As Bulgaria celebrates the future with its entry into the EU, ancient traditions still survive, as John Dyer discovers

It is night-time on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, not far from the Turkish border, and the glowing circle of wood embers on the beach glints like a miniature sun. An old woman in a red-and-white dress holds aloft a battered Orthodox icon depicting a man and a woman. Her face in rapture, her feet bare as she stands inches away from the fire, she relates the story of the Nestinari.

‘God the grandfather came to earth. He would speak to no one, because no one was without sin. So he brought forth fire and called on all men to walk in the flames. Only one man wasn’t burned: St Constantine. God and St Constantine spoke for years, but Constantine grew weary and sad. He had no wife, no family. So God brought forth the fire again and called on all unmarried women to walk in the flames. A sinless man needs a sinless woman. Only St Helena endured the fire.’

Holding the icon of the two saints, the baba steps on the coals. She moves slowly, deliberately. Her eyes are focused forward, but she avoids catching the gaze of anyone in the surrounding crowd. She spends a few minutes on the coals – too long to chalk up her tolerance of the heat simply to practice, not long enough for the whole process to be totally unbelievable. She’s sweating and murmuring to herself.

A man plays the gaida, a Balkan bagpipe made from goatskin. A flute and a pounding drum join in. Only the glowing, red-hot coals puncture the darkness. The old woman bends down and picks up some coals. She puts one on her tongue. The drum’s tattoo and the wild, gyrating melodies of the flute and the gaida continue. The baba seems to be in a trance. I forget myself as I watch. Later, I am reminded the word ‘ecstasy’ derives from the Greek ‘ex-stasis’, or to stand outside oneself: to leave one’s body. As the baba leaves the fire and the music subsides, some onlookers applaud. Others approach, touch her and then cross themselves.

Cultures throughout the world engage in fire rituals, but the Bulgarian Nestinari are unique in the way they linger on the embers. They claim this is in order to become possessed like oracles out of Homer’s Odyssey. ‘In many places they play with fire, but here it is Orphean,’ says fire walker Vesra Roleva, referring to the ancient Greek cult that believed the human race was formed from the ashes of titans vanquished by Zeus. ‘The Nestinari are a symbol of health and luck and the longevity of the Bulgarian nation.’

Experts are less sure about the Nestinari’s origins. Some agree with Roleva that fire walkers are the modern-day remnants of ancient cults. Many link the custom to Dionysus, a god first worshipped by Thracians around the sixth century BC, but whom the ancient Greeks later adopted as the patron of wine and wild celebration. Other experts say Asiatic tribes introduced the custom to the Balkans when they arrived in the seventh century.

Whatever their origins, the future of the Nestinari looks uncertain. Bulgaria has long been isolated on the political and cultural periphery of Europe – for most of its history it has faced east, towards Turkey or Russia. Now, as the country enters the European Union, foreigners are flooding into Bulgaria’s cheap beach and ski resorts, prompting locals to devise ways to profit from this unprecedented influx. Fire walking packs in the tourists at resorts and restaurants, but raises concerns among Nestinari who feel as if globalisation is cheapening the tradition.

‘Now we follow the ritual, but make it somewhat like a show,’ says Analyia Karcheva, a Nestinari who performs in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital. She reflects for a moment and shrugs her shoulders: ‘A lot like a show.’

Karcheva and other Nestinari consider themselves authentic fire walkers, but they worry that something has been lost since the days when Nestinari were rarely seen outside the Strandza, the frontier region between Bulgaria and Turkey where I first saw the ritual on the beach.

Karcheva, for example, speaks with a mixture of adoration and nostalgia about witnessing a famous Nestinari, the late Baba Zlatna, as a child in the mid-1950s. ‘The states of mind she was in, you had to see it,’ she says. ‘She went into this trance. Then she was possessed by something. That’s the difference between her and us. She had visions. We don’t.’

Not all Nestinari are sceptics. Many speak about how fire walking challenges the relationship between pleasure and pain, how the dancer transcends the body’s limitations and makes contact with divine energy that allows her or him to see the future. Some describe the energy as primeval and pagan. Others feel it’s a gift from Christian saints whom the church superimposed on the ritual during the Middle Ages. Everyone agrees that the fire cleanses them of their sins. Thus many Bulgarians, most often in provincial villages, still revere the Nestinari and believe it is good luck to touch them after they have walked on the coals.

Katya Roseva is one such true believer. ‘It’s just a matter of overcoming your primal fear,’ she says. ‘Sometimes that fear is what keeps us human. We choose to overcome that. If you are sinful, the embers hurt. If you are chaste and good they won’t. I feel the life of the fire. You might say I have a relationship with it.’

Rumen Manolov is a rarity – a male fire walker. He adds that in special places and during special times, such as May 21, the feast day of St Constantine and St Helena, he has seen the future while walking on the coals – usually predictions of what might befall the community, such as if a politician is going to lose an election or if a natural disaster such as a flood is due to hit. ‘In order to prophesy, we need to dance in a sanctified place, close to a church or monastery and we need to have fasted for two days beforehand,’ he says.

Ask the Nestinari why they do not burn their feet and eyes will roll. It is a sore point because it emphasises the theatrical aspect of fire walking, the spectacle that attracts tourists whose knowledge of Bulgaria is limited to newspaper stories about mafia bosses gunned down in the streets of Sofia.

They will share with you, however, what they think is the secret: as the coals burn, they are slowly covered by their own ash, providing the Nestinari with a few millimetres of insulation. If you do not linger too long on any one spot, they say, your feet will not burn. Perhaps that is true, but in early June when Nestinari flock to the village of Bulgari in the Standza to fire walk, ambulances line up outside the festival grounds to whisk away neophytes who scorch themselves.

In the end, it is hard to separate any Nestinari performance from the supposedly authentic ritual, says Georg Kraev, a folklorist at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. When Nestinari perform for tourists in a restaurant, he asks, are they really inauthentic? If the original Nestinari were part of bacchanalian revels, then food and drink were around when the first people walked on coals. ‘A tavern is an ancient thing,’ Kraev says.

It is never particularly easy to reconcile past and present in the Balkans, however. Bulgarians have a long tradition of keeping their traditions alive despite the pressure of outside influences, be it Romans, Byzantines or Ottoman Turks. Even when that influence is the EU, the holy grail of democrats that helped free Bulgaria from the yoke of communism more than 15 years ago, many of the Nestinari are suspicious of change.

‘I’m not happy about Bulgaria opening up to the world,’ Roseva admits. ‘But we are a persistent people. Nestinari are part of the past and they will be part of the future.’

STAMP OF AUTHENTICITY

Authentic fire dancing takes place in a few villages in southeastern Bulgaria on 21 May, St Constantine’s and St Helen’s day.

ANCIENT ROOTS

Fire dancing can probably trace its roots back to ancient Thrace where it may have sprung out of a cult of sun worshipping. The Thracians were renowned warriors during the Greek and Roman periods, famed in particular for their speed of movement and ability to hurl a javelin prodigious distances. Theirs was not a literary society and they left behind no great buildings or tombs. They were, however, highly skilled goldsmiths.

COLD FEET

Some Nestinari say they feel their hands and feet becoming cold prior to the ritual. They attribute this to the intervention of the saints.

LINKS

www.historymuseum.org
www.bulgariatravel.org