All-seeing eye on the dollar: a symbol of a secret order or just a good logo

An eye placed in a triangle - everyone probably knows this image. Conspiracy theories are being built around him all over the world. What is so attractive about it for conspiracy theorists, the publication said with the BBC.

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All mysterious symbols and secret signs have always been of great interest to conspiracy theorists and signed their ideas. The all-seeing eye is one such symbol. He is associated with both the Freemasons and the Illuminati, members of a secret society that allegedly controls the world order.

The sign of the All-Seeing Eye is also attractive to conspiracy theorists of all stripes because it seems to be everywhere - on countless churches around the world, on the buildings of Masonic lodges, on the US one-dollar bill, and on the Great Seal, the state seal of the United States.

The choice of this particular symbol looks rather strange and difficult to explain. Some people associate the Eye with a certain Big Brother who sees everything that is happening around.

And the combination of an eye and a pyramid is reminiscent of an ancient esoteric cult.

Where did this inexplicable symbol come from and why does it still excite the minds of the whole world? Is it true that he is associated with some secret order that controls the entire planet?

Even in early Christian times, the All-Seeing Eye symbolized God, and the triangle symbolized the Holy Trinity.

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During the Renaissance, artists used this symbol. One such example is Jacopo Pontormo's The Supper at Emmaus (1525). It is believed that the Eye was later added to the original work to disguise the three-faced symbol of the Trinity, which had been banned by the Counter-Reformation.

In the Iconologia edition of the collection of spiritual symbols, first published in 1593, the All-Seeing Eye was included as the personification of the "Providence of God", that is, the favor of God towards people, the compassionate divine vigilance that looks at humanity.

Based on the past

It is impossible to say with complete certainty who invented the All-Seeing Eye. But one thing is clear - this was done on the basis of pre-existing religious motives.

The triangle is an ancient symbol of the Christian Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Previously, even God was depicted with a triangular halo above his head.

So why is the Eye depicted completely without a body? God was previously depicted in various ways, including in the form of a hand outstretched from a cloud. But an eye without a body?

It is worth noting that the eye has an effect and makes a strong impression. He kind of demonstrates power, but at the same time, sympathetic observation.

Even in some animals in nature, in the course of evolution, images of a large eye appeared on their bodies, helping them scare off predators.

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Surrealist photographer René Magritte exploited the inexplicable, uncanny appeal of the disembodied eye in his painting The False Mirror (1928). On the canvas, painted with oil paints, there is a human eye framed by a cloudy blue sky. In place of the iris of the eye there are clouds.

But the story of the Eye goes much deeper. Three millennia BC, the ancient Sumerians, with whom the emergence of civilization is traditionally associated, conveyed the degree of sacredness of sculptures of deities with their abnormally large eyes - to enhance the feeling of reverent vigil in their presence.

There is also a theory that an eye without a body was "created" by the ancient Egyptians, who painted two eyes on the tomb so that the deceased could see everything even after his death.

One of the most famous ancient Egyptian symbols is the eye of Horus (or the eye of Horus, the left falcon eye of the god Horus, which was damaged in the battle with the god Set). God Thoth healed the eye. Later, the pharaohs wore an amulet in the form of an eye, which was supposed to perform a protective function.

This eye and other Egyptian hieroglyphs depicting human eyes also influenced European iconography during the Renaissance. At that time, scholars and artists fell under the spell of Egyptian writing. The problem, however, was that they did not quite understand it, and the translations usually had many inaccuracies.

For example, in the mystical novel "Hypnerotomachia of Polyphilus" (1499), the Egyptian image of the eye was translated as "God".

Lost in Translation

Due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the use of hieroglyphs, various incidents occur. It is now known that hieroglyphs are just a written representation of phonetics, but in the 15th-16th centuries it was believed that they had some kind of mystical meaning.

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Hieroglyphic images of animals, birds and abstract figures were considered mysterious, and the meaning of each was understood through inspiration. Hieroglyphs, they thought then, were riddles with many possible meanings.

This approach greatly influenced European art, including the perception of the All-Seeing Eye, which was now deliberately given an esoteric meaning that did not exist.

At the end of the XNUMXth century, the symbolism of the Eye expanded to include things and concepts to which before that it did not belong at all.

First example. In post-revolutionary France, the writer, illustrator and painter of French history Jean-Jacques-François le Barbier placed the All-Seeing Eye at the top of the image of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and in this case, the disembodied, attentive eye personified the paternal prudence overseeing a nation that had gained equality.

Example two. Jeremy (Jeremiah) Bentham (1748 - 1832), an English philosopher and lawyer, designed, from his point of view, the ideal prison “Panopticon” (from the Greek “everything is visible”), the symbol of which was the All-Seeing Eye.

The Ideal Prison allowed for XNUMX/XNUMX surveillance of every inmate who did not know when he was being watched and when not.

Now the disembodied eye symbolized the unblinking gaze of the incorruptible law - in the images it was surrounded by the words "mercy", "justice" and "vigilance".

Example three. A few years before Bentham Prison, in 1782, the Great Seal of the United States of America was introduced, a state emblem used to authenticate documents issued by the US government.

Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams suggested options for how it should look, but the idea of ​​Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Continental Congress (at which the Declaration of Independence was adopted), came to life: the pyramid with the All-Seeing Eye at the top became one from print elements. To realize this idea, Thomson collaborated with a young lawyer and artist, William Burton.

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The unfinished pyramid was intended to symbolize “power and extension in time,” and its 13 steps represented the 13 states that were then part of the United States. The Eye was a symbol of God watching over the young nation with compassion.

And, as you can see, in no case did the Freemasons influence and did not play a role in the choice of this symbol. But how then did the Illuminati, maybe they intervened?

Little is known about the Order of the Bavarian Illuminati. It is a German secret society of the 1th century, founded on May 1776, 1787 and disbanded in XNUMX.

It is true that the Illuminati was inspired by the ideas of the Freemasons. Freemasons from time to time used the All-Seeing Eye as a symbol of the Great Architect of the Universe - as did many churches of that time.

However, Freemasons tried not to widely use the image of the Eye until the end of the 18th century - and by that time Le Barbier, Bentham, Thomson and Barton had already adapted it for their own purposes.

Unfortunately for conspiracy theorists, the All-Seeing Eye on the dollar bill says more about the aesthetics of the late XNUMXth century than about the power of the secret elites.

In our time, Madonna, Jay-Z and Kanye West have been accused of using Illuminati symbols more than once, including using the image of a disembodied eye.

But if this betrays anything, it is not the connection of this or that performer with the secret society of the ruling world, but his ability to use catchy visual means.

The ongoing exploitation of the All-Seeing Eye image is not evidence of an insidious conspiracy to subjugate the world, but a clear confirmation of the Eye's enduring splendor as a model for logo design.

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