“The untiring researches of Western, and especially German, symbologists, during the last and present centuries, have brought every occultist and most unprejudiced persons to see that without the help of symbology (with its seven departments, of which the moderns know nothing) no ancient scripture can ever be correctly understood.
Symbology must be studied from every one of its aspects, for each nation had its own peculiar methods of expression.
In short, no Egyptian papyrus, no Indian tolla, no Assyrian tile, or Hebrew scroll, should be read and accepted literally.
As a learned Mason and Theosophist, Kenneth Mackenzie, has shown in his Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, there is a great difference between emblem and symbol. The former “comprises a larger series of thoughts than a symbol, which may be said rather to illustrate some single, special idea.”
Hence, the symbols (say lunar or solar) of several countries, each illustrating such a special idea, or series of ideas, form collectively an esoteric emblem. The latter is “a concrete visible picture or sign representing principles, or a series of principles, recognizable by those who have received certain instructions” (initiates).
To put it still plainer, an emblem is usually a series of graphic pictures viewed and explained allegorically, and unfolding an idea in panoramic views, one after the other.
Thus the Puranas are written emblems. So are the Mosaic and Christian Testaments, or the Bible, and all other exoteric scriptures. The proofs brought forward in corroboration of the old teachings are scattered widely through the old scriptures of ancient civilizations.
The Puranas, the Zendavesta, and the old classics are full of them; but no one has ever gone to the trouble of collecting and collating together those facts.
The reason for this is that all such events were recorded symbolically; and that the best scholars, the most acute minds, among our Aryanists and Egyptologists, have been too often darkened by one or another preconception; still oftener, by one-sided views of the secret meaning.
Yet even a parable is a spoken symbol: a fiction or a fable, as some think; an allegorical representation, we say, of life realities, events, and facts.
And, as a moral was ever drawn from a parable, that moral being an actual truth and fact in human life, so an historical, real event was deduced – by those versed in the hieratic sciences – from certain emblems and symbols recorded in the ancient archives of the temples.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 