Hans Baldung Grien, Witches, 1508
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The Weather Witches, they smoke through us, they smoke like the axis of time. See them wrap their black manes in the sky, ride the fire-breathing cats, see them orb the matter of the night, the flesh of the cloud, see these heavy etheric bodies, these irresistible, irreversible, unbelievable substances.
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They rule over the storm, the volcano, the clouds. They are the mute law of the atom, they break the nucleus as an accelerator, a nuclear paraphernal. Every moment in their tube is a constellation of time, breaking galaxies. The goat’s egg, the cat’s black milk, the witch’s baby, behold, the cream of the black galaxies crosses it. The witches’ feast smokes like a volcano, mandrake smoke, and the dusk licks it with a hungry tongue, and the mice ring like beads on the flasks of alchemical malice.
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Baldung Grien’s witches visit us night and day, early in the morning, often unexpectedly but always rhythmically. They are miracles that breathe flesh and smoke, soaked with dew willow branches and rusty autumn leaves. My witches, indifferent witches, evil beauties, trunks of gloomy joy, turn here in the corner of time, bend more and more the space here, tighten it. No, don’t be sensible, don’t be submissive to the magician’s art. Just like you, I am a restless soul, just like you, radiant flesh and darkness, nothing to do with man.