(4 Jun 2014) It is the eve of the feast days of Saints Constantine and Helena Day (on June 4) and the people of Bulgari in the Mount Strandzha region in Southeast Bulgaria are watching a fire being prepared.
When night falls nestinari dancers in a trancelike state will dance barefoot on burning embers, just as their ancestors did thousands of years ago.
Goran Stefanov is one of the fire-dancers. He says he is called to dance by God.
"Fire dancing is a way for me to connect with God. I dance in the fire because God and St. Constantine tell me to do so. I feel that if I do not come here today and I do not dance, or at least prepared to do so, I have a feeling that something terrible will happen to me, I may literally die. Firedance and entry into the embers comes only by God and no one else can make me enter the the embers. Dance and zayuoto entry into the heat comes only by God and no one else can make me go into the embers. "
However despite the deep religious belief of the dancers who pray to the icon of Saints Constantine and Helena (the Emperor who gave Christianity a legal status and his mother), before entering the fire, the ritual has never be sanctioned by the Orthodox church here.
In the past the Church demonised the nestinari dancers as possessed by the devil.
The ancient mysterious rite, also carried out in northern Greece by refugees from Bulgaria, was often performed secretly over the last century for fear of persecution from the the church and the communist party, which ruled Bulgaria for 45 years until 1989.
The ritual was revived in 1990 in the village of Bulgari.
Stefanov says he is compelled to dance and can not resist the call of the fire.
"I met fire-dancer, who also occasionally plays here Veska who told me that I should dance in the fire. I asked her why she believes I should do that and she just said, "You have to!" and when fire dancing ritual started here, she found me in the audience and told me to take off my shoes and get into the fire. I was startled, but I felt an overwhelming force that pushed me and even though I remember little of that time, It was the first time I danced into the fire."
Irina Mitreva, a local woman says that unless you are called by God, you can not take part in the dance.
"I do not expect to become a fire-dancer. It something that only St. Constantine can say. I can not expect it, if He "pushes" me in the fire I will dance if He pushes me out that, I will not even dare to try. I am not going to try until God prompts me to do so."
After prayers and music, the performance begins at sunset, when the chief dancer, a man wearing a white shirt and a red sash around his waist, spreads the burning embers in a circle about, 6 metres wide and 5 to 6 centimetres thick, in the central square of the village.
The first to tread on the embers are the most elderly active dancers, who go round the embers three times and then step crosswise on them.
Only then does the real dance begin.
The dancers tread on the smouldering circle with a piercing cry.
They walk across the embers, pressing their feet against the live coals, shouting all the time.
During the dance, they carry the icon of Saints Constantine and Helena decorated with flowers.
Gradually the dancers' movements calm down and eventually the dance ends.
Remarkably, after the dance the nestinari's feet do not show the slightest trace of injury or burns.
The fire dance is a religious and mystical ritual to pray for health and fertility.
Over the centuries, the rite was persecuted by the Orthodox Church but also by the Communist regime.
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