Category: American Iconography

• Pyramid of the Great Seal

  The Pyramid of the Great Seal theory held that the reverse design of the Great Seal of the United States—especially the unfinished pyramid and the Eye of Providence—was shaping public consciousness before most Americans ever saw it on paper currency. In this theory, the symbol was allegedly being projected through Masonic ceremonial lighting, lodge displays, or illuminated public tableaux long before the reverse of the seal appeared on the one-dollar bill in 1935. The theory drew strength from the fact that the Great Seal’s reverse existed officially from the eighteenth century while remaining comparatively obscure in everyday life for long periods. The conspiracy version transformed that obscurity into hidden preparation, claiming that elite symbolic networks were teaching the public to accept the eye and pyramid before the state openly printed it into common circulation.