Baba Vanga

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Vanga
Supposed clairvoyant and healer
Born	(1911-01-31)31 January 1911 Strumica, Ottoman Empire, today Republic of Macedonia
Died	11 August 1996(1996-08-11) (aged 85) Sofia, Bulgaria[1]
Citizenship	Ottoman (1911-1913) Bulgarian (1913-1919) Serbian/Yugoslav (1919-1941) Bulgarian (1941-1996)
Spouse	Dimitar Gushterov, married 10 May 1942

Vanga (Bulgarian: Ванга) (31 January 1911 – 11 August 1996), born Vangelia Pandeva Dimitrova (Вангелия Пандева Димитрова) after marriage Vangelia Gushterova (Вангелия Гущерова) was a blind Bulgarian^[2] mystic^{[citation needed]}, supposed clairvoyant^{[citation needed]} and herbalist who spent most of her life in the Rupite area in the Kozhuh mountains, Bulgaria. Her followers were convinced that she possessed paranormal abilities.

Life

Vanga was born in Strumica, then in the Ottoman Empire, later consecutively in Kingdom of Bulgaria, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, again in Bulgaria, SFR Yugoslavia and today in the Republic of Macedonia. During the second Bulgarian annexation of the region (1941–1944) she moved to Petrich, (then and now in Bulgaria). She was a premature baby who suffered from health complications. In accordance with local tradition, the baby was not given a name until it was deemed likely to survive. When the baby first cried out, a midwife went into the street and asked a stranger for a name. The stranger proposed Andromaha (Andromache), but this was rejected as "too Greek", so the second stranger's proposal, Vangelia (Vangelis, Greek: Βαγγελία, short for Ευαγγελία, "herald of the good news", from the components ευ- meaning "true" and άγγελος which means "messenger"), was accepted–also a Greek name, but popular in the region.

In her childhood, Vangelia was an ordinary girl. Her father was conscripted into the Bulgarian Army during World War I, and her mother died when Vanga was quite young, which meant the girl depended on the neighbors for a long time. Vanga was intelligent, with blue eyes and blond hair. Her inclinations started to show up when she herself thought out games and loved playing "healing"–she prescribed some herbs to her friends, who pretended to be ill. Her father, being a widower, eventually married a good woman, thus providing a stepmother to his daughter.

A turning point in her life was a twister which lifted Vanga up and threw her in the field (this claim has not been verified with meteorological records or other accounts from that time). She was found after a long search–very frightened, and her eyes were covered with sand and dust, so she couldn't open them because of the pain. No healing gave results. There was money only for a partial operation,^[3] so her eyesight was failing.

In 1925 Vanga was brought to a school for the blind in the city of Zemun (Serbia), where she spent three years, and was taught to read Braille, play the piano, as well as do knitting, cooking, and cleaning.^[4] After the death of her stepmother she had to go back home to take care of her younger siblings. Her family was very poor, and she had to work all day.

In 1939 Vanga caught pleurisy, although she had been quite healthy in the previous years. The doctor's opinion was that she would soon die but she recovered quickly^{[citation needed]}.

The house of Vanga in Petrich

During World War II Vanga attracted more believers–a number of people visited her, hoping to get a hint about whether their relatives were alive, or seeking for the place where they died. On 8 April 1942 the Bulgarian tzar Boris III visited her.

On 10 May 1942 Vanga married Dimitar Gushterov, a man from a village near Petrich, who had come asking for the killers of his brother, but had to promise her not to seek revenge. Shortly before marriage, Dimitar and Vanga moved to Petrich, where she soon became well-known. Dimitar was later conscripted in the Bulgarian Army and had to spend some time in then Bulgaria annexed Northern Greece. He got another illness in 1947, fell into alcoholism, and eventually died on 1 April 1962.^[5]

Vanga died on 11 August 1996 from breast cancer. Her funeral attracted large crowds, including many dignitaries.^[6]

Fulfilling Vanga's last will and testament, her Petrich house was turned into a museum, which opened its doors on 5 May 2008.^[7]

Work

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Vanga was illiterate or semi-literate. She did not write any books herself. What she said or allegedly said had been captured by staff members. Later numerous esoteric books on Vanga's life and predictions were written.

Vanga claimed that her extraordinary abilities had something to do with the presence of invisible creatures, but she couldn't clearly explain their origin. She said that those creatures gave her information about people, which she could not transmit to them, because distance and time didn't matter. According to Vanga, the life of everyone standing in front of her, was like a film to her, from birth till death. But changing "what was written on the generation" was beyond her power.

She is said to have foretold the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Chernobyl disaster, Boris Yeltsin's electoral victory, the date of Stalin's death, the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk, the September 11 attacks and Topalov's victory in the world chess tournament.^[8][9]

Vanga attempted prophesies of newborn or unborn children. She said that she was "seeing" and "talking" to people, who had died hundreds of years ago. Vanga talked about the future, although she did not like to. In her words, in 200 years man will make contact with brothers in mind from other worlds. She said that many aliens have been living on the earth for years. They came from the planet, which in their language is called Vamfim, and is the third planet from the Earth.

Followers of Vanga believe that she knew the precise date of her own death, and shortly before that she had said that a 10-year-old blind girl living in France was to inherit her gift, and that people would soon hear about her.^{[citation needed]}

According to the Russian website Pravda.ru, Vanga has predicted that a World War III will start in November 2010.^[10][11] However, this prophecy did not come true but North Korea—a nuclear nation, did attack South Korea on November 23, 2010,^[12] raising the assumptions that, perhaps, it has come true. Alternatively, in December 2010, protests in the Arab world started, with possibilities of spreading conflict. The validity of such claims is controversial since the followers of Baba Vanga are convinced that she wouldn't have predicted the time-line or given an announcement for such catastrophic events. On 27 September 2010, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega announced that the world is "in the midst of an international currency war". Discussion over currency war dominated the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit, which took place in Seoul, South Korea on November 11–12, 2010.

Healing

Apart from prophesying, Vanga was believed to be a healer, but only through herbal medicines. According to her, people had to heal themselves only with herbs from the country they live in. She prescribed washing with an infusion of herbs and spices, claiming some beneficial effect on the skin. Vanga did not oppose mainstream medicine, although she thought that taking too much medicines is bad, because "they close the doors, through which nature restores the balance in the body with herbs."^{[citation needed]}.

Studies

Accounts on the predictions of Vanga are often controversial and distorted by the media. One recent attempt to systematically summarize the existing knowledge about Vanga was made in the documentary "Vanga. The visible and invisible world".^[13] The movie includes interviews with some of the people who met Vanga in person, including Sergey Medvedev (press secretary to President of Russia Boris Yeltsin in 1995-1996; Sergey Medvedev visited Vanga as Yeltsin's envoy following Vanga's request to meet her), Neshka Robeva (Bulgarian rhythmic gymnast and coach), Sergey Mikhalkov (Soviet and Russian writer, author of the Soviet Union anthem), Nevena Tosheva (director of the first documentary about Vanga), Kirsan Ilyumzhinov (Kalmyk multi-millionaire businessman and politician). Several researchers have studied the phenomenon of Vanga in the attempt to establish whether she has any extraordinary capabilities. One of the first studies was initiated by Bulgarian government and is described in the 1977 movie Fenomen^[14] directed by Nevena Tosheva. Prominent Bulgarian psychiatrists Nicola Shipkovensky and Georgi Lozanov also studied the capabilities of Vanga. Reportedly, some of the studies concluded that about 80% of predictions of Vanga turned out to be accurate.^[15]

Controversy

Vanga was widely known to be close to the government of Todor Zhivkov and, on several occasions, she appeared on public TV with him and other high officials of the Communist Party. It has been alleged that Vanga used data gathered by the secret services to win the trust of her visitors, although such option was hardly available to her due to the majority of the people visiting her every day. To date, this is yet to be investigated.^{[citation needed]}

Vanga in Russian popular culture

Vanga is well known in the Russian speaking world, e.g. as indicated by large number of google hits in the Russian internet. Some Russian nationalists consider her a true prophet of God and use her alleged prophecies of the upcoming nuclear war and Russian victory to argue for more robust defense policy and, more generally, for a more optimistic view of Russia's future. On the other hand, many Christians reject her as a spiritist and a false prophet on behalf of the devil. Thus there is a widely propagated story of Vanga becoming enraged at a visiting cleric (Nathanael, metropolitan of Nevrokop) carrying a holy relic, saying that this presence prevents her from prophesying.

Notes

Sources

• Стоянова [Stoyanova], Красимира [Krasimira] (19967) (in Bulgarian). Истината за Ванга [The truth about Vanga]. Sofia: Balgarski Pisatel. ISBN 954-443-170-5. 
• Ostrander, Sheila; Schroeder, Lynn (1970). "Vanga Dimitrova: The Bulgarian Oracle". Psychic discoveries behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. pp. 259–281. ISBN 978-0-13-732230-5. 
• Valtchinova, Galia (2005). "Vanga, la "Pythie bulgare": idées et usages de l'Antiquité en Bulgarie socialiste" (in French). Dialogues d'histoire ancienne 31 (1): 93–127. doi:10.3406/dha.2005.2487. http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/dha_0755-7256_2005_num_31_1_2487. Retrieved 1 January 2011. 
• Ivanov, Petko; Izmirlieva, Valentina (2003). "Betwixt and Between: The Cult of Living Saints in Contemporary Bulgaria". Folklorica, Journal of the Slavic and East European 8 (1): 33–53. https://journals.ku.edu/index.php/folklorica/article/viewFile/3733/3572. Retrieved 1 January 2011. 

External links

• Stephen Kinzer: Rupite Journal; For a Revered Mystic, a Shrine Now of Her Own in The New York Times, April 5, 1995
• Baba Vanga - Prophecies of the Bulgarian Prophet
• Ideological Drive Against Paraperception Radio Free Europe Research, March 24, 1983, in Open Society Archives
• (in Russian) An article by Natalia Baltzun, translated by Kristina Hristova (Bulgaria)
• (in Russian) Vanga's Prophecies: Product of the Bulgarian Secret Services
• (in French) An article in french about Vanga's propheties, by K8 Transmission
• Baba Vanga Predictions
• NOTES FROM HISTORY: Baba Vanga, The Sofia Echo, December 19, 2005
• Baba Vanga say about 2012

See also

• Mama Omida
• Djuna
• Edgar Cayce