“There are many ways in which the intuition can be drawn into activity, and one of the most useful and potent is the study and interpretation of symbols. Symbols are the outer and visible forms of the inner spiritual realities, and when facility in discovering the reality behind any specific form has been gained, that very fact will indicate the awakening of the intuition.”

—  Alice A. Bailey

Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), Certain Preliminary Clarifications

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Alice A. Bailey 109
esoteric, theosophist, writer 1880–1949

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“This principle, which is thus made the foundation of the operations and results of Symbolical Algebra, has been called "The principle of the permanence of equivalent forms", and may be stated as follows:
"Whatever algebraical forms are equivalent, when the symbols are general in form but specific in value, will be equivalent likewise when the symbols are general in value as well as in form."”

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“Dharma means duty, or obligation, and it is your definite and specific obligation to develop the intuition. The means or methods whereby this development is to be brought about, can be by the study of symbols.”

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“The metaphysical forms which compose our futurist pictures are the result of realities conceived and realities created entirely by the artist. These last are inspired by the emotion or intuition and dependent on atmosphere-ambience.”

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“With regard to the principle [of using symbols to represent sounds], it matters little whether the symbol is an elaborately detailed picture, a slightly stylized drawing, or a drastically abbreviated symbol of essentially abstract form. What is crucial is to recognize that the diverse forms perform the same function in representing sound. To see that writing has the form of pictures and to conclude that it is pictographic is correct in only one sense -- that of the form, but not the function, of the symbols. We can put it this way:
QUESTION: When is a pictograph not a pictograph?
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“There is no need in these mathematical days to defend the use of symbolism. It is regarded by many schools of modern thought as the only safe form of language. Wittgenstein treats symbols as something more than conventional signs, and regards them as corresponding in some way to the reality to which they refer. He would probably accept Gurdjieff’s dictum that:

Symbols not only transmit knowledge but show the way to it.

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“Everyone holds an intuition and hidden dream which is so specific to that person. This particular unknown and hidden intuition would be awakening if it gets involved with the most harmonious part of nature related to it.”

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Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

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“Symbol and myth do bring into awareness infantile, archaic dreads and similar primitive psychic content. This is their regressive aspect. But they also bring out new meaning, new forms, and disclose a reality that was literally not present before, a reality that is not merely subjective but has a second pole which is outside ourselves. This is the progressive side of symbol and myth.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 4 : Creativity and the Encounter, p. 91
Context: Symbol and myth do bring into awareness infantile, archaic dreads and similar primitive psychic content. This is their regressive aspect. But they also bring out new meaning, new forms, and disclose a reality that was literally not present before, a reality that is not merely subjective but has a second pole which is outside ourselves. This is the progressive side of symbol and myth. This aspect points ahead. It is integrative. It is a progressive revealing of structure in our relation to nature and our own existence, as the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur so well states. It is a road to universals beyond discrete personal experience.

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