You will find lots and lots of information online for your research. I will answer your question re connectedness in a separate post so we can start a discussion there. Blessings to you.

Thanks for your comment – and I found your link interesting. Particularly your reference to the Romans using the ‘ash cross’ – yet another example of the use of what we consider now a ‘Christian’ symbol by different cultures/peoples/belief systems as something else.

To each their own I guess. Like most symbols, those who wear them are either showing the world their faith, or they just like the image! 🙂 In fact, what you say is precisely the reason it took some hundreds of years before Christians began to wear the symbol of painful execution – preferring as I said the fish or the Chi-Rho monogram. And the cross, like the other symbols mentioned, has multiple meanings too being used across a number of civilisations to mean various things but interestingly, nearly always included in rituals surrounding death.