The Evil Eye
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THE EVIL EYE
The evil eye is the name for a sickness transmitted -- usually
without intention -- by someone who is envious, jealous, or covetous. It is also called
the invidious eye and the envious eye. In Hebrew it is ayin ha'ra (the evil eye),
which in Yiddish is variously spelled ayin horoh, ayin hora, or
ayen hara. In mainland Italian it is mal occhio (the bad eye) and
in Spanish mal ojo or el ojo (the bad eye or just the eye). In Sicily it is
jettatore (the projection [from the eye]) and in Farsi it is
bla band (the eye of evil).
The evil eye belief is that a person -- otherwise not malific
in any way -- can harm you, your children, your livestock, or your fruit
trees, by *looking at them* with envy and praising them. The word "evil"
is unfortunate in this context because it implies that someone has "cursed" the victim, but
such is not the case. A better understanding of the term "evil eye" is
gained if you know that the old British and Scottish word for it is
"overlooking," which implies merely that the gaze has remained too long upon
the coveted object, person, or animal.
In other words, the effect of the evil eye is misfortunate,
but the person who harbours jealousy and gives the evil eye
is not necessarily an evil person per se.
This lengthy article has been subdivided into several sections:
DISTRIBUTION AND HISTORY of the Evil Eye Belief
VERBAL AND PHYSICAL AVERSION of the Evil Eye
DIAGNOSING AND CURING the Evil Eye
CASE HISTORIES of Evil Eye Customs Along the Texas-Mexico Border
APOTROPAIC CHARMS Against the Evil Eye
A WORLD-WIDE SUMMARY of Evil Eye Beliefs
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY and Credits
To save loading time, further commentary and illustrations on
the highlighted charms and amulets appear on linked pages.
DISTRIBUTION AND HISTORY OF THE EVIL EYE BELIEF
Many books have been written about the evil eye. The classic 19th
century text is "The Evil Eye: The Origins and Practices of
Superstition" by Frederick Thomas Elworthy. A short popular survey is
"Terrors of the Evil Eye Exposed"
(reprinted as "Protection from Evil") by Henri Gamache. The most
thought-provoking academic essay i have found on the psychology
and the distribution of this belief in world
cultures is "Wet and Dry: The Evil Eye" by Professor Alan Dundes,
who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. The
article can be found in two of his books, "Interpreting Folklore" and
"The Evil Eye: A Casebook," the latter a collection
of scholarly writings assembled
as a text for his anthropology-folklore students.
Dundes theorizes that the evil eye,
which has a Middle-Eastern, Mediterranean, and Indo-European
distribution pattern and was unknown in the Americas, Pacific
Islands, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa or Australia until the
introduction of European culture, is based upon underlying
beliefs about water equating to life and dryness equating to
death. He posits that the true "evil" done by the evil eye is
that it causes living beings to "dry up" -- notably babies, milking animals,
young fruit trees, and nursing mothers. The harm caused by
overlooking consists of sudden vomiting or diarrhoea in
children, drying up of milk in nursing mothers or livestock,
withering of fruit on orchard trees, and loss of potency in men.
In short, the envious eye "dries up liquids," according to
Professor Alan Dundes -- a fact that he contends demonstrates its
Middle Eastern desert
origins.
As Dundes points out in support of this theory, evil eye belief
is geographically spread out in a radiating ring from ancient
Sumer, where it apparently got its start. It is
mentioned the Torah (the Old Testament of the Bible) and
its existence is acknowledged by modern Arabs, Jews, and Christians.
The belief extends eastward to India,
westward to Spain and Portugal, northward to Scandinavia and Britain, and
southward into North Africa. Although many people of European
descent think it is universal, in fact China has no evil eye
belief -- nor does Korea, Burma, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand,
Sumatra, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Japan, Australia (aborigine),
New Zealand (aborigine), North America (native), South America
(native), or any of Africa south of the Sahara. It is generally
referred to by scholars as a Semitic and Indo-European belief. The
Westernmost pre-Columbian outpost of evil eye belief was along
the Atlantic coast -- Ireland, England, Scotland, Spain,
Portugal, and France; the easternmost pre-Columbian outpost of evil eye belief was India.
The epicenter of
currently active evil eye belief is in nations along the
Mediterranean and Aegean shores, plus India and the South
American countries most influenced by Spanish conquest. It is now
a fairly widespread belief among indigenous people in Latin
America. Colonialists also spread it to North America, Australia,
and New Zealand.
Although it was not a part of the belief-system
of sub-Saharan Africans, slaves brought to the New World
picked up the evil eye belief from contact with Europeans. In
mid-20th century America, "Terrors of the Evil Eye
Exposed" by the popular occultist Henri Gamache (author
of the better-known "Master Book of
Candle-Burning"), was extensively marketed to
African-Americans. As with the similarly Jewish-inspired booklet "Secrets of the Psalms" by
Godfrey Selig, the Middle-Eastern and Indian folklore Gamache
"exposed" was syncretized into African-American hoodoo practices.
Almost everywhere that the evil eye belief exists, its effects are said
to occur as an inadvertent side-effect of envy or praise. A
typical account of such a mishap might be: "I dressed the baby in new
clothes and took him to town and a woman who has no children saw him and
said, 'Oh, what a pretty child!' and as soon as we got home he began to
vomit!" The "evil" in these accounts of the evil eye indicate that it is thought
to be situational in nature and that it is caused by a failure to restrain envy
within proper social bounds.
Mentions of the evil eye (ayin ha'ra) in the Bible clearly refer to the role
that envy and covetousness play in its development.
We can read in Proverbs 23:6 "Eat thou not the bread of him that hath
an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meat" and likewise in
Provers 28:22, "He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, and
considereth not that poverty shall come upon him."
Then over in Mark 7:21-22, we see that the early Jewish Christians believed
in ayin ha'ra, for it is written there that when Jesus Christ
lectured about defilement, he told his followers that ayin
ha'ra comes forth from a man and defiles him just the same as if he had
committed a physical crime: "From within, out of the heart of men,
proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts,
covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy,
pride, foolishness."
There is a great deal of attention paid to protecting babies from
ayin ha'ra among Jews, and red threads are commonly employed for
this purpose. Furthermore, in keeping with Professor Dundes'
theory that the evil eye is related to dryness or a loss of
fluids, it is interesting to note that Jewish folk belief holds
that fishes are immune to ayin ha'ra "because they are covered
with water," and that the descendents of a certain man named
Yosef Tzaddik (literally Joseph the Righteous, but
also a pun with Tzaddi or Fish-Hook) are immune to the effects of
the evil eye because he was not jealous -- and coincidentally, his
name relates to fishes.
Jewish belief in the evil eye has resulted in certain community
safeguards to prevent it occurring. For instance, rather than
taking a census and thus opening some people to jealousy because
they have large families, it was long the custom for each person
to simply pay a sheckel (a small coin) to the census taker and
let the coins be counted rather than peoples' names written down, to
avoid damage from ayin ha'ra. The best month for taking such a coin-census
was said to be the month of Adar, which is associated with fishes
and the Zodiacal sign of Pisces (The Fishes)
-- because "fishes are immune to ayin ha'ra."
Preventing jealousy over the size of a family is also at the root
of another Jewish custom, that of not allowing a father and son
to be called successively to the reading of the Torah in
Synagogue. A reason commonly used to explain this custom is that
"an orphan in the congregation who has lost his father, or a
father who has lost his son, may be reminded of his loss and feel
jealousy and give ayin ha'ra." One exception to this custom is
made during the month of Adar (Pisces or the Fishes)
when, during the Feast of Purim, the Scroll of Esther
(Megillat Esther in Hebrew) is read in its lengthy entirety (the whole
megillah!) -- and not once, but twice, which is such a
superfluity of Torah reading that everyone gets a turn and no
jealousy will be engendered, and even if someone did get jealous, the
event would occur in the month of Adar and "fishes are immune to
ayin ha'ra."
Some Jews abjure the notion of ayin ha'ra as "superstition"
yet explain it in theological terms, saying, "When someone is jealous,
he makes a complaint that is heard by God, and if the person who is
being complained against is proud or ungenerous, then God judges him
and lowers him."
Only in Sicily and Southern Italy is it believed that some people can DELIBERATELY cast the
evil eye on others. There the regionally idiosyncratic belief is that certain people
(including at least one former Pope) are born with the evil eye and
"project" it involuntarily. Such people are called jettatores
("projectors") and their specific form of evil eye is called jettatura
("projection") in contradistinction to the garden variety of envious or
praising evil eye, which in Italian is called mal occhio ("bad eye").
Jettatores are not necessarily evil or envious people, according to this
belief system, and they are often represented as being saddened and
embarrassed by the harm they cause.
In the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean region, especially throughout
Greece and up into Turkey, there is a strong tendency to view blue-eyed
people as bearers of the evil eye -- probably because few locally-born
people have blue eyes and those who do show up, such as tourists, are
given to praising and cooing over babies, who are thought to be most at
risk from the eye.
VERBALLY AND PHYSICALLY AVERTING THE EVIL EYE
Because the evil eye is a specific form of evil, the protective charms and
spells that have developed around it are also quite specific in nature.
In some countries, if a person feels moved to praise a child,
fruit tree, or dairy animal, he or she follows the praise by
spitting, under the mother's or owner's approving gaze, to remove the taint
of the praise. In other areas, praise of a child can be
safely mediated by immediately touching the child, to "take off the
eye." If the praiser fails to follow these protocols, the mother may
invoke religious aid by uttering a formulaic prayer to obviate the
possibility of an evil eye incident, or she may speak ill of
the child to counter the damage caused by the praise.
It is important to understand that the person who praises the child is
not evil per se, unless envy of the mother's good fortune in having such
a lovely child is considered evil. In some cultures attuned to evil eye
belief, when someone praises a child, he or she IMMEDIATELY de-fuses the
threat by touching the child or spitting on it (notice that this is the
application of a liquid to counteract the dehydration caused by the evil
eye). In other cultures, any child taken to public places is smeared
or daubed with a little dirt and a bystander can then safely praise the
child by using the formula, "Oh, the child is so pretty -- too bad he
has dirt on him" -- or if the praise is not thus de-fused, the mother
can respond, "He is so dirty right now!"
In Italy, the evil eye is said to affect men as well as children,
nursing mothers, fruit trees, and dairy animals. It brings on
impotence, through a drying up of the semen. Typical protective
aversions of this problem include making the gestures called the
mano fico ("fig hand") and the mano cornuto ("horned hand").
Mano cornuto is a gesture in
which the middle and ring fingers are held down by the thumb and
the index and little fingers are extended outward like horns. Among some people this
is the sign of a cuckholded man, but it is also widely used as a
protective gesture against impotency. The mano cornuto is familiar to
Americans who read comic books as the gesture Dr. Strange makes
when he casts a spell and
the gesture Spider-Man makes when he "thwips" web fluid from his
wrists. (The popular artist Steve Ditko was responsible for the
design of both of these characters, and some comics fans refer to
the mano cornuto as "the Steve Ditko
hand gesture.")
Mano fico is a hand gesture in
which the thumb is inserted between the index and middle finger.
It means literally means "fig hand" in Italian, but "fica" or fig
is a common slang term for the female genitals, so the mano fico is a representation of
the sex act (with the thumb as phallus).
Jews may spit threee times or say "peh-peh-peh", throw salt, or mutter
"kein ayin hara" ("no evil eye") when they feel threatened by the evil eye. They may also
make a particular hand gesture, placing the right thumb in the left palm and
the left thumb in the right palm and closing their fingers over the thumbs. As with the Italian mano fico gesture, the
implication is that of a penis in a vagina; the
magical protection
of male sexual potency from dehydration through appeal to
the female's moist genitalia for aid.
In Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, Moslem people combine an aporopaic approach with
a cure. When a child returns home after taken out among strangers, the parents
will light a charcoal disk and burn on it the seeds
of a plant called Aspand, while
reciting a spell -- actually an ancient
Zoroastrian prayer --
against the evil eye and directing the smoke around the child.
This is done as a prophylactic measure, whether
or not it is suspected that the child has been given the eye. In some families it
is the cuustom to mingle herb leaves and Frankincense grains
with the Aspand to make
a more powerful fumigant mixture.
DIAGNOSING AND CURING THE EVIL EYE
A mother takes her little toddler to town and someone sees the
child and says, "Oh, how pretty she looks! She is just adorable." The
admiring person may gaze overlong at the child. If the mother does not
take an immediate pre-emptive step -- spitting onto the child, denying
before God that the baby is attractive, or asking the person who praises the child to
touch her or spit on her -- the evil eye then begins to operate. By the
time the mother and child get home, the child is sick to her stomache
and crying. She is flushed, sweaty, and may have diarrhoea. Soon she
becomes dehydrated and may be very ill indeed. The mother takes
her to a conventional doctor, but "nothing can be done." She finally
calls in a local healer -- usually an older woman -- who
diagnoses the true cause of the problem and then performs the cure.
Sometime the
evil eye is diagnosed from the circumstances: the child
was well in the morning, was praised or
gazed upon, began sweating and vomiting and the cause is clear.
But most often the diagnosis and cure involve a complex series of
rituals, which vary by culture. Water, oil, and melted wax -- liquids -- may
play a part, or the ritual may center on an eye-shaped and liquid-filled natural
object, the egg. Cures, when effected, are usually said to be
dramatic, almost instantaneous.
In Eastern Europe, the evil eye is diagnosed by dropping
charcoal, coal, or burnt match heads into a pan of water. If the coals
float, the child has been
given the evil eye.
In the Ukraine, melted wax may be dripped into holy water to diagnose spiritual diseases. If it splatters or sticks to
the side of the bowl, the patient is suffering from the evil eye.
Secret prayers known only to women are recited and the holy water is used to bathe the victim.
The wax is reheated and this time when it is poured into the
water, it sinks to the bottom in a solid lump, indicating that a
cure has taken place.
In Greece, Mexico, and other places, holy water is
given to the child to drink and/or drawn on the child in the form of a
cross. If the remorseful perpetrator can be made to spit into
the water before the child drinks it, so much the better. In
order to avoid direct accusations of having caused such a
calamity, a family member may stand outside the church when the
supposed perpetrator attends and ask all who pass by to spit into
a cup of holy water, thus embarrassing no one.
In Italy, diagnosis is made by dripping olive
oil into a basin of water, a drop at a time, while reciting secret prayers, passed
only among females in a family. If the drops run
together in the form of an eye, the evil eye is the cause of the
illness. The cure consists of reciting prayers while dripping oil into the basin
of water again and again -- sometimes for hours -- until a
perfect array of oil forms that does not resemble an eye.
In Mexico, both
diagnosis and cure are often accomplished with whole uncooked hen's eggs.
An egg is rolled across the child's body or placed beneath the bed and
then cracked open. If it is "hard" or "looks like an eye" then
the evil eye has caused the child's illness.
AN ORAL HISTORY OF EVIL EYE CUSTOMS ALONG THE TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER
The following collection of evil eye stories was made by
Soledad Perez among "the Mexican people of Austin, Texas" in the
fall and spring of 1948 and 1949. The commentary is hers as well.
This material appears in "The Healer of Los Olmas and Other
Mexican Lore."
EVIL EYE
The evil eye is an ailment common among small children.
It is believed that it is caused by excessive affection. If
a woman or a man sees a child with physical attributes which
he admires, he must touch the child and invoke God's
protection so that the baby will not suffer from the evil
eye.
Children seem to be most susceptible to this ailment,
although adults may suffer from it occasionally. Babies suffer
the direst consequences. They have a very high fever, a lack
of appetite and sleep, and usually a swelling on some part
of the body. So if a woman casts an evil eye on a child's
hand, it will be swollen and red.
In most instances, the cure for evil eye is simple. It
consists in passing an unbroken egg over the face and body
of the victim, sweeping him, or transferring three mouthfuls
of water from the mouth of the person casting the evil eye
to the mouth of the victim.
After the cure, precautions must be taken in the disposal
of the egg or eggs used. They must be thrown out in a
shady place or buried. If the sun's rays strike them, the evil
eye will attack the victim anew. (For evil eye cf. D2071 and
D2064.4 in Thompson's Motif-lndex.)
EVIL EYE (1)
When a person suffers from the evil eye, he says, "I was
given the eye." To cure this an unbroken egg is passed over
his face. Afterwards, the egg is broken in a saucer, and it
is placed under the bed.
Another remedy is to find the person who cast the evil
eye and force this person to give the victim three mouthfuls
of water.
In order to decide whether a person is suffering from the
evil eye, the egg placed under the bed must be examined
after the cure has been administered. If a white membraneous film
appears over the egg, it means that the person who gave the evil
eye is a man. If only an eye appears on the egg, it means that
the person who cast the evil eye is a woman."
(Informant 3.)
EVIL EYE (2)
When Chita was small, I took her down town on one
occasion. She was a pretty little girl, and people admired
her. While I was standing at the counter of one of the de-
partment stores, a little Mexican woman approached me
and wanted to touch Chita. She said, "What a pretty baby!
Won't you let me touch her hair and eyes?"
I didn't like for people to be touching the baby; so I said,
"No, please don't touch her!"
The little woman left, and I didn't believe in the evil
eye; so I thought no more about it.
The next day Chita became ill. She had a very high fever
and was flushed and uneasy. I called the doctor. He came
and looked at her. Two or three days went by, and Chita
didn't improve. She just seemed to get worse. We went from
one doctor to another, but it didn't do any good.
Finally one day my comadre Mrs. Ramos came over, and
she looked at Chita and said, "This child is suffering from
the evil eye. I can cure her if you will let me try."
I told her to go ahead; and she did. She asked for two
eggs and a cup. One of the eggs she passed over Chita's
whole face. Then she took the egg, broke it, put it in a cup
stirred it, and made a cross with some of it on Chita's
forehead. While doing this she pronounced several prayers. The
other egg she placed on the mantelpiece in the living room
and asked that no one touch it.
The next day Mrs. Ramos came back. Chita's fever was
gone, and you could tell that she was better. Mrs. Ramos
then took the egg from the mantelpiece and broke it. If I
hadn't been there, I wouldn't believe it, but my husband
and I both saw it. The egg looked as if it were hard-boiled.
Mrs. Ramos said, "Chita will get well now. The evil eye
has gone into the egg; that's why it looks like this."
Chita got well.
(Informant l.)
EVIL EYE (3)
In my home, whenever anyone became ill my aunt was
called.
On one occasion it was believed that my little brother
had the evil eye. My aunt came and passed an unbroken
egg over my little brother's face. Then she broke the egg,
and taking some of it, she made a cross on his forehead.
After that she said several prayers and swept my brother
from head to foot. She took another egg, broke it, put it
in a saucer, and left it under the bed. Later, when my aunt
took the egg out from under the bed, she said that she could
tell my brother had been suffering from the evil eye because
an eye had formed in the egg.
(Informant 17.)
Both Perez's introduction and the second collected story accord
with the notion that *touching*
the child dispels the eye or prevents it from being cast. In
story #2, the mother all but admits that it was her mistake in
not letting the admiring woman *touch* her daughter that led to
the child coming down with the evil eye.
APOTROPAIC CHARMS AGAINST THE EVIL EYE
A mother whose child has once been struck by the evil eye will
soon take the advice of the other women in her community and
acquire an amulet for the child to wear to repel the evil eye in
the future. This sort of charm is called a repellent talisman or apotropaic charm.
The design of these charms varies from one area to another. The simplests are
threads or cords, often red. More conspicuous
are the amulets, often in the form of an
eye, a
hand,
a horseshoe,
or a combinations of two elements, such as the popular
eye-in-hand
and
horseshoe-and-eyes.
There are other, locally popular charms as well that derive from
other iconographic and symbolic sources.
In Greece and Turkey, the most common form of apotropaic charm is
the blue glass eye charm, which "mirrors back" the blue of the
evil eye and thus "confounds" it. Turks make beautiful blue blown
glass charms in the all-seeing
eye and eye-in-hand patterns, as
well as in regionally-specific forms i call the horseshoe-and-eyes and eyes-all-over styles.
Modern Turkish women -- and Americans who like the "look" -- wear jewelry-quality
sterling silver evil eye bracelets,
made not only in the traditional shades of blue, but in ultra-hip fahiona colours.
For a further
account of some Turkish charms designed along these lines see the
web page called "Your Name On Rice," in which i
describe meeting a Turk who made and sold blue blown
glass eye-charms on the streets of Berkeley,
California.
Among the ancient Egyptians the eye of the god Horus, called the
wadjet or udjat eye, was worn for
magical protection.
Although found in
many materials, by far the most numerous are those made of blue-glazed
faience or steatite.
In the Middle East, turquoise blue faience beads ("donkey
beads") are used to protect livestock from the evil eye. These beads
can be seen dangling from a modern Egyptian luck-bringing and apotropaic blue glazed wall plaque in the form
of a horseshoe, made in Egypt.
In India, cord charms strung with a
blue bead are placed on newborn babies; when the cord decays and
breaks and the blue bead is lost, the child is considered old enough to have escaped the
dangers of the evil eye.
Among the Kalbeliya Gypsies of India (the tribe from whom the European
or "Bohemian" Gypsies are descended), the "mirroring back" of the evil eye
takes the literal form of fabulously ornate multi-coloured
mirror charms which are
crocheted, braided, and wrapped with beads, buttons, and tassles. The practice of croocheting hundreds of tiny
mirrors into fancy cloth -- especially wedding garment cloth -- is also
widespread in parts of India.
In Nepal, where a hybrid form of religion called Tibetan Buddhism combines elements
of the old animist beliefs with reverence for
Gautama Buddha,
a wonderful amulet called the eye of Buddha
is worn to reflect back the evil eye.
In contemporary U.S. novelty
catalogues, one can see advertisements for a so-called "eerie eye charm"
which is a life-like blue eye set in an eyelid-shaped bezel.
In addition to blue bead eye-charms, numerous other eye-design
and hand-design amulets are used to repel the evil eye.
One of the oldest forms of hand-talisman is the Roman hand of power, a bronze votary
of a hand covered with symbolic images that was kept on the
home altar to protect and bless the entire family.
In countries where Catholicism is the dominant religion,
a Christianized version of
the Roman hand of power is given traits of the eye-in-hand and the resultant image is called "the Most Powerful Hand of God" or mano
poderosa.. In this apotropaic charm -- usually carried on the person
in the form of a holy card or, as in Peru, as a protective package amulet, the symbolic
images that cover the hand have been replaced by saints and a
gaping crucifixion wound represents the eye in the palm.
In India, Israel, and the Arab countries the eye-in-hand charm is common. It
may be carved of bone or cast in metal, with an engraved image of
an eye in the palm or a cabachon-cut stone standing in for the eye.
The Middle East is home to the hamsa hand or hamesh hand charm
(also known as the hand of Fatima among Arabs and the Hand of Miriam among Jews).
This hand-shaped apotropaic charm may be cast in metal and worn as
jewelry, but larger ones, inscribed with prayers of
magical protection are
often made of blue-glazed ceramics and hung on a wall.
In North Africa, a
cabachon cut eye-agate
stone may be used in conjunction with the hamsa hand design.
In America and England, jewelry-quality chams have been made from
cat's eye shells.
The eye-like shells are also carried in the pocket for personal
magical protection.
In Sicily a lemon (a liquid-filled, eye-shaped fruit) may be
pierced with nine nails and placed above doorway to prevent a
jettatore from entering.
In Naples a piece of the rue plant (which has eye-shaped fruits and a strongly repellant odour) may be pinned
to the clothes or a silver charm made to vaguely resemble the plant,
and called a cimaruta ("sprig of
rue") may be worn as a necklace.
Red is another color employed against the eye, mostly in regions where blue is not used:
Red cords around the neck or wrist protect babies
in eastern Europe and also in India. Likewise it is an old Jewish
custom to place a red thread on a baby to protect it from ayin ha'ra.
In Mexico a large brown legume
seed that resembles an eye, called ojo de venado ("deer's eye"), is
hung from a red cord and outfitted with a fluffy red tassel and a
holy print of a saint. It can be worn on the person, hung over
the baby's crib, or dangled from the rear-view mirror of a car
to ward off the evil eye.
In Italy, when a man's potency is threatened by the evil eye,
gold or silver hand charms making the mano
fico ("fig hand") and mano
cornuta ("horned hand") gesture are used to repel the
evil. These amulets are usually carved
of blood red coral, and sometimes found in silver or gold.
They are worn as necklaces, watch fobs, and pocket pieces by
men and boys.
Corno (horn) or cornicello (little horn)
is the name for an Italian amulet that looks like a long, twisted animal horn,
rather freeform in design, usually carved of blood coral, but also
found in red plastic, silver, gold, or blown glass. In America it is
called "the Italian horn." Due to its
phallic shape, it is usually only used by males.
A naturally branched piece of
red coral "twig" is sometimes
worn in place of the Italian horn
amulet, and it may be made into a pin rather
than a hanging amulet and then may be worn by a woman or girl.
Carved red coral amulets in the form of the mano
fico, the mano
cornuta , and the corno
were everywhere in Italy when i
travelled there as a child with my parents in 1957. Every town
had a jewelry store that sold them and all the men seemed to be
wearing them. I wanted one badly, but my mother explained that i
could not have one because only boys were given them to wear and
i would be breaking a cultural taboo. They are, as
she explained to me, a specific against impotence.
More recently, Italian-American women have taken to wearing
such "male" amulets as the corno ,
but now that i am collecting these
things and don't care what people
think of my interest in "men's" as well as "women's" mysteries, i
find that although tiny red coral cornicelli
can still be had (for a high price),
coral mano
fico hands are comparatively rare, due to the near
extinction of Mediterranean coral, caused by water pollution and
over-harvesting. Reproductions in pewter are sometimes found in America.
In ancient times, the moon goddess was invoked as a protectress of
babies, nursing mothers, and milk animals, so her lunar crescent was
used as an apotropaic charm. The previously mentioned North African eye-agate, crescent, blue bead, and
hamsa hand charm is an old example of this usage.
An ancient Egyptian charm that combines the protective colour red
with the protective power of a mother goddess is the so-called
buckle of Isis charm or tit amulet. In fact, this amulet
represents the menstrual pad of the goddess; it protects nursing
mothers (Isis is generally shown suckling her son Horus) and
young babies.
The use of a horseshoe to
represent the lunar crescent is also ancient. Throughout Europe
horseshoes
are nailed to doors to prevent the evil eye from
entering houses and barns. (The horseshoe charm has also acquired
a second function, to "draw" luck to the bearer just as a
horseshoe-magnet might attract
iron filings or magnetic sand.)
In the days before automobiles came into use, draft horses and
donkeys that pulled cabs and wagons in towns, where many people
might see and admire them, were protected from the evil eye by
apotropaic charms. In addition to the Middle Eastern
blue faience donkey beads
and Gypsy mirror charms
mentioned above, locally popular amulets for animals include a scrap of wolf's fur
(Naples), bells (all of Europe), images of mermaids called Sirens
(Naples), and ornamental "horse brasses," often cast in the form of a
lucky horseshoe (England).
I have dozens of examples of the above apotropaic amulets hanging on the
wainscotting of the wall to my right as i sit in my office and type, and
a few have overflowed onto the Lucky W Windowsill, where the morning
sunlight is playing upon them gently. My livestock and my child are very, very safe.
A SUMMARY OF EVIL EYE BELIEFS WORLD-WIDE
PERPETRATORS
Envious people
Those who praise children
Those who suffer from covetousness
Those with blue eyes (xenophobia among brown-eyed racial groups)
Childless women
People born with the unfortunate propensity to inadvertently project the eye
ETIOLOGY
Overlooking (old British term; means gazing too long upon coveted item or child)
Praising without touching or spitting to void the damage
Projection from eye (Sicilian term for one who gives mal occhio is jettatura,
from the same root-word as ejaculation and projection)
VICTIMS (AND SYMPTOMS)
Nursing infants (they sicken and cry; their mother's milk may dry up)
Young children (they sicken and cry; they may vomit or become listless)
Milk cows and milk goats (they dry up)
Fruit trees (they wither and die or they do not bear fruit)
Fathers and sons (orphans or fathers who have lost sons envy them)
Adult men (they become impotent)
(Note: as Prof. Dundes points out, most of these symptoms involve the loss of
FLUIDS.)
APOTROPAIC CHARMS and GESTURES
Refusal to accept praise on behalf of child
Spitting on child
Spot of soot or dirt on child so child will not look pretty
Formulaic phrases
Protective hand gestures
Eye amulets (e.g. wadjet eyes, blue-eye charms, ojo de venado)
Eye-in-hand amulets
Hand of power and powerful hand images
Hamsa hand or hand of Fatima / hand of Miriam
Eye-agate amulets or jewelry
Cat's-eye shells
Blue beads
Cord charms that decay and release a blue bead
Mirror charms
Fumigation with Aspand seeds burned on charcoal and recitation of spell
Amulets that replicate protective hand-gestures
Red thread or cord
Red coral horns and twigs
Buckle of Isis amulets
Horseshoes
Crescent-shaped objects
(Note: Some of these involve reflective imagery, others are protective.)
CURES
Olive oil dripped into water with prayer
Wax dripped into water with prayer
Coals or match heads dropped into water with prayer
Passing a whole raw egg over the face, then breaking it
Breaking an egg in a dark, shadowed place, unseen
Breaking an egg and drawing a cross on the victim's forehead
Throwing an egg into the bushes or against a tree (if tree is victim)
Placing a broken egg in dish beneath victim's bed
Piercing a lemon with iron nails
Victim drinks three sips of holy water
Victim is bathed in holy water
Victim spits at giver of evil eye three times
Water or spittle from inadvertent perpetrator is passed to mouth of victim
Collection of spittle from group (anonymous donation); victim drinks spittle in holy water
(Note: As Dundes points out, these involve use of fluids and/or eye-shaped
objects (egg, lemon) which contain fluid within them)
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE EVIL EYE
(--)
Exhibition of charms and amulets.
Papers and Transactions of the International
Folklore Congress, 1891 pp. 387-393
David Nutt, London, 1892
Bonner, Campbell
Studies in Magical Amulets Chiefly Graeco-Egyptian.
University of Michigan Press, 1950
DiStasi, Lawrence
Mal Occhio (Evil Eye): The Underside of Vision
North Point Press, San Francisco, 1981
ISBN 0-86547-033-2
(This is a personal, almost poetic account of evil
eye beliefs, beginning with the author's Italian-American family
and ranging thence through time and space to cover neolithic
eye-goddess worship; the Horus (wadjet) eye of ancient Egypt; the
cult of Mercury; Sumerian and Cretan eye-motifs; the theories of
Freud, Jung, and Campbell; and the displacement of mother-goddess
worship with the rise of the Indo-Europeans. There are a few
photos and drawings of amulets and seals, but it is not a heavily
illustrated book. CY)
Dundes, Alan (ed.)
The Evil Eye: A Folklore Casebook.
Garland Publishing, Inc., New York, 1981
(A must-have book for folklorists; this is a collection of
previous writings on the subject, most out of print and very
rare, organized and annotated by Dundes. It also contains Dundes'
important article "Wet and Dry: The Evil Eye." Augmented by
Elworthy's book, this collection forms a nearly complete picture of
evil eye belief worldwide. CY)
Elworthy, Frederick Thomas
The Evil Eye: The Origins and Practices of Superstition
John Murray, London,
1895; many subsequent reprints, including Collier Books, London,
1958; Citadel Press, New Jersey; still in print as of 1998).
(I consider this book a classic of Victorian thoroughness and
tenacity. Elworthy studied the evil eye in depth, with special
reference to then-contemporary beliefs in Naples, Italy. The
photographs in the reprint editions are not of high quality, but these pages and
pages of apotropaic charms, all purchased by the author,
are unlikely to be duplicated ever again.
Gamache, Henri
Terrors of the Evil Eye Exposed
[--],1946; reprinted and still in print as "Protection from Evil")
(A good collection of evil eye customs from around the world;
it also includes a few other folk beliefs.
There is no overview, as with the Dundes or Elworthy material,
but for a cheap, secondary source-book, this is very handy to
have. It can be purchased from The Lucky Mojo Curio Co. book list. CY)
Hudson, Wilson M. (editor)
The Healer of Los Olmas and Other Mexican Lore
Publications of the Texas Folklore Society Number XXIV
Southern Methodist University Press, 1951, 1966, 1975
(An interesting collection of Texas-Mexican folklore. The
Soledad Perez oral history material cited above is the only part of the book
that deals directly with the evil eye. CY)
Maloney, Clarence
The Evil Eye
Columbia University Press, New York, 1976
(Great anthropological treatise covering the evil eye
in recent-to-modern cultures. PR.)
Tylor, E. B.
Notes on modern survival of ancient amulets against the evil eye.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19:54-56, 1890
CREDITS
The material in this article was developed from 1995 through 1999 in the usenet
newsgroup alt.lucky.w. I want
to give particular thanks to the contributions of Paul Edson
(weldonkees@aol.com), Cadwaladr (cadwaladr@aol.com), Gearry T
(GearryT20@aol.com), Harlan Thornton (Hthorntn@aol.com), Pete Rhode
(megalith@ccnet.com), and Althaea Yronwode (azyron@itsa.ucsf.edu). Also thanks to
Majid Abdul, who gave me my first sample of
Aspand and to the
Jewish Mailing List for archiving a series of
posts on ayin ha'ra at http://www.ottmall.com/mj_ht_arch/v28/mj_v28i55
(Jewish Mailing List Volume 28 Number 55, February 1999).
copyright © 1995-2003 catherine yronwode. All rights reserved.
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