The Red Thread of Fate
In Ancient East Asian philosophy everyone in the world has a soulmate, and everyone is connected to that soulmate by a length of invisible red thread. Whoever is at the end of your thread, which is often tied around the little finger, is the one you are destined to meet and fall in love with. Though the thread may tangle and wear thin over time, it will never break, and the soulmates’ bond will remain strong and steadfast their whole lives.
Mythology varies slightly from country to country, with Chinese lovers being connected via their ankles, whilst the Japanese belief is that the thread extends from the male’s thumb to the female’s little finger. In all accounts, the colour red is traditionally used to depict love and romance.
in one Chinese telling of the myth, a young boy is stopped by an old man standing beneath the moonlight. The old man tells the boy that he is attached to his destined wife by a length of red thread, and shows the boy the young girl he is surely going to marry. But the boy has no interest in marriage, and throws a rock at the girl. Years later, the boy’s family arrange a wedding for him. When he sees his wife on the night of the wedding, she is waiting in their bedroom with her face covered by a veil. When the young man lifts the veil he is overjoyed to see that his wife is a great beauty, but is intrigued by a strange covering on her eyebrow. When he asked his new wife why she has her eye covered, she explains that when she was a little girl, a boy threw a rock at her and struck her in the face. In this moment the man realises that the old man he had met as a boy had, in fact, introduced him to his destined love, all those years ago.
in another version, an ambitious young man asks the elder who he is destined to marry, thinking that he will marry a rich woman. The old man points across the market place to a peasant girl who is taking a walk with an old blind woman, and shows the red thread between the young man and the peasant girl. The young man is displeased and orders his servant to kill the girl and the old woman. Years later, the man marries a beautiful and wealthy woman who is every bit his perfect match. However, two details trouble the man. His wife has a limp and covers her forehead with a silk patch, and has never spoken of why. When he asks her why, she begins to cry and tells of how she is the niece of the leaders of a wealthy family. Her parents died when she was very young and she lived with her old, blind nanny. One day, whilst taking a walk through the market with her nanny, a madman stabbed and killed the old lady, and wounded her, leaving her scarred and crippled. Realising that this was the girl he had ordered killed, the man broke down into tears, confessed his wrongdoing and begged for his wife’s forgiveness
My Red Thread of Fate series of artworks uses acrylic paint, wool and embroidery thread on large-scale canvases to explore the idea of fated relationships and human connection. The fingers entwined with thread questions whether destiny is liberating in being entirely out of our hands, or, in fact, a prison that takes us in directions we perhaps don’t want to go. If we desire one thing, why does fate give us something else? Why are we tied to one particular person when we have strong feelings for others? Do we have any say over our fate? Can we change or manipulate it or are our lives at the mercy of bigger, unseen forces?
