Religious Use
Imagery of an all-seeing eye can be traced back to Egyptian mythology and the Eye of Horus. It also appears in Buddhism, where Buddha is also regularly referred to as the "Eye of the World" throughout Buddhist scriptures (e.g. Mahaparinibbana Sutta). It is also used to depict the image of God in Caodaism.
In Medieval and Renaissance European iconography, the Eye (often with the addition of an enclosing triangle) was an explicit image of the Christian Trinity. Seventeenth-century depictions of the Eye of Providence sometimes show it surrounded by clouds or sunbursts.
Read more about this topic: Eye Of Providence
Famous quotes containing the word religious:
“The religious inebriation of big cities.—Pantheism.
I am everyone; everyone is me.
Whirlwind.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.”
—William James (1842–1910)