All-Seeing Eye

All-Seeing Eye. This is naturally a symbol of watchfulness, having the connotation both of solicitude and of detection. Thus, it has the idea of assurance to the good and true, but vengeance to the evil. Hence, it is a symbol of omnipresence and watchfulness of the Supreme Being. ”The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3). It is a very old symbol and was used by the Egyptians to represent Osiris. In Preston’s Lecture of the Master Mason degree, the following appears: ”The Sword, pointing to a Naked Heart, demonstrates that justice will sooner or later overtake us; and, although our thoughts, words, and actions may be hidden from the eyes of man, yet that All-Seeing Eye, whom the Sun, Moon, and Stars obey, and under whose watchful care, even the Comets perform their stupendous revolutions, pervades the inmost recesses of the human Heart, and will reward us according to our merits.”

Macoy Collector's Note: Tracing the All-Seeing Eye back to Preston's 1772 lectures, Coil identifies the core Masonic doctrine of Divine watchfulness and moral accountability.