89 YEARS BEFORE NIETZSCHE DECLARED THAT ‘GOD IS DEAD’ (1884), WILLIAM BLAKE HAD ONE OF HIS CHARACTERS – FUZON – DECLARE:

“Shall we worship this Demon of Smoke,”
Said Fuzon, “This abstract non-entity
This cloudy God seated on Waters
Now seen, now obscur’d; King of sorrow?”

Book of Ahania 1795

Fuzon rebelled against his tyrant father but then declared himself God - " the eldest of things!" And what  did God do? He crucified his own son for daring to question and judge his father! So, God killed God! He even crucified him! Ring any bells!

"Sudden sings the rock; swift & invisible
On Fuzon flew; enter’d his bosom.
His beautiful visage, his tresses
That gave light to the mornings of heaven
Were smitten with darkenss, deform’d
And outstretch’d on the edge of the forest …
 
With difficulty & great pain Urizen
Lifted on high the dead corse;
On his shoulders he bore it to where
A Tree hung over the Immensity …
 
The corse of his first begotten
on the accursed Tree of Mystery
On the topmost stem of this Tree."
Urizen nail’d Fuzon’s corse.
 

And thou America! I once beheld thee but now behold no more. Thy golden mountains where my Cherubim & Seraphim rejoicd Together among my little-ones. But now, my Altars run with blood! My fires are corrupt! my incense is a cloudy pestilence Of seven diseases! Once a continual cloud of salvation. rose From all my myriads ...

From William Blake's 'Jerusalem - The Emanation of the Giant Albion, Chapter 4 (1804 - 1820)

1820 - 2020 !

Others in the south may still linger,
Basking in the paradise garden.
Here it’s northerly, and this year
For my friend I’ve chosen autumn.
I’ve brought here the blessed memory
Of my last non-meeting with you –
The pure flame of my victory
Over fate, so cold, so pure.

Anna Akhmatova

Is this century worse than those before?’

Is this century really worse than those before?
Perhaps, in that dazed by fear and grief,
It touched a blackest sore
It could not heal.

In the west the earthly sun shines yet,
And city roofs gleam in its light,
But here the white one marks doors with crosses,
Summons the crows, and the crows are in flight.

Anna Akhmatova

So many stones are thrown at me
That I no longer cower,
The turret’s cage is shapely,
High among high towers.
My thanks, to its builders,
May they evade pain and woe,
Here, I see suns rise earlier,
Here, their last splendours glow.
And often winds from northern seas
Fill the windows of my sanctuary,
And a dove eats corn from my palm…
And divinely light and calm,
The Muse’s sun burnt hand’s at play,
Finishing my unfinished page.

A much loved favourite of mine ...

The image of Medb’s severed head has never haunted me.

For a while I found it comforting, in a strange sort of way.

I can still hear the raucous belly-laugh, mirrored in Medb’s smiling face.

A face, now, forever frozen in time.

Everything happened so quickly.

What I do remember is Medb looking as beautiful in death as she was in life.

I drew her to me.

It was one of the most intimate moments in my life. 

Medb’s blood was everywhere.

Rose-coloured blood covered me like a liquid shroud.

I could even taste it on my lips, and feel it running down my beard.

It was the smell of death.

Death mingled with car oil.

Although my eyes were a blur, some of my other senses were working overtime, trying to make sense of my new environment: creaking metal, burnt rubber, the wind in the trees.

Then silence.

And in the silence three drops of blood fell on my forehead.

In. Slow. Motion.

Medb, in death, anointing me, I fantasized.

Not for a moment did I consider the possibility that this may have been a nightmare.

This was real.

Bloody real!”

Medb’s Epiphany … Medusa’s Apocalypse

Although Medb was not part of my original story, which goes back many a decade, when she did appear, in the mid noughties, it wasn’t to be later on in Guy’s adventure (as I had planned), where she would travel with him to the finale, but at the very beginning, when she would be decapitated after a few minutes of appearing on screen!

I was devastated.

I didn’t want her to be killed off at the start, and ‘fought’ the idea for about a year.

Then I realized that writing the story of the fugitive stag was more that ‘just a story.’

It was the story of a shamanic initiation into the mystery of Goddess.

She became the Patroness of my project, the creative flow, the life-blood, that weaves its way through the story of my ‘cervus fugitivus’ from beginning to end.

YES! THERE IS A TALENTED DIRECTOR ‘OUT THERE, SOMEWHERE’ WHO WILL HELP ME BRING MY FUGITIVE STAG TO THE SCREEN …

PLEASE SHARE … AND HELP ME FIND HER OR HIM.

ENDGAME 2020 – DIOLCH THANKS DOROTHEA TANNING, WHO CELEBRATED THE ‘UNGIRDING’ EVENT IN HER OWN UNIQUE WAY IN THIS BRILLIANT PAINTING

“The Queen is represented by the white satin slipper that is literally stomping out the Bishop. The Queen dominates—not the King … It is nice Surrealist trope, because they’re (Dorothea and Ernst) against the traditional family. And you have a trompe l’oeil detail in the corner, as if the chessboard has been ripped open and you have a landscape where the Queens is going to run away to.” – Javier Pes 4 March 2019

” The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when he wrote of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it ” – so wrote William Blake in 1868