Echoes in the Forest: Channeling at the Witch Memorial of Hirschberg (Germany) (Kopie)

Deep in the Hirschberg forest, Germany, a wooden cross stands on the site of former witch trial executions. Lotte did a channeling and received surprising messages.

Deep in the Hirschberg forest near Warstein, Germany, a wooden cross stands on the site of former executions. Erected in 1986, it marks the place where, more than 300 years ago, dozens of people accused of witchcraft were tortured and killed.

History tells us that Hirschberg endured three waves of witch trials: around 1595, again in 1616–1617, and finally in 1628–1629. About 25 souls were condemned in total—forced under torture to confess, then silenced by rope and fire. For centuries, these events remained shrouded in taboo and silence, spoken of rarely, remembered even less.

For Maison Douce, silence itself is material. Our work does not seek to “correct” history, nor to ease inherited guilt. Instead, we approach these charged sites as places where silence, shame, and memory live in the air. By performing rituals of channeling, we open ourselves to what is left behind: fragments of voices, atmospheres, echoes that resist erasure.

Channeling, for us, is both a practice and a performance. It is a way of listening differently—of stepping aside to let another voice come through. Sometimes these voices emerge as whispers, sometimes as full speech, sometimes as sound or song. We never fully know what will happen; each performance is a negotiation between body, place, and something beyond language.

At Hirschberg, this unpredictability became central. Unlike our first ritual at the Witch Tower in Rüthen, where the channeling unfolded in English, here the forest demanded something else. As Lotte sat on the ground, the voice emerged in German—her mother tongue, the language of the land, the tongue of both accusers and accused. This shift was not planned; it arrived with a force that made the ritual feel more immediate, raw, and intimate.

The performance was filmed as part of our ongoing exploration of memory and ritual. It is subtitled in English, but the German voice remains at its core—untranslatable in its intensity, carrying the weight of history and the heaviness of silence.

This work is not about reconciliation. It is about contact. It is about allowing space for what has been buried to rise again, if only for a moment, and to meet it with presence rather than avoidance. Through ritual, we aim to reclaim agency for those whose voices were stolen, while also breaking the generational silence that lingers around these histories.

We invite you to watch, to listen, and to sit with the uncomfortable intensity of what emerges when silence is broken.