With magic, EVERYTHING is symbolism. It's what makes ritual casting (and I'm talking the initiation version whose name I forget at the moment) possible at all. It's also what makes background count such a cnosideration. Sure Auschtwitz (sp) has a massive BC becasue of the suffering there, but so does the Vatican, and for a totally different reason. The Vatican has a BC of 4/5 because people beleive in the Church there, and that symbolic belief in a diety/ideology/religion fuels the astral in the area. So in a very real sense, if you get enought people believing, and I mean REALLY believing, in an idea/concept/symbol, then that belief is tuyrned into power.
Gabriel