Играта по огън днес: дарба или пробуждане на архетипа?
Fire-Dancing Today: a Gift or Archetype Awakening?

Summary/Abstract: For many people - even today - dancing is a gift from God, charis, a strange phenomenon in human nature, at which people, getting into a peculiar psychological state, go out of the boundaries of common activities and perform without feeling any pain or being hurt, acts which contradict the notions of the physical properties of the matter. If we speak about “prihvashtanija* in Nestinars, this is no doubt the case, but when nowadays people, quite different in mentality, go to the smouldering fire, without being able to explaine to themselves the exact nature of their act, then it is natural to ask ourselves what is it that makes a modem, sane person, who has grown up with the natural fear of fire, decide on such an act. Among the “provoked” contemporaries of mine to whom the proverb “He has gone through fire and water” can be applied to great extent there are all kinds of people: religious, atheists, people following the spiritual path, as well as such, for whom exists only what can be touched firmly with the hands. Some of the fire dancers describe states or behaviour which are typical for the real Nestinars, even - in the utmost limit of the exitment - the fire is not danger but an irresistible need, a powerful centre of attraction. They feel neither its heat, nor do they get burned by it when they tread on it. What they experience is rather a feeling of elation and some kind of gentleness. The unifying “event” in my observations is transition from what was “said” (or “thought”) to what was “done” althogh the words from the Bible - “there was no smell of burning about them” (Daniil, 222, 27) cannot be applied to all of them. “Maybe all of us can walk on the fire” - assumes Andrew Lang. Maybe, but very few do, and not everybody has always enjoyed the High grace. Maybe it is true that all of us can walk on the glowing embers, but the question is why some of us do it at all?

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