Matters of the Heart

It was traditional in many cultures to eat the heart of defeated enemies in order to acquire their strength and knowledge - and to ensure they could never return from the dead.
Myth tells of the time that Zeus ate the still-beating heart of his son Zagreus (who had been torn to shreds by the Titans), and so was able to recreate his son's life in the form if Dionysos.
Chinese tradition associates the heart with the number five and the element Earth. The heart is also symbolic of Spring, which is considered a propitious season for marriage and new buildings.
The hieroglyphic art of Ancient Egypt represented the heart as a vase.
According to proverb, every heart has its own ache, and according to Proverbs 14:10 'The heart knows its own bitterness'.
In 1967 Christiaan Neethling Barnard performed the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. The 54 year old patient lived for 18 days.
St Catherine of Siena is represented by a heart with a cross - an allusion to the legend where Christ replaced her heart with his own.
In Islamic tradition, the heart is not the organ of emotion but of the spiritual and contemplative side of man.