Symbols are not signs, pointing to something else. They presuppose the difference between familiar and unfamiliar and they operate in such a way as to enable the re-entry of this difference into the familiar. In other words, symbols represent the distinction between familiar and unfamiliar within the familiar world. They are forms of self-reference using the self-reference of form. In fact, symbols have developed as the successors of myth, replacing it first by symbolic interpretation and later by pure symbolism.

Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking…, loc. 1350