A symbol is anything that serves as a direct support for spiritual realization, as, for example, a mantra or a Divine name, or, in a secondary way, a graphic, pictorial or sculptured symbol such as a sacred image (pratika). [GTUFS: LSelf, The Vedanta]

A symbol is intrinsically so concrete and so efficacious that celestial manifestations, when they occur in our sensory world, “descend” to earth and “reascend” to Heaven; a symbolism accessible to the senses takes on the function of the supra-sensible reality which it reflects . . . The word “symbol” implies “participation” or “aspect”, whatever difference of level may be involved. [GTUFS: LightAW, In the Wake of the Fall]

A symbol is truly what it symbolizes as far as its essential reality is concerned. [GTUFS: UnityReligions, Concerning Forms in Art]

Symbol / Rite: Let us specify that the accident is to the Substance what ice or steam is to water, and that the form is to the Essence what the reflection is to the sun; or again, on quite a different plane, the relationship between the participle and the verb equals that of the accident and the Substance, and the relationship between the word and the thing signified equals that between the form and the Essence. And similarly in the spiritual domain: when we distinguish between the symbol and its principial archetype, the “Idea” (Eidos), we refer to the discontinuous and static relationship “form-Essence”; but when we distinguish between the rite and its effect, we refer to the relationship “accident-Substance,” which is continuous and dynamic. This is to say that the accident is a “mode” of the Substance, whereas the form is a “sign” of the Essence.
Every sacred symbol is an “enlightening form” that invites to a “liberating rite”: the “form” reveals the Essence to us, whereas the “rite” leads us back to the Substance; to the Substance we are, the only one that is . . . Vision of the Essence through the form, and return to the Substance by means of the rite. [GTUFS: PlayMasks, The Liberating Passage]