it's so important to remember your dreams when you get up in the morning, even if you don't understand them. When you get used to them, pondering them, then the symbols will come clear by themselves. This is beneficial because dreams bring us into a higher harmony.
Simple dreams bring us physical or psychological harmony, but waking dreams bring harmony with the spiritual. That was the purpose of the journeying.
He often called going "down in the cellar". It was a wine-producing area, with a lot of cellars built into the hills. In the cellars it was almost always the same temperature regardless of the season, and it he wanted us to experience that atmosphere.
He would gently prepare us by reminding us of the temperature of the cellar, and the atmosphere, which is dark and moist, soft and mysterious, with strange noises and vibrations. So we would go together "to the cellar" and then he would ask for our observations. He told us that when we were older, we would see other images, and we shouldn't be afraid of them, because they were just images in our minds. He called them "gifts", which could bring happiness or fear. Even fear he called a gift, because you can feel it and accept it. He told us to accept these gifts and not suppress them, even when they were fearsome.
Later he took us "into the well". In that part of Hungary, there were wells about eighty meters deep, and when you looked down, you would see a small circle of shining water in the bottom. He knew that us kids often played around the wells and were fascinated with them, and he would say, "Now we are going down in the well, very slowly, like a falling leaf. You come to the surface of the water, and you sink even deeper down, very, very deep." We were experiencing our prenatal state, and often we fell asleep as if we were dissolved in vapor. "At first you are like ice, the ice is melting, and then the water becomes vapor which dissolves into the cosmos." That was how he took us so far. I don't know exactly what he was doing, but I remember that he gave us all sorts of suggestions. He would make use of the half-dream state to give half-suggestions to us, so that no psychological or spiritual harm or accident would come to us.
He would always warn us not to participate in these activities when we were tired or didn't feel like it, or when we were in pain, psychological or physical. We should stop if we felt pain. "Never force your body, soul, or spirit. One person is quicker than another. What counts is that you are moving forward. The master can run so far that you can't see him any longer. That doesn't matter as long as you can see his footsteps to follow him."
This "subterranean" journey was a journey to the subconscious. Tamas Bacsi never explained that, he was just passing on the tradition, but there are seven levels of consciousness which we can experience. Going into the cellar or the well is going down through these levels. Once you have experienced this, you can live these levels. It is important to experience everything, including what you can touch in feel in life, because when you don't truly feel, you are using twice as much energy as is necessary; but when we are in touch with ourselves, there is extra energy which we radiate, which we can use for ourselves and for others.
Just as there is a subconscious, there is a superconscious. To experience it is to ascend. Tamas Bacsi would say, "Look carefully at a bird, feel like a bird, and fly with the birds -- see the swallows and how they fly, and the bat. Isn't in incredible how they do it? Admire it, and try to feel how they feel. Imagine you are a cloud, a beautiful cloud, or a cloud full of electricity, or rain, a dark cloud. Allow yourself to float and travel just like the cloud." He was teaching us how flying felt. He was developing our supernatural perceptions, in a very simple way.
In addition to his work healing people and animals, Tamas Bacsi was often called to predict the future. After the First World War, many Hungarian prisoners had remained in Russia, and their families wanted to know if they were still alive, or if they were coming back, and when they would arrive. So he was often consulted by their mothers or wives, to "hear something", as he called it.
He would go with the woman to a large old silver birch outside the village, by a country road, in a meadow by a fork in the road. It was more than a hundred years old, and very beautiful. He would sit under the tree and listen to the rustling of the silvery leaves. We were allowed to sit with him, but we had to be quiet, no talking, and he would say, "Listen very carefully, so you can hear that the leaves are talking."
As he listened, he would ask a question in his thoughts. Very gently, then, he would hold the woman, and put her against the tree, with her back against the tree and her face toward Russia, in the East. Then he would say, "Just think about your son" (or husband or fiance). "Think about him and close your eyes, and later you will tell me what you have seen. I am going to listen to the rustling of the leaves and the spirits." Much later I found that this is an ancient method, which had also been used the druids, and even of Joan D'Ark, it is said that angel spoke to her from the tree, from the leaves. The technique of listening to the rustling of leaves or other sources of sound is spread all over the world.
He often listened to the leaves, and he would sing, sing articulated sounds. We always wanted to know what he was singing, but actually, it was only sounds, not a language. Sometimes he would say, "Yes, this is the language of the old Hungarians." Personally, I do think that words would come up, but I don't know how much they had to do with the old language, or if they were only an imitation of it. In any case, he would often say, "This is old Hungarian," or "It is the Tartars, with their dogheads, speak like this."
The Tartars pushed their way into Hungary in 1241, and devastated the whole country. Those were the hoards of Batu Kahn, who laid waste the land, and ever since, the Tartars are called Dogheads for their protruding cheekbones, and because they were short with peculiar skin and a pitch-black heart. It reminded us of dogs, and their language was like the barking of a dog to us. Still it is remarkable that the memory of them survived for seven centuries.
But I know from my own experience that when you are among people of other ethnic groups, you can get the feeling of the language, especially the intonation and rhythm, even if you don't understand it, but Tamas Basci would say, "This is the language of the old Hungarians," or "this is the language of the Tartars with their dogheads."
He would sit under the tree in an Oriental way, not in the lotus posture or anything like that, but like the Turks, not making a ritual of it. He would very simply sit there and sing. From time to time he would stop and listen. After half on hour or so, depending, he would say that the man would not be coming back, or that he was dead, or that he was remarried to someone else, or that they had to wait a few more weeks, because he would get home at such and such a feast.
He never indicated the date precisely, as I can understand, because there are no direct links, but a couple of times I did see that the person concerned did come home at the festival he had said, such as Pentacost, or Easter, during the digging of the potatoes or the harvesting of the plums. Tamas Bacsi had a peasant feeling about time, you know, the feasts and harvests were how he would speak of the passing of time.
There was a swineherd, who took pigs from the whole village into the woods or the meadows for the day, and in the evening, miraculously enough, they would each find their way back to their own farm. But one day there was a terrible storm, and many of the pigs were scared and started to run wild. A fat sow with a litter of piglets ran toward the Donnau, and after the storm they were nowhere to be found. The villagers suspected that the gypsies, who lived at the edge of the village, had found and eaten e sow, but the came to Tamas Bacsi to see if he could find her.
So with a chicken under one arm, the owner came with a gaggle of villagers to Tamas Bacsi, and told him what had happened, and they were afraid the sow had been roasted by the gypsies, but perhaps he could locate her. So Tamas Bacsi went to the silver birch again, and a couple of dozen people followed, because he'd never been consulted about something that this before, and they wanted to see how he would do it. He sat quietly under the tree, not sending anyone away, and they were very quiet, looking t ee what he was doing.
He wasn't doing anything spectacular. He took the owner of the pig, a farm woman of 50 years or so, and he put her with her back against the tree facing the direction in which the pig had run. He told her to close her eyes and think about the sow, and if an image came up, to tell him about it. Tamas listened to the leaves, and after a while he said that the sow and her young had not been eaten, they were in the swamp by the Donnau, but that there were gypsies in the neighborhood fishing, so they had ter get them right away. It turned out just as he said.
He was also consulted for weather predictions. These were the days before weather forecasts, and it can be very important for a farmer to know what the weather will be. Now, close by that old silver birch there was a pond, and Tamas Bacsi would often go there in the evening, around, dusk, and he would listen to frogs, or, as he would say, "To speak with the ancestors", and that's how he would give predictions about the weather. Now I think -- I didn't understand it at the time -- that the frogs can f the weather, and accustomed himself to their different tones, until he could tell them apart and deduce the weather from that. He always told us, "You have to listen very closely to the frogs, because they know everything which is happening in three elements, on the earth, in the water, and in the air, but they don't know anything about fire, it is only the salamander who knows about that. In any case, the frogs were like a barometer which provided information about what happens on, and also in, the eart h. This is because the frog is an amphibian. It is an ancient method, drawing knowledge from the sounds and singing of the frogs.
Sometimes we also went to watch birds, mainly the crows, magpies, and the owls in the nighttime. There were a lot of smaller owls in that area. We would also watch the flying of bats and storks, as well as the swallows.
In the spring and the fall, wild geese and ducks would come and fly over the ponds or alight on the fields. So we watched them too, for various reasons. The wild geese always came in the fall, from the north, which is the direction from which the ancient Hungarians came, and so it was said that they brought messages from our ancestors. Tamas Bacsi would listen to them and look at the formations they flew in, and when they flew back in the spring, they would return to the ancestors, and so he would be nnected to them.
Tamas Bacsi would also use magical signs to see, to hear, to experience, and to heal. For example, the footprint of a wild goose, which is made of three lines, like the sign of Shiva or of Neptune. This often appears in shamanic iconography, and I've read that it is used everywhere. There is a theory that the cuneiform characters of the Esirobabylonians and the Sumerians were variations of the footprints of wild geese, which were later reduced to a dozen signs from which writing developed.
Tamas Bacsi would make the print with his thumb, index, and middle fingers spread out in the dust, or in dirt or clay. He would do it different ways, then stop and look at it. I don't know if it a limnotechnical way for him to remember, or if the lines brought about a shift in consciousness or something along these lines.
For myself, when I draw or paint, I experience a shift of consciousness. I have Strange sensations, which are at once physiological, psychological, and spiritual, and a very different way of thinking arises in me.
There are endless possibilities of what could be made with the three lines of the goose's footprint. For Tamas Bacsi it was the trinity, and as he would say, "It is the day, the night, and what lies in between." Also the trinity of the three worlds, the living, the dead, and the ones yet to be born.
In the northern shamanism of the area of Mongolia, they also speak of three worlds, and so do the aboriginals of Australia. Sometimes the tripartition takes a different form when one distinguishes between the world of the living here on earth, the subterranean world, and the world of spirits. It is assumed that the spirit is immortal, and that those who are yet to come -- who are becoming -- are waiting for a body to enter.
He also used the three-fingered gesture for healing cows and horses. It hardly worked with sheep, though, and not all with pigs. Perhaps this was because the cows and horses came from the original Hungarian nomadic tribes, whereas the sheep were kept more by the mountain people.
That would indicate that Tamas Bacsi had a genetic connection with the old shamanism of the nomadic peoples. Shamanism takes on a wide variety of forms, depending on the area and the mindset of the people, because it always comes from the same state of mind.
He would put the three fingers of his right hand on animals and people, on the afflicted part of the body, or on the different chakras or energy centers. He would do that with ... the manner in which the man, the woman or the child would .... First he would listen, then he would put his finger in the hollow of the throat....adam's apple, or on the gland.
In those days, tuberculosis was the national sickness in Hungary. One out of ten people would die of it. There were posters all over advising you to be more careful of hygiene. Tamas treated a lot of tuberculosis patients. He distinguished between three kinds of coughing: moist, dry, and hot cough. A hot cough is an asthmatic cough which happens very high in the throat.
He would feel the throat chakra in one of three different ways according to the kind of cough. This needed not only sensitivity but also knowledge. Of course you can follow your feelings, but Tamas Bacsi had transmitted knowledge.
He never taught it to me in detail because I was too young, and because I had to go to Budapest for school when I was ten. Maybe he would have taught it me if I had stayed to live in Solt longer. When I came back at summer vacation, there was always a lot of work to do on the land, so it just wouldn't happen. I sawh im on Sundays, but he wouldn't say too much then. By nature he was a taciturn man. He liked to smoke his long pipe and listen to people.
He worked the chakras, not just with three fingers, but also sometimes with the five fingers of his right hand, with the fingers spread out. For example, he would put his hand on the person's heart, and very gently, he would start turning his hand around the palm. It wasn't massage, he was only barely touching the person. With the left hand, he would touch the back side of the chakra, at the shoulderblades. Sometimes he would push on it. I could tell because the patient would sigh because it hurt, then they would relax.
Sometimes he had the patients sit against a tree, on a bench next to him or in front of him. I don't know why, probably it had a psychological meaning. Then he would ask them to close their eyes, without falling asleep, because they had to be aware of what images arose in them. The images were from the ancestors orgood spirits giving advice. Then they would say what they had seen, for example a sunrise over an open field. In most cases the images would come from their daily life. People get images what they usually do, like an engineer might get images of machine parts. What they occupy themselves with. So these were not disturbing visions of angel or devils, not to start with at any rate. Sometimes someone would say they saw a child drown, or an animal, and more archetypal images would arise, because were more fantastic images, but the first images which come up are often from daily life. As you enter more deeply into the ploblem, more archetypal images come up. It's that way for everyone.
Then Tamas Bacsi would ask the person to describe the images and feelings. If he felt that they were getting a message or needed to speak, he would stop his meditation to have them tell their waking dream. Then he would ask, "What were you thinking before you got this dream?", because there would always be a way to connect the dream images with their practical situation. Such an image can have different meanings, so you need to understand the context.
I don't know whether he discovered it himself or if it was transmitted to him, but in the shamanic tradition it is often taught that one must witness galloping thoughts without intervention. "Let them arise". The technique of using dreams or waking dreams is also traditional. But whatever you call it, this was how he would work with people, and at times he would suggest an explanation of the dreams, saying "This is how I see it. Are you satisfied with my answer?". He would never say, "This is how i s," but always, "I see it this way," and the other would say, "Yes, I agree, but this or that point I am thinking differently." So Tamas would ask what the patient thought about it, to draw them out; and then he would listen and nod his head and say "Yes," or "Hmmm," or perhaps ask another question. It was a kind of psychoanalysis without the couch. The patient would sit on a chair, or even on the grass.
And Tamas and his patient were never disturbed by people milling about, or animals, or small children making noise, because they were concentrating totally, so they could abstract themselves from any disturbance. I have already mentioned Tamas's method of divination from the sounds and actions of animals. The crows were an important part of this. He would observe the patterns of their flying and especially the sounds they made, their songs. Again, he was part of an ancient tradition. The ancient Ge ns considered the crow the bird of Odin. The crow is important to the Indians of North America, and even among the Romans, there were special priests who would divine the message transmitted through the shrieking of birds. Tamas Bacsi was able to distinguish no less than sixty-four different calls of the crow. It is a language. The meanings are not of high spiritual matters, but of ordinary practical things, whether people will be coming from the mountains, or what the weather will be.
I have learned that in shamanism, the figure 8 plays a special role, both as a number and as a graphic symbol. It is said to represent two eggs, or two ovals, the human and the divine, or the earth and the heavens united. So it is remarkable that the crows know 64 ???? know 64 ??? end of this tape
For instance, Tamas Bacsi would count out, how many times a stork would clack its beak. When a stork is feeling good, it will dance on its nest and chatter with its beak. Sometimes it clacks at a slow pace, but often very rapidly, about six or eight sounds per second, so you have to have very good ears for it, and you must be able to count quickly. Tamas would say to us, "the stork is telling what he has seen, now count carefully." You can see when the stork is going to do it. It stands up, looks r t and left, and when it feels comfortable in the space, it starts to chatter. Then Tamas Bacsi would say, "Look, here he goes. Count how many clacks he makes." We very seldom counted it right, but he would count with us, and correct us, "No that was two less, or four more, next time you have to pay better attention."
This training helped us develop quick reflexes, and helped us toward a wonderful expansion of consciousness. Many people think that consciousness expansion is a high metaphysical phenomenon, but it starts very simply, with such practical matters as listening to the clacking of a stork's beak, or even to the sound of a turning motor.
It was even harder to count the sounds made by the swallows flying back to the young in their nests with insects in their beaks. That is much faster than the sounds of the stork, 8 to 14 sounds per second. What you have to do is to hear the whole series is a rhythm. As Tamas said, "When you start counting with one, two, three, you will never get there. You have to find the rhythm, and every rhythm has so many sounds."
This is what I continue to do in my shamanization. When a mantra arises in me, or when I people speaking, I listen to the rhythm. Not just counting sounds, but hearing rhythm. This was the purpose of the exercises Tamas Bacsi gave us, such as listening to frogs; later it expanded even further. When it was quiet in the evening, and we were sitting near the pond, there was a terrible number of mosquitoes, and Tamas Bacsi would say, "Count the mosquitoes buzzing. The mosquitoes, too, are your teachers They teach you to sing. Sing like a mosquito, feel it with you whole body." His whole body was his intstrument, and we had to learn to be the same.
We would also count the sounds made by owls, and he directed our attention to two things: the rhythm and the musical intonation, whether it was long or short. "Put a question to the owls," he would say, "And you will hear what it answers." Of course we would ask crazy things, like if we were going to get something good for dinner, or whether dad would bring a present from the town. If the owl called four times, it would happen. It was simple: if we heard an even number of sounds, that meant a positi answer; with an uneven number, it was either negative, or "wait and see".
Tamas would be the interpreter of the sounds. He would be the one to listen to learn about the weather or the a nswer to a question, for example, if a pregnant woman wanted to know whether she would have a boy or a girl. He would listen the swallows and the storks, he would always had more than one source. In most cases his predictions were accurate.
You see, he tuned in to the sound, which caused an expansion of consciousness. Later I have found that the same phenomenon can happen when you listen to the humming of the motor of a car. The sound itself is not as important as that you truly listen, so that your consciousness expands, although not so that the usual three-dimensional reality disappears. It is not a half-sleep state, which could cause accidents, but simply that for a moment you find yourself existing on two levels.
I experience this very often. For instance when I sit in a train I listen to the sound of the wheels on the rails, and as I concentrate I find my consciousness shifts. It's not a slumbering state, but a state in between sleeping and waking, and in that moment, information will come to me. In this state you can get messages or answers or you can feel yourself function in a much more spacious manner. Shamans know that it is the vibration which causes the expansion of consciousness. If it comes from a ork or a motorcycle, it doesn't matter. It gives the same result when you join with the sound. 4: the Great Bear.
I know very little about the way in which Tamas Bacsi himself received his training. In those days there was not a single master, but several people, wise men or women, who each had knowledge of something. One would know everything about herms, another would know how to heal animals or people, or to predict the future by listening to a tree. My understanding is that he gathered his knoweldge from several sources.
But he did have a master, or someone who made a deep impression on him because he had a few objects in his home which were not really magical, but of which he would say, "That comes from a wise man". The only thing I knew of this man was that he was a shepherd.
There was a stick which made a tremendous impression on because it seemed so magical. It was as big as a walking stick, all decorated with old rune signs, the old Hungarian scripts which I could not read at all. As kids, we only knew the ABCs and the Roman and Arabic numbers, but Tamas would always of the runes, "This is the real Hungarian. What you are learning from the church is imported, not the real Hungarian." Sometimes Tamas Bacsi would take the stick in his hand, just as someone else might ho a rosary, and he would touch it with his thumb and sing. The he would stroke the signs and turn the stick very slowly around so that he could touch all the signs which were cut on the stick in a spiral. When he reached the bottom, he would turn over. It fascinated me.
It was a kind of a shepherd's staff which ended at the top in a double snake's head; and about ten centimeters down, on the underside, three frogs had been carved. In shamanism, you know, the frog is important because it represents our amphibian state, but I didn't know that then. As kids, though, we often went to fish with a kind of a basket, and of course we would catch more frogs than fishes, and like all boys we would torture the frogs. We tore the legs off them and drove sticks through them. Bu hen Tamas Bacsi heard about that, he said, "You must never do that, because the soul of tortured frog will come inside your belly and cause pain or sickness."
Since that time I have a great reverence for the frog because he said that. The other boys stopped doing it because they were afraid of gettin sick from the ghost of a trampled frog in their belly, but I was not acting out of fear. I had reverence for the Old One, because he had to know better than I did.
Anyway, there were three frogs on the back of the stick, and on top it ended in a double snake's head. It was a very special ritual object to Tamas Bacsi, which he had received from the master, the one from whom he had learned the most.
Another tradition which Tamas carried from him to us was stargazing, especially the polar star and the Great Bear, four stars in a group with a tail attached. We had to look closely at the highest star, there where it breaks down, and he would ask what I was seeing. "I am seeing a star," I said. "Look closer, what do you see?" "Yes, there is another small dot next to it, a spot of light." Next to the tail star of the Great Bear is a very small star, which you have to look very closely to see. There were three or four boys and two girl, and only three of us could see it. Tamas said that we could "read the stars", because when you can see it, it means you have a good intuition, good observational facilities, and rationality coupled with a feeling for the metaphysical. That connection was very important to him.
Being able to see this star is an indication of a different thought structure, because you can't always see it, it will arise suddenly. I still look at it, and sometimes I think I am imagining it, but I learned many years later that it is a small star, of the fifth magnitude, which stands just behind and above the second and tail star of the Bear, which used to be called Alcor, meaning "test" or "trial". In other civilizations it was used in initiation rituals, to test for paranormal abilities.
In the Hungarian and other shamanistic traditions, the Great Bear is very important. For us, the Great Bear, like many of the star signs, has three names, a secular, a sacred, and a divine name. The secular name is the Cart; the sacred name is the Great Bear; and the third, magical and mystical name is Gonsoumloutl. The Hungarian etymologists have not been able to find the root of the word, but it refers to the one who goes between gods and humans, the one who gave us civilization. It is said that Gonzol was sent from heaven to teach us many practical things, technical, psychological, and spiritual, and when people had learned them, the Gonzol went back to heaven on a fiery cart, where we now see the Great Bear.
There is another version of the story, in which it is told that when he had finished his teaching and wanted to go back, people were afraid they would lose all their knowledge, so they cut him up and ate him to keep the knowledge down here -- the holy or magical cannibalism -- and so the cart went back to heaven without him and he is still floating there.
There is also a village called Gonzol, on an island in the Donnau between Estergom and Komarom, near the Hungarian-Czechoslovakian border. There are documents referring to it dating back to the twelvth century, but it is much older than that. In this village there is a family Gonzol, and the oldest or the most suited man of this family has always been the judge for that area. People would come from far and near to ask his judgement, because he was a just man, who received his knowledge from heaven. there is yet another meaning to the word Gonzol, because when you say of a person that they have the Gonzol, it means they are poorly dressed. This refers to the original Gonzol, a shaman who roamed around in threadbare clothing. Gonzol mean, certainly as far as the ??? is concerned, "negotiator", a shaman which is sent by the heavens to help us. So it is important that Tamas Bacsi always had us look to the Gonzol, the Great Bear.
I have another thought about this. In our time, people speak of flying saucers and where they might come from. We find in the cosmology of many different peoples that certain star signs are considered sacred because people escaped from them???. Perhaps we should be directing our radiotelescopes in this direction, to find out whether there are civilizations there, because I assume these were not gods -- God is pure spirit -- but they might have been higher civilizations which came and stayed here and t behind the memory of a visit of gods or ambassadors of the gods.
In Hungarian mythology the Gonzol is not a god but an ambassador, although with the northern peoples of Siberia he is viewed as the son of god or his faithful servant.
I do think that looking to the Gonzol or the polar star is based on actual fact, but on a psychological or spiritual level. Tamas said that do not necessarily have to look at the star to get in contact with it, because when you go to sleep, your thoughts can go there, or even during the day. In those days we didn't know that there was a starry heaven even during the day, but he told us to try to remain in contact with the Gonzol during the day.
That is a ??? way of thinking. You do not have to have a thing before your eyes to experience it. You can have direct contact with it through synchronicity. Tamas Bacsi always said, "How is it that you can contact your ancestors in the Milky Way, which is so far away? Just look at your finger; now look at that tree in the distance; now look at the stars. What do you observe?" "Nothing," I said, "A finger, a tree, the stars." "What you missed was the fact that looking at these different objects takes the same amount of time." That is simultaneity. It impressed us deeply, but at the time it did not evoke deeper thoughts. Now I think that there is a way of thinking which can allow us to feel the immediacy of everything, independent of time and space, a state which Tamas Bacsi called "journeying without moving".
We often went with him to the lake, especially on days when there was no wind, so the water would be like a mirror, and we would sit there without speaking at all. He would look for hours, fascinated, at the water, and if we asked him what he saw, he said he was looking at his master. He was in the presence of his master. He saw him in the reflection. When we asked him what else he saw, he would say, "Everything that you want to see. When you see the face of the master, you can see anything you thi about." Then we asked, "How deep can you see?"
"Yes," he said, "Even underneath the water, to the bottom, and even below that, to the underworld, even to Hell."
Tamas Bacsi was over 70 when I met him, but he was healthy and active. He continued to work and shamanize until he was 90, when he died suddenly, after only two days of illness. When he was ready to die he didn't waste any time.
Tamas loved horse trading. Back then, there were still yearly fairs and horse trades in many of the larger villages and towns. In Hungary, you know, the towns are spread pretty thin, because the Turks ravaged the country in the 16th and 17th centuries, and there are still large unpopulated areas.
The horse is a powerful shaman animal. Even the Greek mythology talks about centaurs, which were half horse, half human. This was actually a reference to the Sites, a nomadic people who were very close to horses, and who were related to the Hungarians. Tamas was connected to the souls of horses. This kind of connection goes back to ancient times.
Shamans were often the ones who broke the horses, not only because they knew the soul of the horse as well as the soul of the human, but also because they were such great travelers. They traveled through the country to gather knowledge and to heal. This also goes back to ancient times.
Tamas loved to spend time with horses, that's why he traded them, not for the money. And people trusted him to buy or sell horses for them, because he knew them so well.
In the summer before I turned seven -- it must have been August, since it was just before school started -- he took me on a horse-trading trip to the fair. The cart was pulled by just one horse; the ones he brought to sell were tied in back. Special things happened to me on that journey.
I lay in the back under the hood, with a horse blanket thrown over me. It was my first journey, and on it I stepped completely outside of myself. Only later did I realize that this was a kind of initiation which Tamas was giving me, although I don't really know how he did it. He was always singing, Tamas, even when he was alone, singing wordless nonsense. It seemed like a language, but it wasn't, it was only sound, articulated, rhythmically accented, guttural. In the cart that night, he sang me to ep. The rhythmic movement of the carriage and the smell of the horses naturally brought me into a second state -- a state between waking and sleeping, a dozing half sleep. A second state can last for hours.
As I say, I didn't realize it, but it was an initiation journey. While I was dozing I felt myself step outside of my body in a special state. This state is used everywhere, in shamanism and in magical and mystical rituals. In this halfway state, my senses were more susceptible to supernatural impressions. According to shamanism, we possess seven sources of knowledge: the five senses, the emotions, and the thoughts. All kinds of sensations arise from these seven sources. You don't need a special se for supernatural perception, because in a second state, the usual senses become sharpened, like a telescope which works much better on a mountaintop than in a dirty town full of gray fumes.
People often talk about extrasensory perception but in general, it doesn't exist. The seven senses can perceive in amazing ways, much more than usual. There are certainly other senses, though. I have experienced an eighth and a ninth, and Tamas has reached thirteen. And I am sure that there are more than that. I don't have the faculty for them, but I have gotten glimpses of seventeen.
I experienced a cosmic journey on the way to the fair, at once a microcosmic and a macrocosmic journey. I traveled to the starry sky, and experienced the mechanisms of the structure of material reality. I did not meet any beings there, either human or supernatural, but still I experienced the structure of universe.
The structure is not the content, but without the structure you can't understand the content. I felt the structure as a mathematics of micro- and macrocosmos, with textures of power lines, like nothing ever seen before. It was not Euclidean mathematics, but something very different, very alive. One entity became another; the figures were space and time at once. I was feeling space, time, and light, the white light. Of course I had no idea what was happening, but it is not necessary to know. The in ation happens without understanding.
After that I started to think differently from other people. The scheme of my thoughts grew more and more unusual; at times it was a problem. When we moved to Budapest, I was sent to the psychiatric institute for study because it was felt that I was different, perhaps abnormal. In those days, the 1930's, psychoanalysis was very much on the rise in Hungary, and the head of the institute was a student of Sigmund Freud, Firensi by name. I stayed there a couple of weeks to be observed. When my mother e to fetch me, a professor said to her, "Madam, you should treat your boy very gently, because he is a genius. Let him do and think whatever he wants to." but they didn't say what kind of a genius.
You see, I had the habit of waking up in the middle of the night, around 3:00am. I would feel completely awake and refreshed. I would dress and run through the deserted streets to the park, or cross the bridge over the Donau and go up the Gelard. The mountain is named for the Hungarian saint Gelard, who converted the Hungarians to Christianity with a flaming sword. Anyway I would climb the mountain, maybe 450 or 600 meters high, and look out on the world.
I had a room of my own at home, so I could climb out the window without being seen, but one night my parents noticed I wasn't in bed, and of course they were scared to death. Then when I came back and explained what I was doing, they were bewildered. They couldn't understand how I could get up at three in the morning and still go to school the next day, not even tired.
I explained that I expected something to happen. That's why I went there.
I had a beautiful view of the Donau from up there, and I used to stare at the waves, small rippling waves, until I went into a kind of hypnotic state, as Tamas had taught me. Near the village, there were a few small lakes, about two or three hundred meters long. We used to stay up there in the evening with Tamas, and watch the stars or clouds, not by looking up, but in the reflections in the water. He taught us that everything is a reflection.
Doing this can provoke a wide state of perception. There are all kinds of techniques for this, but the simplest way is to concentrate on a single thing, something that is alive and moving, like rippling water or rustling leaves. This expansion of consciousness by connecting to the eternal cycle is characteristic of the shaman -- I say that now, but at the time I was simply sitting there at the crack of dawn, just as the light appeared, watching the small waves in the Donau, or listening to the leaves.
And I was expecting. I expected that something would happen, but nothing ever did. What happened was an expansion of consciousness, but I didn't realize it at the time. Tamas had drawn my attention to this technique, and I came to do it, but I didn't really understand it yet.
When I was at school, I would be found reading a book instead of playing soccer, or sitting in a corner of the schoolyard looking at dust motes dancing in the sunlight. The schoolyard woven was not tiled as they are these days, and in the summer when it was dry I would look at the dustmotes vibrating in the sun. It gave me great pleasure to watch them.
Or I would look at the clouds, observing how they flowed over and into each other. This was unusual at that age, which is one reason the professor told my mother to treat me quietly. That I was genius. He said I was not dangerous to myself or to others. When my mother told me this years later, she started to cry, because it was so extraordinary, like a meteor falling on the house. Unfortunately, my mother did not think to ask what kind of a genius I was, so they didn't tell her. I must conclude th I was not a genius for anything specific, but in some versatile way, which could take many forms.
After the war, when I returned to Hungary, I tried to get a hold of the files they kept of me in the years 1930-31, to learn more about their observations, but unfortunately that part of the institute was destroyed in the war.
During the trip in the farmer's cart, the initiation, I saw structures, which were always in motion, like transparent crystals, but finer, like crystals become light. There were a great number of dimensions all pressed together, and the white light, white on white. I cannot describe the intensity of the whiteness, but imagine a milk bottle with a narrow neck, held upside down until the milk glugs out of it, and all sorts of white crystal structures remain, shaped like honeycomb or soap bubbles.
Tamas Bacsi would describe this to us and say, "This is how the universe works. The universe is full of small holes. Everything that you see around you, even a cow, or your hand, is full of little holes." His vocabulary was not large enough to speak of mathematical forms, but he was talking about the multi-dimensionality of the universe, how everything has structures and openings. He would show us the milk bottle, and tell us to look at the sky, where we would be able to look into and enter the hole How we could travel through the holes into another space, another existence.
The shamans were primitive people, but they saw the multi-dimensionality -- which modern science can only assume mathematically -- and they could even enter into it. This is the true journey. When I looked into the dust on the schoolyard, I was starting out on this journey. Tamas would do it this way, as well. Once he took a handful of dust and threw it in the air, where it vibrated in the sunlight. "Look!" he said, "those little spots you see are the holes, and you can enter in through the holes." his was a didactic example, but it is also a meditation.
He taught that when you look enough at the sky, you can see the atomic particles of the air. I persisted with the exercise, but I never saw them myself until thirty years later, in 1960. So never lose faith: spirituality is hard work.
It happened in Belgium. I was working in Charoba as foreman in a metal factory. I supervised the blast furnaces, and I was responsible for over three hundred tons of iron ore. I had to taken two years of technical school to learn it.
One day as I was coming into the control room from the outside, all of a sudden I saw many little points in the sky, microscopically small, but clearly visible, as if something had fallen from my eyes. The points were blue, green, orange, yellow, red, purple, and other colors. All the colors of the rainbow. I thought, "This must be coming from somewhere," so I looked around, searching for a colored window. I was thinking in very concrete terms. I opened a door, looked outside, and I saw it out ther s well. I went outside, made a round of the blast furnaces, and came back in again, but I was still seeing it. I went back out, looked at the sky, where I kept seeing the vision, and suddenly I realized, as Tamas Bacsi had said, "Look into the twirling dust in the sun, and you will see holes, colored holes." Thirty years later, without warning, I saw them, in the most profane of circumstances. I am telling this to make it clear what the initiation was about, the experience of multi-dimen sionality, the m icro- and macrocosmic levels.
More than a year before the initiation, when I was about five and half, I was playing outdoors in my village with several other children, making an enormous ruckus. It was annoying one of the neighbors, a farmer who warned us several times to be quiet because his wife was sick in bed. We'd quiet down for a few minutes, but then we'd get noisy again, because we were playing cops and robbers.
Each time the farmer warned us he got angrier, until he suddenly showed up with a thick branch used to hold up the grape vines. He swung it around with tremendous force it and threw it at the group of us, and as it happened it struck me right it the head, and I fell unconscious. What happened next I don't know, but my mother tells me that for weeks I hovered between life and death. The stick had given me a severe concussion, and my breathing stopped, which might have caused me to suffocate.
All the time I spent unconscious I was living in white light, I was journeying in white light. Like I experienced in my initiation, but this time I went right through it. In the initiation I was looking at it from a distance, not doing anything but observing, but while I was unconscious, I went through the light as through a vapor, as if I too was a vapor, traveling through electromagnetic fields, between walls of electromagnetic force. It felt wonderful. I felt myself timeless, spaceless, yet in co iousness. I mean that I had a different kind of consciousness, which was omniscient. That is how I experienced it.
The village doctor couldn't do anything, except to say that I shouldn't be transported to town. There were only horsecarts in those days, and I certainly would have died from the shaking. My mother kept putting icepacks on my head the whole time I was unconscious.
Later I became aware of the connection. For many years, shamans have deliberately used concussions to get to another level of consciousness. Sometimes they would tap on skull to expand the consciousness, and so to restructure the brain cells and the neurons. A shaman would never express it that way, of course, or understand precisely what is happening, but would simply see the positive result.
He strikes with the back of his hand at five places on the skull: at the back, the place of the primal brain, the small brains, then on the right temple, the forehead, and the left temple. He spreads his fingers apart and bends them a little, and knocks on the crown, the fontanel. In this way he knocks thirteen times: hoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoy, three times four plus one, and the thirteenth time is harder. You have to knock hard enough to feel a certain stimulation, in each of these five places.
Thirteen is the number of the master. For example, there are twelve apostles and the thirteenth is Jesus, the twelve signs of the zodiac and the thirteenth is the sun, the king. You can find it everywhere, in every culture. This relates to the four elements, earth, air, water, and fire, and the polarities, positive, negative, and neutral. Three fours is twelve, and the thirteenth is life itself. The master understands this and can harmonize his actions in accordance, which is why thirteen is a holy mber.
The shaman gives himself a small concussion with these vibrations. You have to do this for yourself because no one else can feel exactly how hard to knock, and when. You have to feel a small pain, but when the pain becomes sharper, like a burning ray of light, you should stop immediately and wait several days or there may be an accident. Tamas Bacsi always warned us of this, because to overdo it can be very serious. There was a boy of ten or twelve in our village, the son of a clockmaker. He had be a student of Tamas Bacsi, and he knew the method because he had been born with a caul, but he thought, "The old man wants to do it much too slowly. His age makes him overcareful," and he started to knock harder, and when he felt a sharp pain, he continued, and ended up with brain damage. He got a terrible stutter, and nothing could help him. Another time, an adult, a married man of forty, got temporary blindness from overdoing it. So Tamas would often say, "See what happened to Pe ter and Belind. Be car eful and don't overdo it."
During the initiation I was in a continuous state of sound. It is the sound which characterizes this multi-dimensionality. The original sound, which is one single sound, consisting of hundreds of sounds, all mingled together. This is perceived when you pay attention to the sound. The composer Robert Schumann put it this way: "The air is full of music". I have experienced this. I feel certain that Tamas Bacsi intentionally brought about this experience in me as I slumbered, with his song of monoton , guttural sounds. He didn't give me any kind of drug or potion.
Just at dawn, he called out to me, "Josika", a diminutive of Joska, and I slowly opened my eyes and vaguely saw the stars in the sky. You could just still see the stars, and it seemed to me that I was returning from the stars, as if I had just been born.
Later I came to understand this as what I call a prenatal state. The unborn embryo, at first, is at least two-thirds connected to the multi-dimensionality; when the heart forms and starts to beat, it loses another third. The embryo continues to become more human, more material, and when the child is born it loses the connection.
It is possible to recover this memory, but the direct contact is gone and must be recreated. It is important to experience that prenatal state again, not just being in the mother's body, but also the timeless, the spaceless, and the unconscious, all very different thought structures. You experience the sphericity, the metaphysical state. You don't need faith for this. I don't have faith in it; but I am convinced of it, because I experienced it like that. That was the meaning of the initiation. It seemed so unlikely to me when I awoke. My body felt so strange. Compared to what I had just experienced, my body seemed very stiff, almost lifeless.
At the horse fair there was a secret reunion where the wise men, the tudos emberek, got together in a big tent. Some came from Transylvania, the old Hungary, others from Bosnia and northern Bulgaria. These were the Bogomils, and now when I see a picture of the Bogomils, I remember seeing them at the fair. They came with their herds on foot to the fair, traveling hundreds of kilometers. And I remember there was an old gypsy with them.
They gathered in a tent, eight men. The youngest was forty, but there were also boys of twelve or fourteen years, their students. They didn't have a common language, and Tamas Bacsi himself spoke only Hungarian, but they could communicate. When they made it clear that they wanted to continue on with their herds, Tamas Bacsi took a string from his pocket and strung it on his hands, like the string game that kids play. He made a pattern with the string, showing them the lay of the land, and he pointed three different places in the design, demonstrating a shortcut.
My grandfather knew how to do this as well. He used to have a servant, a hardworking man and strong as an ox, but deaf and mute. He liked to work alone, so my grandfather would send him to work alone on faraway fields or vineyards. My grandfather would use the string game to show him where to go and work. He understood it.
So there's a practical use for it. There are more than ten thousand variants of the forms. At the end of the last century, it was said that you could know an anthropologist because he would have a string in his pocket. In those days it was fashionable to collect variations on the string game, in hopes of finding the key to the culture, but of course they never succeeded.
In any case there are thousands of variants, which occur everywhere from the Pacific Ocean to Alaska. In Stockholm there is a huge collection of string figures which were used by the Eskimos. They thought it was only a pastime, but it was also used for other ends: to locate themselves in space, and as a mnemonic, to help people remember genealogies of people, gods, or spirits. In the Pacific Islands, the young people had to know all their ancestors by heart, sometimes twenty or thirty generations, no ust their names but what they did. They used string figures to help themselves remember. In the same way, the abstract or mathematical tattoos and paintings in Africa are used to remember the ancestors, to benefit from their powers, because that was the genetic past. Shamans honor their ancestors, knowing their names, and invoking them for help.
But there is another element which has not been studied, which is the structure of thought. The string figures are thought structures, like the Yantras in Indian culture. When people looked at a certain figure, without knowing what it meant, images would come and they would understand it. Then they would think in a different way, to see if they could make a journey, and they were able to experience the prenatal state. They were able to free their thoughts from time and space. With this game it is p ible to restructure the neurons in the brain. The environment changes our mental state, and as our way of thinking changes, the brain changes as well.
At the reunion I remember the men sitting together, drinking red wine, singing, and passing around a pipe. I don't know what was in the pipe, aromatic herbs maybe, because you can always find these in pipe tobacco??? I suspect they were also exchanging plants and mushrooms. There was a tall mountain man with a tobacco pouch made of cat hide. It was very soft. He dug through it and took something out, showing it around, but I couldn't see over all the men standing around.
Then they sat in a circle singing guttural sounds. I don't how long it went on, because I dozed off. I'd had a glass of wine. There were other children, but they were twelve or thirteen, I was the youngest. One of them woke me and said, "Come, we are going back," and we went home. It was evening already; we drove all night, going home.
The shamans were singing together for two reasons: for themselves and for others, for the world. Sound has a magical and mystical purpose, but also a practical purpose. They were singing themselves into a special state. I don't know whether they were using herbs or mushrooms, but I noticed that they were doing something we boys weren't supposed to see. But mainly they were singing. The singing brought them into that special state which was the heart of the ritual.
In connection to the use of consciousness-expanding means, now, there is another image which comes up in my memory. I can see the old Protestant churchyard, where there are totem poles for the dead. The Hungarian Protestants used the old pagan totem poles. The Catholics had crosses, so the Protestants used totem poles. Actually, these are the spirits of the dead person, or perhaps the dead person themselves. Anyway, I was walking with Tamas Bacsi in the churchyard, which was over two hundred years , when a gypsy came up to us. There are two kinds of gypsies in Hungary, some living permanently in cities and towns, some roaming around trading horses while the women predict the future. I can still see the gypsy in front of me. He had a broad black hat, which marked him as one of the roaming gypsies, the Romani. But he spoke some Hungarian. He was looking for Tamas Bacsi. Someone must have given him a description of how Tamas Bacsi looked, because the gypsy recognized him immediat ely and asked if h e was Tamas.
He had a little sack of herbs, which he showed to Tamas Bacsi and let him smell. Tamas Bacsi took it in his hand, smelt, and said, "Those are good herbs. That's the real thing." The gypsy wanted to sell it to him, and he was very persistent. Tamas Bacsi was always smoking a pipe, and when he wasn't smoking, he was chewing tobacco, but when the gypsy kept insisting, he said that he despised everyone who used these herbs to enter into a different state of consciousness. He despised anyone who would u consciousness-expanding means, because they were too lazy to work on themselves. They were reaching for artificial means instead of putting the time and effort into themselves, so they are unworthy, lazy people who want the harvest without the work. Then he turned his head a little and spat his chewing tobacco, which was a great sign of contempt with him. He didn't want to hear about it. After a while he did give the gypsy the name of someone else to talk to, but he himself never used drugs.
I have had to go through several initiations. In a way, you could say that some of them were more like trials to see if I had certain abilities, and how strongly.
When I was about twelve, I went for summer vacation to Salt, and on a warm July day, Tamas Bacsi said I should go to the lake. There were several lakes close to our village, dug out when the villagers needed clay to build houses with. The lakes were about a hundred meters wide and three hundred long, with the depth depending on the rainfall and the time of year.
Tamas said, "Go to lake Kopoka". The word comes from "coponya", a popular expression for a skull. It was shaped a little like a skull. I had to go there and find a horse skull for him. I asked where to look for it, because even though the water was not deep, the mud was thick on the bottom, and if you tried to walk through it, you would sink in up to your knees and stir it up so you wouldn't be able to see anything. He said I had to find it for myself. He told me to stand in the middle of the lake d come into contact with the water, so I could sense where the skull was.
I went out there, but with each step I took the water got grayer. I couldn't use my normal senses, which Tamas Bacsi must have known. So I allowed myself to be guided by my feelings, which led me to an old pail sunk in the mud. Just like radar, I was being attracted by objects. The strange thing is that I was attracted to an iron object first. Then I found a weed basket -- something more organic. I tried to stand still so that the mud would settle and the water would clear, but that really wouldn' ork unless you could move over the water without disturbing it.
Suddenly I felt that I had to go to my left, and I tried to concentrate on the object, so I could grab it all at once, since I couldn't scan the whole bottom for it. I stooped and felt something sharp, and pulled on it, but it was stuck deep in the mud. That horse skull must have been lying there for many years in the stagnant water of the lake, because it only stuck out about two inches above the bottom.
The whole search had lasted about forty minutes. I washed the skull and triumphantly laid it at the feet of Tamas Bacsi, who was sitting under a tree. All he said was, "Hmmm."