44th National Táncház Festival & Fair • 4–6 April 2025
Issue:
Starting page: 30
Serie:
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A Moldavian Soulseer – excerpts from Kóka Rozália’s book on Jánó Ferenc Ilona, a Hungarian Csángó woman from Moldavia. Starting in 1969, for 37 years Rozália visited the soulseer in her home village of Lészped/Lespezi (Romania), documenting her visions. In Hungarian folk belief “a soulseer is a person with supernatural powers, who can contact the dead…” Ilona was nine when her mother died. She began having visions when she was 11. When she was twelve she saw Jesus. In a vision, Jesus gave her a bride’s ring. Her family wanted to marry her off. Ilona refused. She worked at the local agricultural cooperative, where her peers taunted her cruelly for not marrying. When she spoke to Jesus about these problems he sent her down a beautiful but difficult path, which she traversed unharmed. Jesus assured her she’d always be able to take that path and remain unharmed… From the book by Kóka Rozália published 2006, L’Harmattan, Budapest.