Modern Survivals
Two treasures of Bran the Blessed, his magical horn and platter providing food and drink on demand, were fertility symbols that have been associated with the legend of the Holy Grail.
The Cerne Abbas giant is a fertility symbol, which offered help in conception to childless women. Similarly, the Maypole is a phallic pole celebrating the sexual renewal of life in spring.
Western marriage ceremonies regularly include the throwing of rice and the bouquet - vegetative symbols of fertility. The shoe tied to the happy couple's car can been seen to represent the fertile vagina, as with The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.
Read more about this topic: Fertility Symbol
Famous quotes containing the word modern:
“Families have always been in flux and often in crisis; they have never lived up to nostalgic notions about “the way things used to be.” But that doesn’t mean the malaise and anxiety people feel about modern families are delusions, that everything would be fine if we would only realize that the past was not all it’s cracked up to be. . . . Even if things were not always right in families of the past, it seems clear that some things have newly gone wrong.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)