LANDSCAPE/SEASCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY AND ART CONTEST - The old stone forest

It is definitely worth traveling only 18 kilometers from Varna city and really losing your sense of reality. And it's hard to resist the temptation to pinch yourself and your companions to make sure you're not dreaming! No, you haven't moved into another dimension and turned into midgets. You just found yourself in a forest where instead of trees there are stone columns of the most bizarre shapes and sizes. They grow directly from the sand that replaces the grass here. That's why the Bulgarians call them the Beaten Stones.

There are many hypotheses about their origin, which can be grouped mainly into two groups - for their organic and inorganic origin. The first are related to coral organisms and others. According to the latter, their origin is explained by the prismatic weathering of the rocks or by the formation of sandstone-limestone concretions, etc. In order to protect them, they were declared a natural landmark in 1937.

Apart from a few more words about their height, thickness and appearance, this concludes all the information. Do you think this description will attract tourists and what is such a place if there are no legends surrounding it. We present to you the legend, which is very popular with Russian tourists and which certainly makes an unprecedented advertisement for the Stone Forest of Bulgaria.

The name of God

long, long ago, when gods lived in the sky and titans on earth, the sea stretched much deeper into the continent than it does now. And where the Stone Forest is now, there used to be a beach and a fishing village next to it. There also lived a righteous boy. With his deeds and actions, he pleased God so much that one day He descended from the heavens and appeared to the young fisherman with an offer he could not refuse.
God revealed his name to the young man and along with that gave him eternal life, but in return he asked him to swear that he would keep this secret forever. If he doesn't keep the deal, he will lose his immortality. The young man, of course, agreed. And he would certainly have kept his word if he hadn't met a girl he loved at first sight.

His girlfriend reciprocated. But the lovers could not get together, the girl was promised as a wife to the main titan. The young man decided to talk to the bridegroom. He listened to him and said that he was ready to release the bride if the fisherman would tell the Titans what the name of God was and thus immortalize them too. The fisherman asked for a day to think. During this time, he figured out how to keep the oath and appease the Titans at the same time.

The next morning, he asked his rival's men to line up in a certain way, and always took the place indicated by him. Thus he inscribed the name of God on the shore with the bodies of the Titans. God, who watched this scene from the heavens, became angry and turned the Titans into stones.
This is how the Stone Forest appeared. And in the place where the young fisherman first embraced his beloved, today a healing spring gushes. Its water is considered particularly useful for kidney diseases.

Architects of the miracle

Do you like the legend? Russians find it very romantic and even claim that the first to describe the stone forest was a Russian journalist. In 1829, during the Russo-Turkish War, the military correspondent Viktor Teplyakov was posted to the headquarters of Ivan Dibich, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army. Returning home, he published "Letters from Bulgaria", where he told in detail about the Stone Forest under the name Gebedji ruins (after the nearby village of Gebedji). It is certainly curious to read lines from these letters even now. Colonel L. ordered, at my request, that one of the smaller cylindrical columns be torn out. Some of our soldiers got to work. Loud shouts: “Let's find the treasure! Let's find a pot of gold coins!" were distributed every minute around the excavated column. After a while, it was discovered a little more than a fathom (a Russian measure of length equal to 2.13 m bd), but digging along the right cylinder into the ground , we had to conclude that its subterranean base was still a long way off..

The magic circle

Regardless of which of the versions will lie in your heart, let's mention that for the Russians the Stone Forest of Bulgaria is a powerful bioenergy zone. They say that Vanga herself used to come to the place to recharge her batteries. It is for this very reason that it is highly recommended. a must come here, even if one feels broke and broken. There, under the shade of the stone trees", he will certainly feel better. It is also recommended that a person walks in a pine tree so that he will quickly part with the accumulated negative energy and charge himself with positive.
After all, the epicenter of this place of Power is the Magic Circle, so called a stone composition in the shape of a circle, in the center of which there is a column. Rather, it is partly a handiwork, as noting the schematic outlines of a circle, the natives once completed the work that nature had begun by making a circle of small stones.

Be that as it may, it is believed that it is in the Magic Circle of the Stone Forest that the charging of energy and the synchronization of bioenergetic rhythms with the rhythms of the universe take place. They also say that the energy of the Magic Circle is so strong that within a radius of 10 meters from it quite often phones, cameras and other equipment fail.

In return, however, everyone gets incomparably more. The Russians spread the belief that if one walks around the Stone Forest and then enters the circle, luck it will never again turn away from man.