An Ancient Time and Tomorrow
When in “ancient time,” in 1983, I arrived to New York as a Self-Made Shaman, I called to come with me to a journey Mr. Michael Mellmann.
The successful Squat Theater’s manager soon was waiting for me in his home, Bleecker Street, Soho. It was an under-ground theater before. He was waiting for me with his idols, from Bob Dylan, through Maria Callas, to the first-ever-taken Blues recordings.
He wanted to bring me immediately to Mrs. Haynau, in New York. She was the great-granddaughter of the bloody hangman of the 1849 Hungarian Revolution, but I refused to go.
I didn’t want to meet her.
I wanted to meet “HAYNAU, The Judge of Blood.” The Deity.
Baron Jacob Haynau was an Austrian military leader who executed many of the Freedom Fighters, and hung-up the Thirteen Revolutionary Generals who were coming from all over the world. They were executed in 1849 in Arad, Transylvania.
No.
I didn’t come to see a political hangman, Baron Haynau. After the executions, he was buying a castle in a small Hungarian village, in Nagygéc.
TO SEE “HAYNAU” I DID NOT NEED TO MEET HIS RELATIVES.
No.
I wanted to meet “HAYNO, THE JUDGE OF BLOOD,” the ancient embodiment of all the Dictators. Not the Baron General. I wanted to meet his legendary-self. The Deity.
Like I met the people on their last night of Nagygéc, which was washed away by an enormous FLOOD. The dead-tired peasants in the mud, that last night couldn’t say anything else:
“HAYNO Fucked the Four Corners of our Village.”
The curse was just going into reality.
EVEN the village’s name was soon to be terminated.
From the nineteenth-century butcher, the villagers re-created an ancient deity, carrying in his persona all the Dictators in history. He became “HAYNO.”
I just “Emptied” Myself Out, I called His Power-Dogs, the Bloody Hounds of Hell. They were waiting for me, barking at me for a final battle, outside of the rusty theater door.
I was in the 19th-century Bleeker Street and Hayno’s Dogs were there at the Door. I told to them, “The proverb says? Barking Dogs Don’t Bite!”
Then they started to shape-shifting, turning into something, smoky, vaporing ghosts. One of them told me: “They sometime bite!” I had nothing to think, just focusing on them. As they turned into some Monster figures, with sharp claws and nails, turning more and more for one shape. As I said to them, “The proverb says: Heal the Bite of the Dog, with the Hair of the Dog!” Then I said, “And proverb also says, Dog can’t change his Skin.” But at that time the single shape shape-shifted into a dark Devil, being ashamed …or just pretending…of his nakedness.
As the Dark Devil turned into his next and final shape, he said.
“Dogs can’t change his skin, but some can shift into something else…”
AND HE WAS THERE FOR A FINAL BATTLE, —
Me: “That is you: HAYNO, THE JUDGE OF BLOOD.”
He was there in full Military Uniform.
Shiny sword on his side, his fangs dirty and mighty,
and his hairy claws, ready to bulging out from his fingers,
and he was ready to bring me with him Under the Ground.
(There was a Subway Entrance close to us.)
It’s a rule, a monster tale is a horror story. A Horror Story with a HERO, is a Legend. That is why I am here.
Ivan Szendro,
Self-Made Shaman
P.S.: If you want to see the whole movie, reach me at the TheLegendofYou@yahoo.com
Ivan Szendro is a healer shaman who uses the power of myths and legends. For over 40 years, he has been contributing to the modern understanding of shamanism through his methodology. He learned his own myth from the residents of Nagygéc, a 1,000-year-old village on the border of eastern Hungary. His career is based on his insight that the myth that lives within each of us, a personal myth, can be used for healing. He calls this The Legend of You. He has been a member of the International Society for Shamanistic Research since 1994 and has presented papers at ISSR conferences in Budapest, Alaska, and Guiyang, China. In 2008, a Hungarian documentary team made an award-winning film about his engagement with Hungarian myth, The Self-Made Shaman. www.thelegendofyou.com