Charming Debrecen – Legends and mystics in the city of Cívis
We visited the Deluxe version of the “Ghostly” City Tour of the Great Plain, which has been regularly organized by City-Legends.com for years, on the eve of St. George’s Day on Saturday. Following in the footsteps of ghosts, through the fog of mysticism, we tried to read the secrets of garaboncis, witches, and Freemasons with the light of magic. Máté Horog accompanied us on an afternoon city history walk, spiced with humor and a language of peace, mixed with careful research. And of course some stray ghosts.
In a faithful way in Debrecen, we met our tour guide in front of the Small Church, who assured the audience from the beginning: during our playful, easy-going walk, we will also have magic tricks, and next time they will only be seen in Las Vegas.
– Debrecen is rarely associated with mysticism and the thousand, despite the fact that the city’s world of folk beliefs is extremely diverse. It is no coincidence that István Hatvani, the “Hungarian Faust”, is also connected here. In addition to the natural sciences, the professor gave his head to magic, so he spread that he sold his soul to the devil. He gained his magical knowledge by obtaining the whispered magic book, said Máté Horog. Our escort recalled that on the stormy night of Good Friday, the professor from Debrecen had knocked the ground seven times at the crossroads of the cemetery on Cegléd Street, before the dead appeared in the form of a giant snake. Sixty had to make three unfulfilled requests to gain control of the book.
The professor asked them to bring him this year’s owl last year’s egg, cut all the hairs in the world in four, and collect his works written after Cicero’s death. Because the dead souls were unable to accomplish all this, they scattered screaming, bringing the volume of diabolical knowledge to the scientist.
He is a magician in Révész Square
What luck gives us is a copy of the magic book from an antique shop in our mysterious suitcase. He read from it how we can enchant a boiled crow egg so that it is red, black and white, quenching our thirst, poverty and loneliness. As we also learned that if we cut off the head of a white snake with an ax on St. George’s Day and plant a pea in its mouth, its flower, which has hatched by the third day, offers medicine for every mourning.
The ghosts could finally get tired of Révész tér ringing with secret knowledge, so the pages of the book held by Máté Horog suddenly caught fire. Our rapporteur felt that it would be better to move on. After turning the light on the traffic light green, we headed back in time towards today’s Kossuth Square.
Free nights
At our next stop, in front of the imposing building of the Golden Bull, our companion summoned the scene of the Orpheum worlds centuries ago. In the old days, in addition to the hotel on the main square of Debrecen, the Fehérló Hotel on the site of the County Hall hosted those who wanted to have fun. With the urbanization of the 19th century, colorful and fragrant life took place throughout the city. The people of Debrecen could meet the high culture of the time in the theater, the lighter entertainment was represented by the performances of Orpheum, with the participation of comedians and daggers. The students, including Endre Ady, spent their time in the then iconic student pub, Kispipa. And over time, the Kossuth Hotel has become such a dubious locality that it has deserved the protest of the city’s decent citizens.
The day-to-day Royal Café really took a breather, and at the New York Café on Simonffy Street, counterfeit cards were used to fetch silver from travelers ’pockets.
The Cívisváros also had a women’s band, which is a curiosity because at that time the members of the better sex might have been just bartenders. Although there have been several reports that women have not only served gentlemen on a tray. But fights were frequent, and knives also came out in the night. In this respect, Debrecen became a big city in the 1920s. The Spiritist Sean Circle of Debrecen has also been involved in some major murder cases. In the contemporary press, it was fashionable to photograph the bloody scene and write the awfulness in a clear, detailed way. The journalists defended themselves by saying that the people who avoid the police will be exposed by the people – we learned from Máté Horog.
He added that the greatest Hungarian magician, Rodolfo, also visited Debrecen frequently, and then, as the closing chord of the station, dazzled the audience with a stunt in honor of Harry Houdini, an illusionist of Hungarian descent.
Garabcons and witches
Standing in front of the building on Hatvan Street on the site of Mihály Csokonai Vitéz’s birthplace, Máté Horog revived it, holding the tradition of Csokonai and Sándor Petőfi as students with garaboncia.
According to folk belief, these wicked monks were on the whirlwind, causing a storm, speaking the language of animals. The young men in ragged clothes knew the exact location of the hidden treasure, but they would have betrayed it, and would be silent forever.
Superstitions survived in connection with his chocolates, according to which he fought in the image of a black bull around Hajdúhadház. And even fewer know that he did have prophecies. More precisely, presumably in order to increase credibility, some have tied these insights only to his name. In any case, he thinks he foretold a great heavenly war, many fruits and sick, an antichrist, an earthquake and a locust, and then another antichrist. According to the visions of the end of the 19th century, the whole planet will be in smoke, the stars and the moon will fall, the dead will be resurrected, and the world will be over. Yet a prediction came true:
he said he wouldn’t even want to be a dog in a hundred and twenty years, because they would even be taxed.
Buddies with the devil
At our station on Kápolnási Street, our guide revealed that, according to Hungarian beliefs, the night of St. George was the night of the deterioration and its elimination. In this case, for example, cows could be successfully cursed not to give milk. The leaders of the civis town, the citizens attending church, were very preoccupied with the world of charmers. In the 16th century, Péter Méliusz Juhász mentioned striga, succubus and other devilish lovers. In his sermon on George George’s Day, István K. Diószegi mentioned the dead, witches, enchanters and blinders. And a Parisian writer talks in his book that “a vampire epidemic struck a city in Hajdú.”
Against their superstition, the people of Debrecen stood rationally for the question of the witch. They did not believe in his ability to change. Rather, they accused the old butt women of mistreating their patients. For sure, the first witch trial in Debrecen in 1599 was burned out of more than a hundred accused women, and more were beheaded.
Freemasons in Debrecen
Like the Garaboncians, the opinion of the Freemasons is quite mixed. Somewhere they write about them appreciatively, and somewhere they associate their names with conspiracies and world domination aspirations. Máté Horog did not set out to make his decision either, so we were immersed in their mysterious world only by knowing their history, relying on the facts.
It is so certain that already in the 18th century lodges were formed in Hungary, Kazinczy was also one of the well-known Freemasons. During the civilization of the 19th century, various trends increasingly reached the city of Civis. The Progress Lodge, founded in Debrecen in 1875, first held meetings on Saturdays at the Queen’s Hotel in Opposite the Csokonai Theater. Over time, they needed more space, so they moved to the first floor of a building at 1 / C Simonffy Street. To this day, the Masonic symbol can be seen on the building from Hal köz. The best-known member of the lodge and also its chief dr. It was Gyula Kenézy.
At that time, Masonic lodges were divided into two parts in terms of their aspirations: some companies sought to achieve inner nobility, while others advocated for more radical social change. The more conservative members did not want to have a say in the affairs of the world, so after a while they left the lodge and founded a new company called Sándor Kőrösi Csoma.
In the 1920s, Freemasons were charged with anti-regime acts and the order was banned.
As an early note reads: “to exterminate the teaching of religion from schools, to poison the nation by proclaiming love, to ridicule everything that incites Hungarian, (…) nationalities to a deadly battle against each other. That’s what they called progress. “
All of this was the culmination of the finale: after the outdoor venues, our illusionist even managed to dance the table during a playful session in the basement of a dimly lit wine bar. Of course, like any fair secret meeting, what happened here must be forgotten.
László Hajnal