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:
“... it is seldom a medical man has true religious views—there is too much pride of intellect.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Yet the New Testament treats of man and man’s so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man’s religious or moral nature, or in man even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)