The Nestinarstvo fire-dancing rite is the climax of the anual Panagyr ritual on the feast of Saints Constantine and Helena (3 and 4 June) in the village of Bulgari, in the Mount Strandzha, region of south-east Bulgaria. The festival culminates in a fire-dance in the evening as the highest form of veneration of the Saints. People silently form a circle around the burning embers led by the sacred drum, and the Nestinari, who are spiritual and physical leaders through whom the saints express their will, begin entering the circle and treading the embers. Formerly celebrated in some thirty nearby Bulgarian and Greek Villages, Nestinarstvo remains today in Bulgari, a avillage of only a hundred persons.
