Romantic Symbols of Love and The Meaning Behind Them

Romantic symbols vary from culture to culture, here is why

Let’s do a short experiment. Take a second and think about the first word that comes into your mind after reading these 5 words: heart, cupid, swans, rose, and doves. What did you think about?

Now, it would be improper to generalize, but the vast majority of people would likely see those above words and think of “love”, “romance” or even “Valentine’s Day”. The connotations of those words and their meaning when combined together are so ingrained within us that some would even assume that it is innate. But it’s not. Which begs the question: what is the root of their meaning?

Many psychologists and researchers of past and present have spent time proposing various theories on the meaning of love, its value, its saying power, its effect on our minds, and the genesis of romantic symbols. As a result, this article will explore a wide variety of classic symbols of love in order to discuss the root of their meaning, their history, and why they persist.

Related: Do You Know What Love Really Is?

What Is Love?

The topic of “love” has unified the fascinations of individuals, philosophers, poets, scientists, writers, and even historians since the beginning of time. From the earliest civilizations to the modern era, people have used the tools at their disposal to better understand love’s significance and nature.

Love can be defined as the “desire to enter, maintain, or expand a close, connected, and ongoing relationship with another person”. But it can also be understood to be a set of emotions and behaviors that are characterized by engendering passion, intimacy, and commitment. It also results in expressions of care, closeness, and attraction. As well as many negative emotions such as jealousy, envy, and cause violence.

Nevertheless, love is a powerful concept that is viewed as a fundamental element of human existence, a unifying force, an essential attribute of everyday life, and our psychological drive.

Related: 5 Psychological Theories of Love

The Most Widely Known Romantic Symbols

Romantic symbols can therefore be understood to be artificial signs (or signifiers) of love. These symbols are chosen and used to express love and in some cases used as evidence of “true love”.

Romantic symbols will vary from culture to culture, however, the most revered symbols tend to remain universal. Some examples of these include:

• Heart

• Cupid

• Swans

• Doves

• The rose or other flowers

• Harp

• Claddaugh ring

• Diamond

• Infinity symbol

• Knots

• Apple

Some romantic symbols have been a part of the cultural language for centuries (such as the heart, cupid, or Celtic love knot). While some, like the diamond, are more modern additions.

Nevertheless, romantic symbols as a whole become signifiers of love through being imbued with so much meaning they become sacred. So much so that for some, these romantic symbols end up being regarded as the concept of love itself and a means for people to grasp its meaning.

Cupid, the Harp, the Love Heart and the Root of Their Meaning as Romantic Symbols

As mentioned above, some romantic symbols have been positioned as such for many years. Here are some of their histories and meanings.

Cupid

Cupid can be understood to be the Roman counterpart of the Greek God Eros. He was one of the oldest gods in the pantheon, making his historic symbolism quite ancient.

“Eros, in fact, was a key part of the ancient Greek creation mythology, meaning that he was there almost at the beginning of time and before the Olympians,” says Dr. Brian Tierney, PHD, RCST, and The Somatic Doctor.

“Eros carried an arrow that even other gods feared because it could make them do very embarrassing things if they were shot by it, like falling head-over-heels with humans,” he finishes.

But how did Eros turn into the Cupid of modern times?

“As the Roman world became more Christianised, the images of Cupid and Eros started to resemble that of a cherub, to suit the new religion’s aesthetic, and Christianity’s fondness for purity over eroticism,” says Inbaal Honigman, celebrity psychic and spirituality expert.

“While Eros represented passionate love and fertility, the Romans transformed him into Cupid (Cupido in Latin), a mischievous, bow-wielding cherub. This puckish depiction highlighted romantic love’s unpredictability and ability to strike suddenly, catching us off guard,” says Dr. Daniel Glazer, Bsc, DclinPsy, and co-founder of US Therapy Rooms.

"While Eros represented passionate love and fertility, the Romans transformed him into Cupid (Cupido in Latin), a mischievous, bow-wielding cherub."

Daniel Glazer, Bsc, DclinPsy

“Over time, Cupid further evolved into the popular image of a nude, winged infant representing desire’s innocence alongside its considerable power,” adds Glazer.  As a result, later depictions of Cupid or Eros tended to show him as a playful infant, which is closely associated with Valentine’s day.

“It’s interesting to think about how a god of that magnitude got squished into a cute little cherub, but never forget that this symbol still carries an arrow that can make and break worlds,” says Tierney.

The Harp

“The harp is an ancient instrument, and its antiquity speaks already to a dimension of its symbolism: a powerful music ‘lost’ in the mists of time that is found in romantic love,” says Tierney.

As a symbol of love, it has existed in many different cultures, representing slightly different types of love. “For example, David plays the harp in the Bible, to soothe King Saul, making the harp a symbol of friendly love”, says Honigman. “In Celtic culture, the harp represents a ladder between heaven and earth, as a bridge for love.” “In Northern Europe, the harp’s strings represent the ascent to love’s higher levels,” she finishes.

As a result, music and love have always been connected, and the sounds of a harp are perfect for romantic music — with some mythos stating its music is enchanted. “[It is believed that] the harp inebriates the listener with overwhelming emotions of longing for mystical union with a partner, where the pain of mundane existence is left behind,” adds Tierney.

The Love Heart

The love heart is perhaps the most famous romantic symbol there is and due to its popularity, it holds a vast array of symbolism that has gone through many transformations over the ages.

The origins of its shape and the reasons it became known as the heart is not known and has been in contention, though an approximation has been given. “The ubiquitous heart symbol dates back over 1,500 years to ancient coins minted in the Syrian-Palestinian region. Scholars believe the stylized shape originated from an artistic depiction of the seed pod from a plant like the silphium, which was prized for its birth control and aphrodisiac properties,” says Glazer.

“The connection between these seedpods, fertility, and carnal desire created an early visual metaphor that evolved into our modern heart iconography. A 3rd-century Roman coin even portrayed a representation of Venus, the goddess of love, holding what appears to be a heart-shaped object,” he adds. Thus, despite its disputed origins, it has held a diverse history as a symbol.

“It has symbolized a variety of elements including courage, love, wholeness, intelligence, beauty, and even life itself,” says Tierney. “Its association with blood as a symbol of life itself probably traces back to some of the earliest sacrificial rites that were performed in religious practices long before the Indus Valley civilization,” he adds.

Takeaway

The heart has four chambers and as a carrier of the symbolism of the number four, the heart represents wholeness. What each region means is subject to debate, but contenders include the four cardinal virtues...or Plato’s goodness, truth, beauty, and justice.

These days, it is usually used to symbolize the romantic elements of love or “eros” love and it is discussed synonymously with this type of love all over the world. It is also a foundational feature of Valentine’s Day celebrations.

Related: How to Nurture Eros Love in Your Relationships

How Did Romantic Symbols Come To Exist?

Now that the history of romantic symbols and the roots of their meaning have been explored, it’s important to work out why they persist.

To do this, it is important to explore the history of the mind and why it works the way it does. Therefore, let’s introduce the two biggest contributors to theorizations about the mind, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Freud and the Unconscious Mind

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. He was born in 1856 and he dedicated his life to changing the way people and medical practitioners thought and treated mental health conditions. As a result of his revolutionary works, and theories; he is often referred to as the “father of modern psychology”. But he is also known as a controversial figure.

One of Freud’s most enduring theories is the unconscious mind. In this work, he theorized that there are three levels of the mind: the preconscious, conscious, and unconscious. He believed that people’s behavior and personality were formed from the interaction between conflicting psychological forces that operated at these three different levels of awareness.

He likened these levels of the mind to an iceberg, with the top level being what is visible, the second level being visible, yet, under the water, and the last (yet bulk of the iceberg) being unseen, beneath it all. Thus, the preconscious mind could be understood as consisting of things that could be brought into the conscious mind. The second level, the conscious mind, contained all the memories, thoughts, feelings, and wishes people were aware of. Whereas the unconscious mind was likened to a reservoir of emotions, thoughts, and memories that lay outside of awareness.

At the time, this theory was quite revolutionary as it ran counter to previous beliefs about the mind. Behaviorism — a learning theory that states that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning that occurs through interaction with the environment — was the dominant school of thought in psychology. And behaviorist theorizations either denied the existence of the mind, due to the belief that for something to be real, it needs to be seen and observed. Or ignored it altogether, due to the belief that only observable behavior should be studied — with emotions, cognition, and mood being too subjective.

Freud’s work, therefore, re-legitimized the study of mental processes in scientific human psychology and it still informs ideas about the unconscious mind to this very day.

Related: The Role of the Conscious Mind

Jung and the Collective Unconscious

Carl Jung, on the other hand, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. He was born in 1875 and he worked with Freud in much of his early work, even affirming many of Freud’s teachings. However, as time went on their principles of psychology split and Jung founded the school of analytical psychology, developed the concept of the collective unconscious, Jungian archetypes, as well as introverted and extroverted personalities.

According to Jung, the collective unconscious was a segment of the deepest part of the unconscious mind that wasn’t shaped by personal experience but rather genetically inherited.

Takeaway

This part of the unconscious contains the inherited accumulation of primitive human experiences in the form of images or archetypes. These archetypes manifested themselves in myths, religion, dreams, and other cultural phenomena.

He believed that while the collective unconscious may have been the least accessible part of the unconscious mind, it still held a large role in shaping humanity. To further this, he likened the collective unconscious to a reservoir that stored all the knowledge and experiences of the human species. As a result, he believed the collective unconscious was responsible for various ingrained beliefs and modes of behavior, such as sexual behavior, spirituality, phobias, and instincts around life and death.

Related: What Is Jungian Therapy?

What the Unconscious Mind and Collective Unconscious Say About Romantic Symbolism

Like Freud, Jung believed that the unconscious mind played a significant role in affecting people’s conscious behavior. However, unlike him, Jung believed that collective unconsciousness modified these behaviors at a fundamental level.

Therefore, it can be ascertained that a Jungian view of romantic symbolism would state that the persistence of romantic symbols is due to them being a part of the collective unconsciousness. From here the inherited accumulation of love would form archetypes that are manifested symbolically. Thus, a Jungian view would attribute the universality of romantic symbols and their diverse historical transformations as evidence of this.

And as a result, they would claim that the reason people feel more romantic when thinking of romantic symbols is due to their meaning being the inherited accumulation of past human experiences. "They represent romantic truth archetypes that exist beyond any single individual," says Glazer.

When it comes to dreams, both psychologists believed that dreams made the unconscious visible to the conscious mind and worked as a means of revealing human behavior. However, Freud viewed suppressed sexual desire as the main cause of psychological problems and dreams as the manifestation of this.

"From a Freudian lens, our powerful unconscious associations with these romantic emblems, rooted in sexuality and biology, help explain their enduring resonance. Even if we’re not consciously aware of it, archetypal symbols like hearts and winged cherubs stir primal feelings around courtship, desire, and intimacy. They serve as visual embodiments of our most instinctual emotional and physical yearnings," says Glazer.

Therefore, a Freudian view of romantic symbolism would state that romantic symbols occur due to the mind using symbols to represent powerful ideas. Thus, this view of symbols states that repressed urges and fears found in the unconscious mind are expressed in symbolic form in dreams. From here, these dreams would impact conscious behavior and lead to their expression in physicality.

As suppressed sexual desire is a trait found in all people, the permanence of romantic symbols and their universality is explained through this.

Related: What Does It Mean When You Dream About Someone?

How Psychologists View Romantic Symbols Today

It is important to note that while modern psychology has certainly moved on from Freud and Jung’s theorizations, there is some evidence that suggests that the mind forms natural associations between specific symbols and the concepts they represent. However, more research is needed in order to work out if there truly is an “archetypal memory advantage.”

Nevertheless, it is evident that romantic symbols represent meaningful ideas, which cause powerful responses in people. “These symbols reflect the enormously powerful intensities in humans regarding love and will continue to carry meaning because love is a force that deeply shapes how people relate to relationships and the world,” says Tierney.

That said, while romantic symbols indeed hold sacred meaning, it is important not to confuse them with love itself. After all, symbols are mutable and evolve into different meanings across time periods and history. “Modern symbols refer mainly to the romantic aspects of love that are not held in balance with the more difficult aspects required to sustain love over time,” he finishes.

Therefore, it is vital to remember that symbols are just that, symbols.

Read Next: Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love

Read the original article on Verywell Mind.