Symbolic Meaning of Left & Right For this week’s Historic Cemetery Symbols post, we explore: The Meaning of Left and Right, and the Vein of Love! Left and Right on a Headstone Married folks often share a headstone, and when they do, most of the time you will notice that – as you stand facing the monument – the wife’s name will be on the left, and the husband’s name will be on the right. In the same vein (pun intended, but you’ll have to read the rest of this post to get it!), if you’ve ever attended a traditional Christian…
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Historic Cemetery Symbol of the Week This week’s Historic Cemetery Symbol of the week is Corn: The Symbolic Meanings for Corn When you see an ear of corn on a headstone, you may be standing at the grave of a farmer. In fact, it was an old country custom to send sheaves of corn, instead of floral bouquets, to a farmer’s family upon his passing. There is more to the symbolic meaning of corn, however, than simply indicating a person’s occupation. In the Bible, the word “corn” is used for grains, in general, and is used symbolically to indicate spiritual…
FREE Cemetery Symbols Guide: Would you like a FREE guide to historic cemetery symbolism? If so, click the image below: Historic Cemetery Symbol of the Week This week’s Historic Cemetery Symbol of the week is the harp: Heavenly music When harps appear on headstones, it’s usually a reference to heavenly music and praising the Lord. If you see a harp in a historic graveyard, look closely; sometimes it’s carved to show to look as if one of the strings is broken, thereby indicating that a person’s life was cut short. St. Cecilia – the patron saint of music Since Saint…
Cypress Trees in Cemeteries See that tall, skinny evergreen tree on the left in the photo below? That’s a cypress tree. If you are interested in historic graveyards, then you should leaarn to be on the lookout for these! Cypress Trees: easy to ID & helpful for finding your way! Not only are historic cemetery symbols featured on headstones, certain trees have symbolic meanings, too. Even if you don’t think you are good at identifying plants, there is at least one tree that you really should become familiar with: the cypress tree. And lucky for us, it’s quite easy to…
Thank you, readers! If you’ve been following my series on the meaning of historic cemetery symbols, then you know each week I share a quick explanation for that week’s graveyard symbol. In the book that I’m writing, however, which is a Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism, I dive much deeper into the meanings behind each symbol. I also learn a lot from the conversations that each of these posts spark – either from blog commenters here, replies on Twitter, and the emails that I’ve been getting. So, I wanted to give a hearty shout out to all the readers out…
Inspired by a Newsletter Subscriber! This week’s historic cemetery symbols post was inspired by an email from Bill Dodds, a reader who subscribes to my weekly author newsletter. Like me, Bill enjoys traipsing through historic graveyards and taking photos of interesting headstones. Bill lives in Massachusetts, and he had a question about the symbolic meaning behind Weeping Willows: “As far as i can tell it started to appear on stones in the 1820’s and had about a 50 or 60 year run before it more or less disappeared again.” What do weeping willows mean on a headstone? I’m still researching…