"It is the mind that hears it, not the ear…"
sounds, lights, visions in peasant mysticism
pp. 255-261
in: Enik Sepsi, Aniko Daróczi (eds), The immediacy of mystical experience in the European tradition, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
This article is based on a fieldwork-study of the religious life of a peasant woman in Southern Hungary. The interviews took place in the 1990s, in her home. Her everyday life is determined by her special, intimate relationship with her sacred beings, whose immediate presence she experiences day and night. She considers herself to be a servant and clerk of God. She gets the holy messages as suggestions, and perceives them "in her forehead"—as she says: "It is the mind that hears it, not the ear." She writes down these texts immediately and regularly just after the vision. These texts form "The Scripture"—as she calls it—which she regards as a sacred text, consisting of the "Truth." She receives not only sounds but also different lights and visions. She takes them as meaningful heavenly signs to be decoded, and she makes regular notations and interprets them in "The Scripture." This study first tries to understand the role of these divine suggestions appearing in the form of acoustic sounds and visual images. Secondly, it tries to show how "The Scripture" as a diary documents her everyday practices of sacred communication, and the concepts and rituals of her daily religious practices. Thirdly, it tries to understand the peasant mysticism underlying the worldview of a contemporary woman who writes "The Scripture" with absolute awareness of the importance of her tasks, with the consciousness of prophets, visionaries and healers.