2. Are you lost, my dear? Come here to my breast, Mama will steer you right.

 I am armed with a digital camera, a notebook and a pen. There is a storm raging outside, winds so fierce wheelie bins are being blown down the road, but I will not be deterred. My adventure has begun. My mission, to forge a solid link between art and writing. ‘Snow, wind, you don’t scare me, my mission will be completed!’

My first stop is the library. If I’m looking to fuse art and writing in order to create something beautiful and hopeful unique, it seems like the perfect place to start. Art and literature are fused there every day, from the architecture to the art within the building.

Out of the cold I dart straight for the religion section. My fascination with religion began when I was in the Sixth Form but it's quite possible that it could have started before then. I remember getting into witchcraft when I was about twelve; I remember reading The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, (1993), whilst sitting in an art class in year 10, so maybe it did start before then.

But back to sixth form. I was friends with a girl whose father had just died and as a reaction she became interested in religion. I recall her telling me that she'd read the Bible for the first time and how it was full of contradictions and that now she knows for sure that God didn't exist.

Somewhere in that time frame, however I required a lot of books on faith and religion including three Bibles (two of them stolen, but I thought I was being ironic at the time).

This interest in religions and mythology has become a sort of underlying hobby that has run beneath mostly everything that I've done. Maybe it's the fascination of why people believe, maybe it's the similarities between faiths that lead me to believe that maybe there is some truth within them. I don’t know. Whenever I go to a library though, I use it as an excuse to indulge in all the religious, theology and mythology books I can get my hands on.

On this particular trip I ended up looking at fairy tales as well. Fairy tales are always intricately illustrated and there is another reason.

Fairy tales are dramatic, colourful; they create explosions of colour that ignite the imagination. They include magnificent, magical outfits; skip playfully between simple stories to far-fetched epic tales. And, if you look closely, have very religious undertones.

I’ve always thought that fairy tales were religious texts of children; you hook them with the ridiculous and sexist stories when they're young so they'll believe the bigger ridiculous, sexist stories when they're older.

Though the stories have this element of fantasy, maybe it's possible that fairy tales are just a lot simpler than that. Whilst at the same time they're expressing simple base fears, such as being eaten by wolves, maybe there is living vicariously through the characters. A romantic fantasy, defeating evil, being roused from sleep by a kiss, even being the evil witch with all that power.

In these stories a woman is usually the main character but never the hero. In the Christian/Catholic/Jewish/Muslim Bibles, if women aren't completely dismissed or ignored they are painted as these sinful brazen creatures. The one woman in the Bible who is revered is a virgin and god fearing and is therefore deemed worthy to give birth to the 'son' of God.

Although in the Christian Bible, even Mary is portrayed as dependant, relying on her husband Joseph.

In the Koran on the other hand, Mary has no husband. In this version, Mary or Maryam was praying in seclusion when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her, blew onto her and she conceived. For the birth, there is no manger, no shepherds and no three wise men; she is alone in the desert. Through the pain of childbirth she screams to heaven, the most beautiful thing I have ever heard or seen written, she screams:

“Oh, would I be a thing undone. Oh, would I be dead before this!”

'Maryam'

I think that this line is so beautiful to me because at some point in our lives we’ve all felt like that, like we can’t take anymore. But I have this theory that if you can still say that you can’t take anymore, you probably still can, so just don’t say it.

It is also a very beautiful line because, it shows her strength, despite feeling like this, she struggles on, and it’s not just because she has no choice, it’s because she does.

Not only is Mary the only woman mentioned by name in the Koran but she is the only woman shown as having any strength. Especially when she goes back home, carrying a baby in her arms and has to explain everything to her disbelieving parents.

The Koran's version of events shares similarities with Aleister Crowley's theories as outlined in The Book of Thoth, (1974).

In the Thoth, a version of Mary and or Eve or perhaps Mary as a descendant of Eve, is referred to as the Scarlet Woman, and is depicted as Lust or Strength. The Scarlet Woman is described as riding...

'astride the Beast; in her left hand she holds the reins, representing the passion that unites them. In her right she holds aloft the cup, the Holy Grail...'

'The Awakening of Eve'

So what is it exactly that I'm looking for within all this?

It could possibly be the sexist attitudes of religion and stories that are supposedly the foundations and cornerstones of society? It could even be a search for comparisons with religions and stories that are supposedly there to influence us such as the parables and 'the moral of the story is...' type of thing?

Although this seems to have formed more into a project about the lost, which is perhaps what I am.

But then again, maybe not.