Among visual symbols themselves there is also an example of "instantaneity" which is fairly comparable to that of sound symbols. This is the case of symbols that are not traced permanently but only employed as signs in initiatory rites (notably the "signs of recognition") [NA: Utterances that serve a similar purpose, passwords for example, fall naturally into the category of sound symbols.] and in more general religious rites (the "sign of the cross" is a typical example known to all); here the symbol is truly one with the ritual gesture itself. [NA: A sort of intermediary case is that of the symbolical figures that are traced at the beginning of a rite or preparatory to it, and effaced as soon as it is ended; such is the case of many yantras, and used once to be the same with the "tracing board" of the lodge in Masonry. The practice does not represent a mere precaution against profane curiosity, which as an explanation is always much too simple; it should be looked on first and foremost as an immediate consequence of the intimate bond uniting symbols and rites, in such a way that the former have no cause for visible subsistence apart from the latter.] In any case a "graphic" symbol is, we repeat, itself the fixation of a gesture or a movement (the actual movement or series of movements that has to be made to trace it), and in the case of sound symbols one also may say that the movement of the vocal organs that is necessary to produce them (whether it be a matter of uttering ordinary words or musical sounds) is as much a gesture as are all the other kinds of bodily movements, from which it can never be entirely isolated. [NA: Note especially in this connection the part played in rites by the gestures called in the Hindu tradition mudras, which form a veritable language of movements and attitudes; the "handclasps" used as "means of recognition" in initiatory organizations in the West as well as in the East are really only a particular case of mudras.] Essays: Rites and Symbols