xnet.vanga.eng.sum.txt

summary / excerpt from: Kostadinova, Zheni, "Taynata na Vanga", Trud: Sofia, 2009

Vangelia Gushterova (f), or simply Vanga, is probably Bulgaria's most famous psychic to date. 
Born in 1911, she died in 1996, in a village close to Petrich, a city in South West Bulgaria. 
During the Cold War, it was known to all that she was frequently visited by the higher 
political eschelons not only from the Eastern, but from the Western bloc, too. Although 
clarevoyancing was an illegal practice in the light of the communist ideology, the communist 
political elite protected Vanga, to the extent that the daughter of the chairman of the 
Bulgarian Communist Party took an active interest in her, and in her well-being. Still, 
according to prof Lozanov, the protection was not necessarily out of love: "My phone was 
tapped, let alone hers. Once I was talking with someone from abroad and it went on for too 
long. At one moment I heard a third voice saying "Hey, Doc, can you hold on for a sec so that 
we change the cassette". State Security was doing their work /the intelligence agency --R/. 
They feared Vanga, they tapped her, controlled her. When they frisked me at the airport 
/where he was arrrested in 1980 for his research --R/, they asked me whether I had materials 
regarding Vanga. They thought that I had got secret information from her, and which I was 
about to export. I had nothing on me, not even a scrap of paper." (Kostadinova 2009: 26).

In her words, Vanga explains her abilities as a gift from God: "My gift is from God. He 
deprieved me of my human sight, but he gave me other eyes with which to see the whole visible 
and invisible world"



In her book Taynata na Vanga, or The Secret of Vanga, Kostadinova gives credence to her 
abilities among which are: contacts with the dead, precise diagnostics, telepathy, predict 
the future, etc. To this end, the author interviewed, among others, the scientists and 
doctors who have been in contact with her until her death. In her book they share with 
bewilderment of her ability to precisely diagnose the ailments of those who visited her, 
speak with accuracy of the past of the visitors, by giving detailed information of who their 
deceased siblings were, and accurately predict whatever was in store for them in the future 
(Kostadinova 150-188: 2009).

Probably of greatest interest of us are the accounts of Prof. Georgi Lozanov and Tinka Miteva 
(psychologist, a colleague of Lozanov). He in 1965 began a scientific study on Vanga, 
although it was never completed as in 1980 he was arrested without charges for ten years, 
with all of his documentation on the Vanga case confiscated (Kostadionva 2009: 23-28). In the 
period of seven years, Lozanov kept record of the predictions of Vanga, made to each of the 
visitors. At some point after their visit, he would contact the people and compare her 
predictions. According to his research, she was firmly 40-50% accurate with her predictions 
of the future, and and that figure warranted further research into her abilities. This 
recommendation was made to the central committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, and 
permission to proceed was granted. As a result a laboratory for parapsychology was instated 
within the institute of suggestology (Kostadinova 2009: 25). Unfortunetely, all related 
scientific documentation along with an early scietific movie is unavailable for 
methodological verification as they were confiscated after the arrest of Lozanov (Kostadinova 
2009: 27).

The above 40-50% success rate of predicting the future might sound discouraging, altough in 
the absence of the scientific papers little could be said regarding the reliability of the 
above methodology. Establishing the reliability of a psychic by asking the subjects to 
interpret their lives seems unreliable.  Predictions of the future could be misconstrued by 
the subject at the moment when the psychic is revealing them and later incorrectly noted as 
true or false. Moreover, with a long time span between the visit and the consequent 
questionnaire the respondents might not have rememberred the prediction accurately and hence, 
skew their response in either the positive or the negative. Last, subjects answering in the 
affirmative might be engaging in backward rationalization, that is - interpreting past events 
in their lives to fit the prediction. All in all, in Kostadinova's book (2009) Lozanov does 
not mention whether all predictions were recorded, in order to allow for proper 
interpretation of the consequent events.

Probably a better approach into the reliability of Vanga's psychic powers is offerred by 
Tinka Miteva, a psychologist, a colleague of Lozanov's. In an experiment, she would briefly 
interview the visitors as they leave their session with Vanga. Then she would ask how much of 
the information regarding their affairs now and the past, as opposed to in the future, is 
correct. The results suggest 90% accuracy. Yet again, though this book is not a scientific 
piece, it is in the context of this research that the prophecy, that the Tomb of Bastet is 
in the bowels of the mountain of Strandzha, should be discussed.