Reminiscences of shamanism in Bulgarian nestorianism

The origin and existence of shamanism in Southern Europe is insufficiently explored. At the same time, there is no doubt about presence of shamanistic elements in the European folk religion. Also, insufficient attention is paid to the survival and persistence of archaic elements of myth-ritual complex found in folk religion. To shed light on the above mentioned issues, the phenomenon of Bulgarian nestinarstvo is examined in this paper. It does contain distinctive shamanic features. Main features of South-European shamanism are its agrarian nature and professional differentiation of religious specialists (knowledge about the dead, or agrarian fertility). Bulgarian beliefs connected with nestinarstvo show a relationship to one of the basic myths of the Indo-European mythology: the struggle of the heavenly, thundering storm-god against the underworldly, water-retaining chaos-dragon.