43rd National Táncház Festival & Fair • 5–7 April 2024
Issue:
Starting page: 8
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My meetings with a Moldavian soulseer – excerpts from a book about a Hungarian Csángó Moldavian woman, Jánó Ferenc Ilona. Starting in 1969 Kóka Rozália visited her informant Jánó Ferenc Ilona in the village of Lészped/Lespezi for 37 years - documenting her visions and important events in her life. "A soulseer is a man or woman who according to Hungarian folk belief has supernatural powers and can contact the dead, bring news from them, or can help with healing…" When Rozália first visited Jánó Ferenc Ilona, the seer greeted her with: „I’ve been expecting you…my guardian angel told me you were coming...” Jánó Ferenc Ilona was nine in 1943 when her mother died. Her mother had given birth to twelve children. Her father remarried, but the new wife didn’t want to take care of all his children and she was mean to them. Ilona began to have visions when she was eleven. When she was fourteen: „One night my guardian angel came to me, and gently awakened me, I saw that my soul had left my body. My body stayed in bed, little Jesus was there. My soul was like my body, only it was light and shining. My guardian angel wanted to show me heaven. Every night for two weeks I went there. I only had visions at night. Every morning my angel woke me so I’d get up on time and my body could get back together with my soul...heaven was beautiful…I saw beautiful places, where the good, pure souls are. They showed me how beautifully the angels sing…” (to be continued). From the book by Kóka Rozália published in 2006 by L’Harmattan in Budapest.