Sight and Insight: A Contribution Toward An Iconography of the Eye

Abstract

The eye is the bridge between outer and inner reality. To the artist it is the mirror of external reality, and to the poet it is the mirror of the soul. The open eye is symbolic of life and intelligence and, closed, of sleep and death. It is a symbol of the sun and, in some religions, of God. The first act after death is to close the eyes of the deceased. Though rooted in ancient fears of the evil eye, this gesture symbolically shuts the windows of the soul. In the process of individuation primitive man gradually impressed his own image upon nature. Self-discovery, which came earlier than the discovery of nature, led him to identify her mysterious forces with human characteristics. In this process the seeing eye of man was pro jected into the sky to become the all-seeing eye of God. By a leap of symbolic thinking, the sun, the pre-eminent eye of the sky, was assigned human properties and thus became one of the visual symbols of the power of God. As early as the Pyramid texts, the eyes of Horus represented the sun and the moon, his white right eye the sun, and his black left eye, the moon.1 In Iranian mythology, Mithra is the ruler of the day sky and the watcher of everything upon the world. He is the Heavenly and represents heat and life. This Persian Lord of Light was worshipped by Roman soldiers as the Invincible Sun.2 Hindu phi losophy also demonstrates clearly the process of identification of the human eye with the sun, the celestial eye. Discussing the creation of the four worlds by the cosmic person (Brahma), the Aitareya Upani shad states, Eyes were separated out; from the eyes, sight [caksus];

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