Progress of a soul: two stories
Phoebe Anna Traquair's warning, and its antidote
A few months ago I found myself in front of these four embroidered panels in the Scottish National Gallery, long before I had ever heard of Phoebe Anna Traquair. They are large; hand-crafted with gold thread, shining with the colours of silk, made up of millions of tiny stitches. It was before I started writing here, and before I had found a way in to starting to explore more of the art of my own culture.
I had no idea what I was looking at, but I could feel that it was going to disturb me if I tried to find out. Not least because whatever was going on for this human throughout the panels, in the last one he seemed to be being asphyxiated by the kiss of an angel.
The four embroideries, entitled ‘Progress of the Soul’, were finished in 1902, having taken nine years to complete. You can research the Wagner opera which inspired the theme, or the story by Walter Pater (‘a tale about the god Dionysus living as a priest in medieval France’) which influenced Phoebe’s interpretation. I’m not going to go into those details here.
Phoebe’s story is told to us by the commentaries beside each embroidery.
The Entrance. This is the first from a suite of four embroidered panels which follow the journey of the human soul to heaven. It illustrates the happy stage of hope and innocence, when the soul is in tune with nature, ignorant of the realities of life.
The Stress, 1897. Here the forces of evil begin to invade the soul’s world, and destroy all precious, living creatures. Hands reach out for flowers, birds, and even the soul’s tunic, while a snake entwines one leg.
Despair, 1899. Traquair provided her own explanation of the embroideries, asserting that in this scene ‘frustration, delusionment and despair have gained the upper hand’.
Victory, 1902. Here the human soul is welcomed into heaven, awoken from death with a kiss from a red-winged angel. According to Traquair, this final panel symbolised ‘ultimate salvation by the grace of higher powers, rather than the merits of the individual’.
I find the story that’s told by this breathtakingly luscious set of hand-stitched, gold-threaded panels utterly life-negating.
It begins rather beautifully. A youthful figure is standing, relaxed and fluid, in the middle of an abundant, natural scene. At his feet, a free-flowing river, a healthy rabbit, flowers and plants, the sun rising to the left of a strong and productive vine. The grapes are ripe and plentiful, birds fly above his head; he’s dressed in an animal skin and playing a harp. He’s a part of nature, embedded in an intertwined ecology; dependent on animals for food and clothing, eating the fruits from the vine. But we’re told that all of this is delusion; being ‘in tune with nature’ is ignorance, and that knowledge is needed in order to understand that ‘the realities of life’ are not, in fact, anything to do with all of this.
In the second panel, the atmosphere changes. Something sinister begins to emerge; disembodied hands reach out from hidden places, trying to pull off the animal skin, breaking the limbs of the vine, plucking the grapes and the flowers, capturing the birds. The hands are trying to take the harp from the central figure, though he’s still playing. He tries to turn away from them as flowers fall to the ground. The rabbit has been killed by a duck, the river is drying out, the plants are losing their leaves, and a serpent is starting to coil around his legs, preventing him from escaping. There’s no sun, everything is getting darker.
In the third panel the sky is dark, the birds are lined up in sleep along a branch. The human is now suspended on the vine, showing no signs of life. The darkening animal skin is falling off his body, the harp hangs broken in his hand. The serpent is wrapped around both of his legs, pinning him to the vine, devouring the grapes. The flourishing green plants have been reduced to a thorny briar curling around the human’s feet, two thin green snakes winding in and out of them.
In the final panel, everything is light, colour, brightness. Birds are flying around the angel’s head, plucked flowers adorn his hair. His arms enfold the human and the vine in a tight grip. The broken harp is forgotten, a rainbow arcs around their feet. But look! The human’s feet are disappearing into the open mouth of the serpent, now large and strong, curling under the rainbow as it bares its teeth and slowly starts to pull the human down into its belly. The human, immersed in his bliss, is totally unaware.
As I was studying the images, my brain began to make a second story, about current times and the fast-moving encroachment of genAI.
At first the human is immersed in nature, a part of it all. He’s killing animals in order to eat and to cover himself, but nature is flourishing all around him. He’s discovered viticulture. There’s music, he’s made a harp; he’s standing in the midst of everything, playing to the birds and the sun.
But then something starts to sour. Perhaps he starts to take his food and his clothing for granted. Does he get a little bored with the splendour of nature? Something seems to have spotted his doubts and is coming after him. It’s taking the birds out of the trees, breaking the vine. It starts to tug at his clothing, telling him that there’s something else, somewhere else; filling him with stories about a world that’s better and brighter than this one. The rabbit’s been killed by the duck anyway by this time, so why not come over here and find new food? The snake coils around his feet, making it hard to get away.
We’re currently heading for the world of panel three. The human is a shadow of his former self. He’s hanging limply from the vine, no longer independent, his feet bound by the serpent to the vine-like structure. Is it a vine? We’re not sure. It looks like one, but we have no way of knowing for sure. The serpent is eating the grapes anyway, one way or another. The carpet of green, living things has been replaced by the encircling mass of an encroaching bramble. The thorns are beginning to hurt, and all he can think about now is finding something better than this.
So to panel four, the promise of genAI; a glowing, technicolour vision of shining resolution. Now the human is completely engulfed by the shining angel, whose kiss silences any protest. The harp, once capable of interaction with its maker, dangles broken from his hand. Everything is absorbed into this moment of dopamine bliss. In fact the human is being quietly devoured by the serpent; slowly, imperceptibly being pulled into its mouth, but he has no awareness of this at all.
The original story is from long ago, but fingers from this tradition still stretch into the present; in our cultural disdain for the earth, our lack of concern for all the connected systems which we still refuse to acknowledge sustain us. The current rush towards building enormous super-computers in order to facilitate the ongoing development and use of AI, with no concern for its environmental cost, is breathtaking.
What is the antidote to all of this horror?
Reclaim the human.
Unstick their mouth from the angel, shout in their ear; raise them from their sleep. Repair the harp. Practice viticulture.
The antidote is the light reflecting off the golden threads, the human patiently stitching for nine years; choosing red and green and silver, working silk into forms of vine leaf and rabbit’s eye.
The antidote is the colour that Phoebe used in her enamel work, shining with the iridescence of dragonflies.
Tell stories, find the old ones, make new ones.
Make stories about humans being webbed into the world, right here, right now.
Embodied. Conscious. Aware of what’s happening.
Able to discriminate between the useful and the numbing. Understanding their own nature well enough to know how to resist the creeping colonisation of genAI at the expense of the earth; at the expense of human culture, human thought.
Grounding themselves, and others, by making human art.
And this folks, is how you tell new stories of nourishment and life, both through and beyond false promises.
This is so wonderful! I am so drawn to the antidote. It really makes me ponder the story, the spell that is within these four panels and your ability to stand independent from them and see a different way forward!