In the beginning woman made god, and god was a tyrant. Woman saw that this was… compelling. And so woman made the compelling argument for hypnotic tyranny, mirrored always on the unforgiving, unrepentant and indifferent surface of the sea, the sea.  

The act of creation, the object of creativity. Spontaneous recording of the past, present and future all colliding mercilessly in the cauldron of literature. Woman stirs, adds her spices and tinctures - such strange ingredients - and stirs and stirs again. Bubbling up from this black pot looms our stranger god: a director of the stage with a Shakespearean fixation. He is his own Prospero, conjuring monsters and ghosts and impish spirits to be bent over by his will, thoroughly used, and then left to the carrion of fate. He commands an entire playworld from the island of his peninsula, demanding ritual sacrifice from each worshipper who makes pilgrimage to this holy place.

Driven by the most dogged, envious, paranoid obsession I’ve ever witnessed in a single figure, his passions are illumined by the frequent moonlit visions, only to be revealed as pure lunacy. Oh! god himself is overcome and eventually undone by hopeless figurings of his own heaven. A dream of a heaven, which can never be drawn to earth.

To return to the instruments of sacrifice and sanctification: Charles the father, harelipped Titus the son and cousin James the Holy Ghost. Of course, as the story goes, the son must be given up for someone’s sins. For an altar, perhaps Minn’s Cauldron; the church, Shruff End. Could the sea, throughout all this, be the relentless torment of Hades? Perhaps so for this ancient vengeful god of classicism. 

I delight in the dementedly dark threads with which this story has been woven. Far from moralising and chastising, it bellows its twisted hymns and seduces us into the ordinary depravity of man. Yes, it demands sacrifice and supplication, but it asks of us no repentance, offers us no penance. 

It is truly sacred, profoundly profane.