Floral Symbols

“Man can feel no religious awe more genuine and profound I believe, than the awe he feels when treading the ground where his ancestors – his roots – repose." – Nikos Kazantzakis

This week I would like to share what I have found out about floral symbols on gravestones and what they mean. Like I said in one of my first posts, gravestone symbols were actually used as a language to tell people about the deceased and how they died because many people during the colonial New England era were illiterate. The more I find on the interpretations of symbols the more I am amazed by the forms of communication people come up with!

This first list of interpretations is from Memento Mori: Bringing the Classroom to the Cemetery by Laura Suchan.

• lily/rose: purity
• foliage/fruit: lushness of heaven
• ivy: Christian constancy
• palms: peace/victory
• unopened bud/broken flower: life cut short or life budded on earth but will bloom in heaven
• floral wreaths: symbol for mourning-often used to frame an epitaph

This second list is from Keenan Andersen of The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

• floral motifs are usually associated with women and children to symbolize beauty and innocence.
• bud and the broken stem suggest that the flower will never get an opportunity to grow and blossom
• Floral patterns and specific flowers can also be used as a sign that the deceased was attractive.
• calla lily: beauty
• Easter lily: purity
• tulip: love and passion
• corn: fertility
• grapes: Blood of Christ
• morning glory: resurrection, beauty, loss of young child
• passionflower: passion of Christ
• sunflower: devotion to God
• floral wreath: victory over death

Now, the items that are highlighted purple above are probably more contemporary symbols rather than colonial. I say this because, although the Puritans did believe in the resurrection of Jesus, they did not believe that any other being was capable of resurrection (in the case of the second coming of Christ). The Puritans also did not believe in the Eucharist or Communion, which means they would not have used grapes as a symbol of the Blood of Christ.

Also, I would like to point out from my post last week about hand symbols, the last hand symbol is holding a chain. I wondered if it meant anything, but couldn't find anything on it...until now! I found out the chain (or "Great Chain of Being") symbolizes life on earth, and since it is broken it symbolizes that that life on earth has ended. Just in case anyone else was wondering!

Sources:

Suchan, Laura. "Momento Mori: Bringing the Classroom to the Cemetery". The History Teacher, Vol. 42, No. 1. Nov 2008. Society for History Education. Retrieved Nov 14, 2013. (JSTOR) Web.

Andersen, Keenan. "Gravestones- floral motifs". The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Spring 2009. Retrieved Nov 14, 2013. Web. <http://www.ettc.net/njarts/details.cfm?ID=1450>.

Decoding The Hand Symbol

This week I would like to revert back to decoding New England gravestone symbols. After researching the stonecutters, stone materials, and the events of this time period it is easier to understand the language of the carvings found on colonial gravestones.

I want to discuss the symbolism of the hand or clasped hands.

The clasped hands shown above signify the goodbyes during the death, the farewell to their earthly body, or the reuniting of a couple who might have been separated by death.

Praying hands symbolize devotion to God

If the hand is pointing up it signifies the reward of the righteous or the confirmation of life after death. (not sure how they're "confirming" that, but okay).

If the hand is pointing down it signifies a sudden death or mortality.

***UPDATE 11/14/13: While researching this week I have found another source which talks about the hand symbols on gravestones. This author has the same interpretations for the first three hand symbols (hand shake, praying, and pointing upward) BUT her interpretation of the downward pointing hand is that it usually represents the hand of God. She also states that the downward pointing hand is the most rare of the hand symbols (Suchan, 50).

I think the meaning of the hand symbol is easy to understand. These symbols are still used today and still have the same or similar meanings. I really thought the downward facing hand was interesting because it is more rare than the other hands, and I wouldn't have guessed that it meant sudden death. 

The next section of this post is a passage from Gravestone Studies: Symbolism on Gravestones by Jessie Lie Farber. Farber explains why in many New England graveyards the headstones are oriented east or west.

"In many, but by no means all, early New England burying grounds the graves are positioned east/west.  This east/west orientation is the most common orientation in other parts of the country and world as well.  The earliest settlers had their feet pointing toward the east and the head of the coffin toward the west, ready to rise up and face the "new day" (the sun) when "the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised"  or when Christ would appear and they would be reborn.  If the body was positioned between the headstone and the footstone, with the inscriptions facing outward, the footstone might actually be facing east and the decorated face of the headstone facing west.  If the headstone inscription faces east, the body would most commonly be buried to the east of it.  Much depends on the layout of the graveyard -- if there was a church or other building in the center of the burial site, where the high ground was located, the location of access roads, etc.  Early graves were seldom in the neat rows that we are used to seeing.  Burials were more haphazard, more medieval in their irregularity; families didn't own plots and burial spaces were often reused.  The north side of the cemetery was considered less desirable and is often the last part of the burying ground to be used, or you may find the north side set aside for slaves, servants, suicides, "unknowns," etc. In many burial grounds graves face all four points on the compass. Sometimes a hilly site will have stones facing all four directions.  With the coming of the Rural Cemetery Movement in the 1830s and 40s, an entirely new style of burial became popular.  The ideal of winding roads and irregular terrain dictated the orientation of the monuments to a large degree.

Sources:

Farber, Jessie Lie. Symbolism on Gravestones.The Association for Gravestone Studies. N.d. Retrieved Nov. 10 2013.