BE STILL MY FOOLISH HEART!

The heart.  That sweet symbol that we see everywhere this time of year.  The two halves joined as one showing the meaning of love......but was it always the symbol of love?

As children one of the first things we learn how to cut with scissors on our own is probably the heart shape.  So simple but means so much.

The heart shape can be traced back to the ice age but historians can find no meaning for it then. In 600 and 400 B.C. the Greeks used it in the shape of the musical instument the Lyre and was closely associated with Eros the god of erotic love.

In western civilization the symbol can be traced to the African city of Cyrene in the 7th. century.  The city became a rich trade centre for the heart shaped seed from a fennel like plant call Silphium that was a successful form of birth control thus making couples more intimate without the concern of another mouth to feed.

With the coming of Christianity, the heart symbol took on the meaning of brotherly love with the symbol of the Sacred Heart meaning to love the saviour which is something that carried on throughout history.

In the Tarot, hearts can also symbolize knowledge, love, life from water, and fertility, and a fortune of joy.

 Hearts adorn things in our everyday life now, not just Valentine's Day.  Why do we adore this symbol so much?  It's origan is up for interpertation.  Of course they say it symbolizes love of the human heart but it looks nothing like a human heart.  Meaning "love" artists took the shape from the buttock and the roundness of the female busom.

Wherever the heart shape originated we do love it.  We see it on everything from clothing and pillows to home decor.

We have seen hearts used in architecture for centuries.  We still have hearts on our homes in some form.

We adorn our bodies with hearts and our hands make the perfect shape to tell someone how you feel.

The heart was and will remain the ultimate symbol of love and Valentine's Day.  In whatever shape you choose.

The heart, the symbol of eternal love.  The one thing that joins the world together.  The joining of hands to form one, the cutting of paper to make one, the giving of jewelry to say yours is forever theirs.  This little shape can mean so much.  It makes my heart sing!

Images from PINTEREST.