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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.

As metaphor

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 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 does not emerge 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.

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.^[1]

The Stoics taught that the heart was the seat of the 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.^[2]

These themes were reiterated in the European Middle Ages.

As icon

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

In European traditional art and folklore, the heart symbol is drawn in a stylized shape. This shape is typically coloured 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.^[3] It only vaguely resembles the human heart.

A coin from Cyrene, depicting a silphium pod.

The seed of the silphium plant, used in ancient times as an herbal contraceptive,^[4] has been suggested as the source of the heart symbol.^[3]^[5]

The heart symbol could also be considered to depict features of the human female body, such as the female's buttocks, pubic mound, or spread vulva. The tantric symbol of the "Yoni" is another example of a heart-shaped abstraction of a woman's vulva

"I Love..."

The heart symbol is used in various 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. In many countries it can be used to show that one has a crush on someone or is in love with someone. It is also present in some recent titles, for example the film I ♥ Huckabees and the video game We ♥ Katamari.

Computer code

The most common emoticon for the heart is <3^[7]. In Unicode several heart symbols are available:

Glyph	Description	HTML code	Alt codes
♥	U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT	`♥` or `♥` or `&hearts;`	Alt + 3
♡	U+2661 WHITE HEART SUIT	`♡` or `♡`
❤	U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART	`❤` (may not appear)
❥	U+2765 ROTATED HEAVY BLACK HEART BULLET	`❥` (may not appear)
❣	U+2763 HEAVY HEART EXCLAMATION MARK ORNAMENT	`❣` (may not appear)

In Code page 437, the original character set of the IBM PC, the value of 3 (hexadecimal 03) represents the heart symbol. This value is shared with the non-printing ETX control character, which overrides it in many contexts.

Mathematical description

There are several mathematical descriptions that result in approximately heart-shaped curves. The best-known of these is the cardioid, which is an epicycloid with one cusp. The implicit curve (x²+y²-1)³-x²y³=0 yields a better approximation of the heart shape.^[8]

References

^ Aristotle, De partibus animalium ("On the Parts of Animals"), book 3, ch. 4
^ Galen, De usu partium corporis humani ("The Use of the Parts of the Human Body"), book 6.
^ ^a ^b The Shape of My Heart: Where did the ubiquitous Valentine's symbol come from? by Keelin McDonell, Slate.com.
^ Pliny the Elder, XXII, Ch. 49
^ Sowing the seeds of love, The Age, by Luke Benedictus, February 12, 2006
^ Woodward, John and George Burnett (1969). Woodward's a treatise on heraldry, British and foreign, page 203. Originally published 1892, Edinburgh: W. & A. B. Johnson. ISBN 0715344641. LCCN 02-0
^ See http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34056
^ Eric W. Weisstein, "Heart Curve." From MathWorld

External links

www.heartsymbol.com: The Heart Symbol - Origin, History And Significance by Prof. Armin Dietz
P. J. Vinken (2000), The Shape of the Heart: A Contribution to the Iconology of the Heart (illustrated ed.), Elsevier Health Sciences, ISBN 9780444829870
Vinken, P (2001), "How the heart was held in medieval art", The Lancet, 358 (9299): 2155–2157, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(01)07224-5, PMID 11784647

[1] Aristotle, De partibus animalium ("On the Parts of Animals"), book 3, ch. 4

[2] Galen, De usu partium corporis humani ("The Use of the Parts of the Human Body"), book 6.

[mcdonell-3] The Shape of My Heart: Where did the ubiquitous Valentine's symbol come from? by Keelin McDonell, Slate.com.

[PlinyXXII-4] Pliny the Elder, XXII, Ch. 49

[5] Sowing the seeds of love, The Age, by Luke Benedictus, February 12, 2006

[Woodward-6] Woodward, John and George Burnett (1969). Woodward's a treatise on heraldry, British and foreign, page 203. Originally published 1892, Edinburgh: W. & A. B. Johnson. ISBN 0715344641. LCCN 02-0

[7] See http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34056

[8] Eric W. Weisstein, "Heart Curve." From MathWorld

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@@ Line 33: / Line 33: @@
 [[File:Cyrenecoin.jpg|thumb|A coin from [[Cyrene, Libya|Cyrene]], depicting a [[silphium]] pod.]]
 The seed of the [[silphium]] plant, used in ancient times as an [[herbal contraceptive]],<ref name="PlinyXXII">[[Pliny the Elder]], [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plin.+Nat.+22.49 XXII, Ch. 49]</ref> has been suggested as the source of the heart symbol.<ref name="mcdonell" /><ref>[http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/sowing-the-seeds-of-love/2006/02/11/1139542445573.html Sowing the seeds of love], The Age, by Luke Benedictus, February 12, 2006</ref>
+The heart symbol could also be considered to depict features of the human female body, such as the female's [[buttocks]], [[mons pubis|pubic mound]], or spread [[vulva]]. The tantric symbol of the "[[Yoni]]" is another example of a heart-shaped abstraction of a woman's vulva
 [[File:Blason famille it Coglione01.svg|thumb|Inverted heart symbols have been used in heraldry as stylized [[testicle]]s (''coglioni'' in Italian) as in the [[canting arms]] of the [[Colleoni]]s of Milan.<ref name="Woodward">Woodward, John and George Burnett (1969). ''Woodward's a treatise on heraldry, British and foreign'', [http://www.archive.org/stream/treatiseonherald00wooduoft#page/202/mode/2up page 203]. Originally published 1892, Edinburgh: W. & A. B. Johnson. ISBN 0715344641. {{LCCN|02||020303}}</ref>]]