Between the Living and the Dead

The author has undertaken extensive research on the history of folk beliefs connected with communication with the supernatural sphere. In this text, she examines the relics of European shamanism in early modern sources, and the techniques and belief-systems of mediators found in the records of witchcraft trials from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Pocs also explores the kinds of communication systems known to early modern Hungarians, the role of these systems in everyday village life, and how they were connected to contemporary European systems. On the basis of her material and analysis, she contributes a number of details and identifies types of mediators and systems which function up to the twentieth century.