Guide
The All Seeing Eye
· 2 minute read
The All Seeing Eye is the Masonic symbol most people think they know, and the one most often explained wrongly. In the lodge it is a simple figure. An eye, usually in a radiant triangle or a burst of light, reminds a brother that the Supreme Being observes his thoughts and actions, however secret he believes them to be. It is a call to conduct, not a claim to surveillance.
Where it came from
The eye as a figure of God's watchfulness is Christian art, centuries older than any lodge. Painters put an eye in a triangle above altars to stand for the Trinity and Providence long before 1717, when the first Grand Lodge was formed in London. Masonic writers adopted it in the second half of the eighteenth century, and by the early nineteenth it was standard on aprons, tracing boards and lodge certificates, which is where the engraved style of our Archives plates comes from.
The dollar bill
The eye above the pyramid on the Great Seal of the United States, printed on the back of the one dollar bill since 1935, is the source of most of the confusion. The seal was designed between 1776 and 1782 by three committees. The eye was suggested by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, an artist who was not a Mason, and the final design was drawn by Charles Thomson and William Barton, who were not Masons either. Of all the men who worked on the seal, only Benjamin Franklin was a Mason, and his committee's design was not the one adopted.
The eye reached the seal and the lodge from the same older source, and neither took it from the other. That is the whole story, and it is less interesting than the one the internet prefers.
In the lodge today
The eye appears on Master's chairs, on the ceiling of many lodge rooms, on certificates and on the jewels of some officers. It is never the central emblem of the fraternity, which is the square and compasses, and it belongs to no one degree. It is a reminder that hangs over all of them.
In our designs
The All Seeing Eye plate in the Archives collection puts the eye in its radiant triangle above the square and compasses, with an anatomical study of the eye and engraved cloud in the margins. The Hidden Hand plate draws the conspiracy legend on purpose, with a straight face, for brethren who have heard it once too often.
Questions
- What does the All Seeing Eye mean in Freemasonry?
- It is a reminder that the Supreme Being observes a Mason's thoughts and actions, however hidden he believes them to be. It is a figure of conscience, borrowed from Christian art older than the fraternity.
- Is the eye on the dollar bill Masonic?
- No. The eye on the Great Seal was proposed by an artist who was not a Mason and drawn by designers who were not Masons. Both the seal and the lodge took the figure from older religious art.
