Symbols Universe(s)

Some researchers describe Symbols Universes as separate places. 

Symbols were among my first bodies. This was before every "Games Universe" for me , because things weren't so put together. I'd create symbols and pretend that I was nowhere else except where they were. I'd pretend that all my originations came from them, and others would have to interact with me through those symbols.

There wasn't a limitation on quantity and not all symbol gates had to accept all communications equally. Finding "the real one" eventually became a game itself; a being would mock up a perfect symbol, usually multidimensional, and then manufacture a ton of duplicates that all lacked, say, symmetry. These were preconsiderations to identities and roles, to resonances and contracts, to the sympathetic magic and anchor points that later came to conjoin beings and universes.

Symbols were also ways to connect spaces to somatic pools. Some attempts at radionics play at this, constructing connection points to transfer energy or informational content from one place to another. In the middle ages, and even into present day among the more creative types, art and complex symbols contain and communicate between spaces and times.

The long evolution of symbols tracks with dimensional wars, because symbols can extend across varying dimensions. One game many of us played for a while was to use a symbol that spanned across several dimensions and therefore appeared differently depending on how dimensions from which it was simultaneously viewed. Over time, it became possible to use nested dimensionality within symbols to both hide in plain sight and, as beings worsened in ability and perception, assess the state of remaining players. This is still an easy way to assess who is able to look at things from outside of their physical body. (Whoever said "it's not what's on the outside that counts, it's what's on the inside" apparently couldn't see that almost everyone currently incarnated here on Earth is much, much uglier on the inside.) 

Some gods still employ a version of this to scare away any people so degraded as cannot see past a silly devil mask. Gods, it would seem, also value space and silence, but when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Or, as Herman Hesse might put it, the unseen boatman was always such.

Many creatives recall aspects of this. Jonathan Stroud seems to remember this symbol dimensionality game and incorporated it into his description of multidimensional perceptics as part of his Bartimaeus series. Cassandra Clare's treatment of sigils recalls parallel layers in her City of Bones material. It's fascinating to watch people remembering without realizing what's going on.

Over time, symbols have been employed as keys, gateways, trophies, encoded multidimensional information channels, and ways to standardize rules. Enforced written law is profoundly older than Earth. It also used to be much more interesting.

Finally, it should be pointed out that words now function as symbols in themselves to many people. This because of the state they are currently in. To those operating in smaller and deader spaces than symbols, words often have command value in that symbols are literally more cause than they. A bunch of religious iconography and symbolism regarded by occultists suggest the overriding power of some symbols -- on candles, in ritual, on pieces of paper... perhaps written in chicken blood, urine, or some other humour. Some people wear crosses. Some people even believe that pronouns matter.