A year without saints.
The Coven Annual Wheel follows no divine calendar.
Nineteen festivals mark the cycle – each of these nights disfigures a familiar ritual, desecrates a symbol, breaks a law.

What began as a reversal is no longer a break.
It has settled, left its mark, inscribed itself in every subsequent step.

The old meanings still hold true,
but they are losing weight.

And with each festival, it becomes clearer
that this year is not passing –
but closing.

What others celebrate as light, we transform into embers and shadows.

WELCOME TO THE ERA OF BLOOD AND SILENCE.

The fifth festival in the Coven Year.

On the night of May 1st, fires are lit all over Germany.
Officially, to ward off winter.
Unofficially, because people remember that this night existed before anyone gave it a name.

Later, it was called Walpurgis Night.
The churches gave it a saint to make it tangible.
But what happens up there on the mountains
never asked for permission.

Witches, heretics, outcasts –
not as roles, but as what remains
when someone refuses to conform.

They don't come in costume.
They return.

The Night of the Blazing Witches is not a celebration or a spectacle.
It is a re-emergence.
A moment in the year when what has been suppressed
no longer remains silent.

The fires are not meant to create light.
They mark places.
And those who see them immediately understand
that they are not for everyone.

You can ignore this night.
Most people do.

Or you can stop,
look too long
and realize that there is something real about it.

Welcome to the Night of the Blazing Witches.

It was called the Blocksberg.
Today it is known as the Brocken.

A mountain that, long before it became a destination for hikers,
was a place to be avoided.
Not out of superstition,
but from experience.

In the centuries when people began burning others,
because they knew too much or did not obey,
reports kept emerging.

Of lights on the summit.
Of voices in the storm.
Of figures that moved at night
and were gone by morning.

People explained it.
As they explain everything they cannot control.

And yet they went.

Not many.
But enough.

They ascended in the darkness,
without signs, without guidance,
as if following a path that does not exist on maps.

Once at the top,
no names were spoken.
No one asked questions.
No one explained why they were there.

The fire was lit,
and in its light, everything that still held meaning below
lost its form.

And then, in the midst of the dance,
a voice was said to have spoken through the fire:

“You call it sin,
because you remember
what it feels like to be free.”

When morning came,
the mountain was empty.

Only ashes remained
and stories,
which were better told as fairy tales.

Yet to this day it is said
that every Walpurgis Night
the fires flare up again –

and that those
who watch them too long
recognize something within themselves
that can no longer be banished.