The All-seeing Eye in the Pyramid

Recently, my brother visited the Benedictine Monastery in Australia, at New Norcia – Norcia in Italy being where St Benedict, the founder of the Bendictine system, was born in 480 C.E. The founders of the monastery came from Italy and Spain and one of their coats of arms had an eye within a triangle.

Any symbol of an eye within a pyramidal triangle tends to get shunted into a da Vinci Code siding these days and becomes a symbol of the Freemasons and Illuminati. However, research on the web reveals an interesting story of the All-Seeing Eye or Eye of Providence.

 

The Eye has become associated with Egyptian-style pyramids through (a) the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States and (b) the conflation of the Egyptian’s Eye of Horus and their building of pyramids (with something inside).

 

 

In the heraldic version the eye is within an equilateral triangle from which rays emerge from each side of the triangle. [Neither the Great Seal or the Great Pyramid are equilateral]

 

An all-seeing eye that appears
on the tower of Aachen Cathedral
[see Wikipedia reference below, all pictures from Wikipedia]

The earliest we find the Eye of Providence within a triangle is the Palatine Chapel, Aachen Cathedral, built 786 CE by the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne. Interestingly, it looks more like the outline of the Great Pyramid than an equilateral form.  Wikipedia also provides an alchemical woodcut of the Eye-in-the-sky.

Given the emergence of Freemasonry, from the period in which alchemy was a precursor to Science , then it is to be expected as a powerful symbol, carried forward, of the Great Architect. Alchemy itself was possibly so named after Egypt, another connection, as it was the nearest of the ancient cultures with renowned lost knowledge and indelible monuments. It is hard not to see the sun god when the rays are attached unless the rays are emanations of the divine rather than illuminations from the celestial.

 

Also of interest is the famous third eye of Shiva, the Ajna chakra sited in the forehead, since the triangular motif is ideal for the expression of the third eye, itself an all-seeing eye and possibly the subject of initiatory transmission - representing a human capacity to see the truth, psychologically projected outwards into a vengeful eye that sees and notes our sins.

This is exactly the situation remarked on in Sacred Number where a symbol of something genuine cannot be supported by the culture at large and becomes degenerate, even contradictory, with respect to its original meaning. For instance, this "eye in the triangle" is often interpreted as representing the Holy Trinity; and should any Christian sect not fully sign up to this as a doctrine, their destruction as heretics soon followed.

This gives us a concept of an all-controlling eye that is not a million miles away from the information society we actually have today and leading to natural anxieties concerning the abuse of information as power.

The actual pyramid on the Great Seal is not like the Great Pyramid but is sharper than both an equilateral triangle and the Pyramid, at the apex.  The organisation of the boulevards north of the White House (see chapter 10 of Sacred Number) do form an equilateral triangle though; the simple explanation could be that the White House was the "all-seeing eye" built on the "thirteen layers of masonry" that represent the original thirteen states of the Union within a Seal that was in fact drawn according to artistic criteria.

 

The prime number 13 is the lowest prime number not used within ancient metrology, which describes the Earth using only 2, 3, 5, 7, & 11 (see Chapter 3 of Sacred Number). Seven, eleven, thirteen and the higher primes are excluded from conventional musical harmony.

 

Thirteen manifests primarily in the Sky as Venus, Venus having an orbital period 8/13 of a solar years [i.e. of Earth's orbit]. Venus also leads, through its synod and 8/5,  to the Pentagon (see previous postings).  It strains credibility to think that thirteen founding states would have been arranged deliberately to represent Venus?

 

Thirteen manifests in myth as Jesus plus twelve disciples [or as thirteen disciples including Madgalene] and King Arthur plus twelve knights but the same caveat concerning credulity must surely apply. However one might expect fortuitous resonances of number to be selected and amplified when founding a new nation, if celestial symbolism was important to the founders.

Update on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at 12:20PM by Richard Heath

Readers of Matrix of Creation will perhaps be familiar with the very sharp style pyramid used in the Great Seal: it is very like the "phi squared" pyramid found between the inner and outer solar system (page 123). The Great Pyramid has a rising angle of phi, the Golden Mean or Section which equals 1.618 to three decimals, its cosine, whilst it is quite possible for a pyramid to have a slope angle base to hypotenuse of 2.618.

Matrix of Creation, figure 9.8

The slope angle is 67.544^o and so it looks a little like the top of an upward facing pentagon, whose slope is 72^o as to the left, in which the phi relations of the pentagon are shown.

Sacred Number, figure 1.7

 The angle of the Great Seal Pyramid is between 67 and 68 degrees on the depiction with slight parallax, and it appears therefore to be modelled on a phi squared design.

The direct inspiration of the sharp pyramid within the Great Seal might be an illustration found in John Greaves' work Pyramidographia, easily available to the seal designers.  He produced an impressive picture of the Great Pyramid alongside a picture of the third pyramid at Giza, below. This can be found in the online pdf called Measurer of All Things: John Greaves (1602-1652), the Great Pyramid,and Early Modern Metrology by Zur Shalev

 

Figure 2: exterior of the third Pyramid, J. Greaves, Pyramidographia
(London, 1646), 110. With permission, Princeton University Library.

In comparison to this impressive image [of the Great Pyramid] the illustrations of the three pyramids’ exteriors are disappointing, following the conventional steep form influenced by Cestius’s Pyramid in Rome, and being uninformative in terms of texture and detail (figure 2).

In other words, it is ancient Rome that built a real pyramid most like that of the Great Seal. According to the above web page, the pyramid was 36.81 metres high and 29.5 wide making the slope angle 68.163 degrees.  Whereas it was the Holy Roman Empire had the all seeing eye within a pyramid, but in the style of the Great Pyramid. Wikipedia gives dimensions 27 metres high by 22 square yielding a slope angle of 67.833 degrees.

 

The above etching showing the pyramid, next to the Appian Way, was a likely inspiration for the Great Seal then combined with the concept of the all-seeing eye, which is also then like the missing top of the Great Pyramid. It is also true that this shape exists at the top of the eventual design of the Washington Monument although then the shape is that found on top of the obelisks of ancient Egypt, many of which were plundered by Rome, the Empire and the Church, and the capitals of the old world including London and Paris. To learn more one should consult the definitive work on obelisks, including the Washington National Monument, The Magic of Obelisks by Thompkins.