Heart (symbol)

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The traditional "heart shape" appears on a 1910 St. Valentine's Day card.

The heart has long been used as a symbol to refer to the spiritual, emotional, moral, and in the past also intellectual core of a human being. As the heart was once widely believed to be the seat of the human mind, the word heart continues to be used poetically to refer to the soul, and stylized depictions of hearts are extremely prevalent symbols representing love. However, more realistic depictions of human hearts tend to have macabre connotations of death and violence, quite unlike the concepts associated with the poetic and symbolic heart. This discrepancy is a common source of black comedy.

1 As metaphor
- 1.1 In mythology, spirituality and religion
- 1.2 In early science and philosophy
2 As icon
3 "I Love..."
4 Additional images
5 References
6 External links

[edit] As metaphor

[edit] In mythology, spirituality and religion

In religious texts the heart has historically been ascribed much mystical significance, either as metaphor or as an organ genuinely believed to have spiritual or divine attributes.

In Egyptian mythology, the heart portion of the soul was weighed in a balance against the feather of Ma'at, symbolising truth, in the judgment of the dead in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Egyptian sources do not actually reveal whether the heart had to be lighter or heavier than the feather for the deceased to pass into paradise - all depictions show only the weighing of the heart, not the actual results, heavier or lighter.

Similarly, in the Bible, this idea emerges in the earliest passages; Genesis 6:5 situates the thoughts of evil men in their hearts, and Exodus 5 through 12 speak repeatedly of the Lord "hardening Pharaoh's heart." By this it is meant that God made Pharaoh resolve not to let the Israelite slaves leave Egypt, in order to bring judgment against Pharaoh and demonstrate his power: "'Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them'" (Exodus 10:1). In the Book of Jeremiah 17:9, it is written that the Lord is the judge who "tries" the human heart.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary are traditional Roman Catholic devotional images.

European traditional heart symbol.

[edit] In early science and philosophy

Many classical philosophers and scientists, including Aristotle, considered the heart the seat of thought, reason or emotion, often rejecting the value of the brain.

The Stoics taught that the heart was the seat of the human soul.

The Roman physician Galen located the seat of the passions in the liver, the seat of reason in the brain, and considered the heart to be the seat of the emotions. While Galen's identification of the heart with emotion were proposed as a part of his theory of the circulatory system, the heart has continued to be used as a symbolic source of human emotions even after the rejection of such beliefs.

These themes were reiterated in the European Middle Ages.

[edit] As icon

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In European traditional art and folklore, the heart symbol is drawn in a stylized shape. This shape is typically colored red, suggesting both blood and, in many cultures, passion and strong emotion. The hearts have constituted, since the 15th century, one of the red suits in most playing card decks. The shape is particularly associated with romantic love; it is often seen on St. Valentine's Day cards, candy boxes, and similar popular culture artifacts as a symbol of romantic love.

jb (F34) "heart"
in hieroglyphs

What the traditional "heart shape" actually depicts is a matter of some controversy. It only vaguely resembles the human heart. Some people claim that it actually depicts the heart of a cow, a more readily available sight to most people in past centuries than an actual human heart. However, while bovine hearts are more similar to the iconic heart shape, the resemblance is still slight. The shape does resemble that of the three-chambered heart of the turtle, and that of the human male prostate gland, but it is very unlikely that the image was patterned after either of these organs.

The "heart" shape could also be considered to depict features of the human female body, such as the female's pubic mound or spread vulva. The tantric symbol of the "Yoni" is another example of a heart-shaped abstraction of a woman's vulva. In fact, the symmetry resembles the vulva far more than the asymmetry of the organ. In the introduction to The Vagina Monologues Gloria Steinem writes, "[The heart] was reduced from power to romance by centuries of male dominance."

Others maintain that the heart resembles the shape of the female breasts or the female buttocks.

Ancient silver coin from Cyrene depicting a silphium seed or fruit.

Another possible origin can be seen on the coins of the ancient city of Cyrene, some of which depict the seeds or fruit of the now-extinct silphium plant. The seeds are distinctly heart-shaped. Since this plant was widely used as an ancient herbal contraceptive or abortifacient, this shape may have come to be associated with sexuality and love.

The "heart" shape is formed by the back and wings of a dove, which was associated with Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love.

It may also be a stylised form of the combination of the silhouettes of two people kissing.

The most common emoticon for the heart is <3. In Unicode, the heart symbol ("BLACK HEART SUIT") is U+2665, and it can thus be generated in HTML by typing ♥ or ♥, or by the HTML entity &hearts; (♥). An unfilled heart symbol ("WHITE HEART SUIT", ♡) is U+2661, or ♡ or ♡. Mathematically, a heart-shaped figure, called a cardioid, can be represented by plotting a graph of either $(x 2 + y 2 - 1) 3 = x 2 y 3$ or, in polar form, $r = 1 - sin(θ)$ (although this lacks the sharp point at the bottom, more closely resembling the cross-section of a plum)

[edit] "I Love..."

The heart-shaped hole made by nature on a leaf

The heart symbol (♥) is used in slang expressions to indicate love or affection, sometimes with a connotation that the feeling is superficial or juvenile. It is a play upon Milton Glaser's classic I Love New York logo (typeset "I ♥ NY"). In the U.S., it can be used to show that one has a crush on someone or is in love with someone (i.e. "I ♥ [someone's name]" or "[Someone] ♥s [Someone else]"). It is also present in some recent titles, e.g. the film I Heart Huckabees or the video game We Love Katamari.

The widespread use of this expression has inspired many parodies. Originally pronounced "I love", the phrase has recently been used by young hipsters who have taken to facetiously verbalizing it as "I heart". Other examples include:

Parody bumper stickers have included:
- "I ♠ My Cat" for "I Spayed My Cat" (using "♠" = "spade" as a homophone and common pun for "spayed")
- "I ♣ Seals" for "I Club Seals" (using "♣" = "club" referring to seal clubbing).
A The Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson pictured Godzilla driving a car with an "I 8 NY" bumper sticker (8 meaning ate).
T-shirts parodying this phrase and Unicode have read "I ? Unicode", ? being the "replacement character" used on a Macintosh when the font in question does not contain a graphic for the Unicode character in question, or "I ☐ Unicode", as some Windows fonts show.