[305] Catalonic [Catalonian?] fields---I think it was 411 or so---has been very often painted and described. And it was painted as a double battle, a battle on earth and a battle even in the realm of the air, where the spirits of the dead were continuing the fight. Now this is symbol, this means this was the decisive battle in which Western culture was saved for more than a thousand years. Therefore, far beyond the empirical events, this battle represents the existence of Western society. This is a political symbol. Now I don't need to go into this; you understand immediately that these representative^a

symbols^b are not only signs; they participate in the power of that which they represent and which has happened. The same is true of religious synbo [sic.] symbols, and at the time when we spoke about them I said that they are the ONLY in which we can speak about that which is ultimate^c and transcends the material reality, the subject-matter which is used IN ORDER to symbolize the ultimate. All these symbols are taken from persons and events and qualities and acts which happen in time and space. But they all, if they are used to symbolize the ultimate, get a quite different meaning. But they cannot be exchanged, because they express, in their very nature, in their

double nature, pointing-beyond-itself---namely the relationship of a social group to the ultimate--- which cannot be expressed in anyother [sic.] way. These are the common characteristics of all symbols^d of the last type, the representative type, which are not signs but genuine symbols. To this realm belong the artistic symbols, and I will speak more about them next time.