evil eye

• Bretons retain charms for warding off

80:9.14The su­per­sti­tions of this com­par­a­tively re­cent sun-wor­ship­ing era even now per­sist in the folk­ways of Brit­tany. Al­though Chris­tian­ized for over fif­teen hun­dred years, these Bre­tons still re­tain charms of the New Stone Age for ward­ing off the evil eye. They still keep thun­der­stones in the chim­ney as pro­tec­tion against light­ning. The Bre­tons never min­gled with the Scan­di­na­vian Nordics. They are sur­vivors of the orig­i­nal An­don­ite in­hab­i­tants of west­ern Eu­rope, mixed with the Med­i­ter­ra­nean stock.

• ghost retaliation against human prosperity

87:5.4Hu­man pros­per­ity was sup­posed to be es­pe­cially provoca­tive of the envy of evil spir­its, and their method of re­tal­i­a­tion was to strike back through a hu­man agency and by the tech­nique of the evil eye. That phase of the cult which had to do with spirit avoid­ance was much con­cerned with the machi­na­tions of the evil eye. The fear of it be­came al­most world-wide. Pretty women were veiled to pro­tect them from the evil eye; sub­se­quently many women who de­sired to be con­sid­ered beau­ti­ful adopted this prac­tice. Be­cause of this fear of bad spir­its, chil­dren were sel­dom al­lowed out af­ter dark, and the early prayers al­ways in­cluded the pe­ti­tion, “de­liver us from the evil eye.”

• phallic cult defense against

87:5.5The Ko­ran con­tains a whole chap­ter de­voted to the evil eye and magic spells, and the Jews fully be­lieved in them. The whole phal­lic cult grew up as a de­fense against the evil eye. The or­gans of re­pro­duc­tion were thought to be the only fe­tish which could ren­der it pow­er­less. The evil eye gave ori­gin to the first su­per­sti­tions re­spect­ing pre­na­tal mark­ing of chil­dren, ma­ter­nal im­pres­sions, and the cult was at one time well-nigh uni­ver­sal.

• intelligent human beings still believe in

88:6.7Grad­u­ally sci­ence is re­mov­ing the gam­bling el­e­ment from life. But if mod­ern meth­ods of ed­u­ca­tion should fail, there would be an al­most im­me­di­ate re­ver­sion to the prim­i­tive be­liefs in magic. These su­per­sti­tions still linger in the minds of many so-called civ­i­lized peo­ple. Lan­guage con­tains many fos­sils which tes­tify that the race has long been steeped in mag­i­cal su­per­sti­tion, such words as spell­bound, ill-starred, pos­ses­sions, in­spi­ra­tion, spirit away, in­ge­nu­ity, en­tranc­ing, thun­der­struck, and as­ton­ished. And in­tel­li­gent hu­man be­ings still be­lieve in good luck, the evil eye, and as­trol­ogy.

• primitives thought much sickness caused by

90:3.73. Magic—the in­flu­ence of en­e­mies. Much sick­ness was thought to be caused by be­witch­ment, the ac­tion of the evil eye and the magic point­ing bow. At one time it was re­ally dan­ger­ous to point a fin­ger at any­one; it is still re­garded as ill-man­nered to point. In cases of ob­scure dis­ease and death the an­cients would hold a for­mal in­quest, dis­sect the body, and set­tle upon some find­ing as the cause of death; oth­er­wise the death would be laid to witch­craft, thus ne­ces­si­tat­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of the witch re­spon­si­ble there­for. These an­cient coro­ner’s in­quests saved many a sup­posed witch’s life. Among some it was be­lieved that a tribesman could die as a re­sult of his own witch­craft, in which event no one was ac­cused.

• some subordinate gods kept as

96:1.14As man ad­vances in cul­ture, the lesser gods are sub­or­di­nated to a su­preme de­ity; the great Jove per­sists only as an ex­cla­ma­tion. The mono­the­ists keep their sub­or­di­nate gods as spir­its, demons, fates, Nereids, fairies, brown­ies, dwarfs, ban­shees, and the evil eye. The He­brews passed through heno­the­ism and long be­lieved in the ex­is­tence of gods other than Yah­weh, but they in­creas­ingly held that these for­eign de­i­ties were sub­or­di­nate to Yah­weh. They con­ceded the ac­tu­al­ity of Chemosh, god of the Amor­ites, but main­tained that he was sub­or­di­nate to Yah­weh.

• primitives cravenly feared malevolence of

111:0.7Ev­ery race of evolv­ing Uran­tia mor­tals has a word equiv­a­lent to the con­cept of soul. Many prim­i­tive peo­ples be­lieved the soul looked out upon the world through hu­man eyes; there­fore did they so cravenly fear the malev­o­lence of the evil eye. They have long be­lieved that “the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.” The Rig-Veda says: “My mind speaks to my heart.”