Belintash
The center of the Rhodope Mountains is a beautiful and wooded area, high mountains cut by deep canyons, where the largest fir forests in the Balkans exist, hundreds of bears, and some of the most beautiful landscapes in Europe are found. In the northern part of it one finds the megalithic site of Belintash.
The meaning of the name “Belintash” is “the rock of knowledge” in Turkish. It is a large rock at the top of the mountains with engravings and depressions cut thousands of years ago; one of the theories about the place is that the etchings, especially the cup-marks, reflect constellations of stars, and the site was a kind of ancient observatory. On clear nights, the cups carved in the rock were filled with pure water, and the stars in the sky would be reflected in them. Thus, the arrangement of the cups corresponds to important star constellations. Another suggestion is that they would fill the recesses with oil and light them to resemble stars. The idea of capturing cosmic energies in the earth by building receptacles with the same frequency is very ancient and appears in the pyramids of Egypt (the Giza pyramids are aligned with the stars of Orion’s Belt).
Even if the cups were not filled with water or oil, and the stars were not reflected in the rock etchings, there are more than 300 small cup-shaped carvings on the rock surface arranged in the form of constellations that were significant to the ancients, such as the Little Bear, Orion, Leo, and more. Some say that the alcoves at the tops of the rocks were made in honor of the dead and that offerings were placed in them for the Sky God, while others argue that they were connected with offerings to the dead.
Either way, the site is connected to the summit of a nearby volcano crater called Karadjov, and there are two tumuli (burial mounds) at the entrance to the large rock plateau that towers over its surroundings. The rock has energetic properties, such that in the cold winter days it remains free of snow while the surrounding mountains are covered. The Belintash rock plateau is several hundred meters long and part of it is artificially shaped. People report supernatural phenomena at the site, legends tell of alien landings there and connect the place to the biblical flood. Scientists, on the other hand, argue that it is a Thracian site from the 5th century BC associated with the god Sabazios.
The Belintash site is one of three apexes of an energetic triangle in the center of the northern Rhodope Mountains. The other two apexes are the Cross Mountain (which is described in the Christian Route section) and the Thracian Karadzhov Kamak site. The three apexes are located on three mountain peaks that are at the same height (around 1,400 meters), and when connected by straight lines they form an equilateral triangle. Legends say that Belintash belongs to the people and is the positive vertex; the Cross Forest belongs to the gods and is the neutral vertex, while the rocky peaks of Karadzhov Kamak belong to the dead and are the negative vertex of the triangle.
