Eye of Providence

The Eye of Providence is an eye inside a triangle, surrounded by rays of light. It appears above the altar in Catholic churches, on the reverse of the American dollar bill, on Masonic lodge walls, and in the architecture of government buildings across Europe and the Americas. It is one of the most recognizable symbols in the world, and most people who see it every day have no idea where it came from.

Christian origins

The symbol began in the church. An eye enclosed in a triangle represented the omniscience of God as expressed through the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The triangle stood for the three persons, the eye for the divine sight that sees all things.

One of the earliest painted examples is Jacopo Pontormo’s 1525 Supper at Emmaus, now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The eye-in-triangle floats above the scene of Christ revealing himself to two disciples after the Resurrection. It is a straightforward piece of Counter-Reformation iconography, placed where it is to remind the viewer that God watches.

Over the following centuries, the symbol spread through European church decoration. It appears in stained glass, altarpieces, and architectural pediments from Spain to Poland. The Aachen Cathedral treasury, the Jesuit churches of Bavaria, and dozens of parish churches across France all carry versions of it. In every case the meaning is the same: God sees.

Masonic adoption

Freemasonry picked up the Eye of Providence in the 18th century, after the symbol had already been circulating in Christian art for two hundred years. The Masons called it the All-Seeing Eye and attached it to the concept of the Great Architect of the Universe, the deliberately nondenominational term Masonry uses for the Supreme Being.

Thomas Smith Webb’s 1797 Freemason’s Monitor helped codify the symbol’s place in Masonic visual culture. Webb described the All-Seeing Eye as a reminder that a Mason’s actions are observed by the deity at all times. The symbol appears on tracing boards, the illustrated teaching aids used in lodge ritual, and on the walls and ceilings of lodge rooms.

The Masonic version often omits the triangle and shows just the eye surrounded by rays, or replaces the triangle with clouds. The Christian version almost always keeps the triangle. The difference is a reliable way to tell which tradition a given image comes from, though the two have been confused so thoroughly in popular culture that the distinction is now invisible to most viewers.

The Great Seal

On 20 June 1782, the Continental Congress adopted the Great Seal of the United States. The reverse side shows an unfinished pyramid of thirteen courses, representing the thirteen original states, with the Eye of Providence floating above it inside a triangle. Above the eye runs the Latin motto Annuit Coeptis: “He has favored our undertakings.” Below the pyramid: Novus Ordo Seclorum, “A new order of the ages.”

Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress who finalized the design, was not a Freemason. Benjamin Franklin, the only Mason on the first design committee in 1776, had proposed a completely different image: Moses parting the Red Sea. His design was rejected. The eye was introduced by Pierre Eugène du Simitière, a Swiss-born artist and antiquarian living in Philadelphia, also not a Mason. William Barton, the heraldry expert who contributed to the third and final design committee, was not a Mason either.

The seal’s reverse sat unused on official documents for over a century. In 1935, Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace noticed the design and showed it to President Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt, himself a 32nd-degree Mason, ordered it placed on the one-dollar bill. The combination of Roosevelt’s Masonic membership and the eye’s presence on the currency has fueled conspiracy theories ever since, despite the fact that the symbol’s path to the seal had nothing to do with Freemasonry.

Every American who carries a dollar bill carries the Eye of Providence in their pocket. Most assume it is a Masonic symbol. It is a Christian one, placed on the seal by non-Masons, put on the currency by a Mason who liked the way it looked.

Related reading

• Square and Compasses. The Masonic emblem that is actually Masonic in origin.
• Eye of Horus. The Egyptian protective eye that is sometimes confused with the Eye of Providence but has an entirely separate history.
• The Freemason Origin Myth. The lodge tradition that adopted the All-Seeing Eye without inventing it.

Sources

Bibliography. The same list is held in the article’s frontmatter for the citation tools that read it programmatically.

• Jacopo Pontormo, Supper at Emmaus (1525, Uffizi Gallery) — early example of the eye-in-triangle in Christian painting
• Thomas Smith Webb, The Freemason’s Monitor (1797) — codifies the All-Seeing Eye as a Masonic symbol
• Charles Thomson, design notes for the Great Seal of the United States (1782) — placement of the eye atop the pyramid
• Journals of the Continental Congress (1782) — official adoption of the Great Seal design