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April 2000

In an article on the origins of adornment (see The Dawning of Human Beauty: Adornment and the Afterlife) a few weeks back, Jolique mentioned that spiritual protection may have been one of the original purposes of adornment.

Several thousand years ago, when our early ancestors first conceived of the notion that spiritual beings governed our existence—religion—we created amulets (jewelry), cosmetics and perfume, in order to invoke good spirits and to protect ourselves from evil ones. Today these beliefs have names: Christianity, Vodun, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, Shamanism, etc. Within many of these religions, however, is also a belief in what is known as the Evil Eye. A belief in the Evil Eye is practically universal: it exists on nearly every (if not every) continent of the world. The belief's pervasiveness is evident by the number of different names used to describe it. Author Tobin Siebers offers a few:

In Greek, the evil eye is called baskania, from which the Latin words for the evil eye, fascinum and fascinatio, are said to derive. The Latin form recurs in the English word, "fascination," which directly referred to the evil eye until the seventeenth century. In the Spanish-speaking countries of South America, the evil eye is called mal de ojo, mal ojo, or simply ojo. In France, the term is mauvais oeil; in Haiti, mauvais jé, in Holland, booz blick; in Germany, böse Blick; in Poland, zte oko, in Corsica, innocchiatura; in Norway, skørtunge; in Ireland, droch-shuil; in Scotland, bad Ee, in Persian [...] aghashi; in Arabic, 'ayn; in Hebrew, ayin hara, in Tunisia, 'ayn harsha; in Armenian, pasternak; in China, ok ngan; and in Turkey, nazar. In Italy, the evil eye possess many names. It is generally called malocchio, but in Tuscany and southern Italy it may be referred to as affascinamento or jettatura.

The Evil Eye belief is also prevalent in parts of the northeastern and southwestern United States, where it is known as mal de ojo (influence from Spanish colonialists) and a whole host of other names.

The Evil Eye in History

What exactly is the Evil Eye? First recorded by the Mesopotamians about 5,000 years ago in cuneiform on clay tablets, the Evil Eye may actually have originated as early as the Upper Paleolithic age. Amulets designed to protect against it have been found on every continent of the world. In some cultures, it is a devastating, omnipotent force—a Big Brother who knows all; in others, it may simply be bad luck, a "jinx."

The Evil Eye belief centers around the notion that certain people have the ability to cause harm or to destroy one's sexual power. In society, by definition a highly-ordered construct, the Evil Eye represents anything perceived to be out of the ordinary, out of the defined norms—chaos. Chaos is the ultimate fear of any society because it tips the orderly, reproductive balance between men and women. In history, chaos, or the threat of chaos, has been personified by unmarried or widowed women, lesbians, gays, Jews (outside of Judaic culture), Christians (outside of Christian culture), the Salem "witches"...even those individuals simply unfortunate enough to be afflicted by some medical ailment, such as a hunched back, a clubbed foot, or infertility. In general, anyone who appears to be different in any way from the society in which they live may be thought to have the Evil Eye. Their difference sets them apart from the group, and because of this difference, they are outcast, imprisoned or worse, murdered. By branding these "others" with scarlet letters or pink triangles, their evil is identified and they are culled from the flock. In his book, The Mirror of Medusa, Siebers describes the process that ensues:

From the midst of the crisis, a scapegoat appears. Seeking the cause of the crisis, the mob accuses one of its members who, despite his similarity to everyone else, is held to be different as well as responsible for the disorder. As the crowd seizes the unfortunate individual, cause and effect merge. The expulsion and murder of the scapegoat signal the conclusion of the crisis, for the community truly believes that by eliminating the victim it has rid itself of the source of the crisis. If the crisis continues after the expulsion, the community repeats the accusatory process until tranquility is restored [...T]he sacrificing of the victim creates the sacred, the double nature of which derives from the dynamics of persecution. The murder both curses and sanctifies the victim. [...] The duality of this logic accounts for the origin of taboo and ritual. In the aftermath of the murder, the community unites to venerate the victim who was once held responsible for the crisis and now wins responsibility for its resolution. To prevent future crises, the community. [...] repeats the process that brought about the dissolution of the crisis. This representation of the crisis forms the basis of ritual. Thus taboo and ritual are born; taboo coming to mean the prohibition of activities with violent potential and ritual referring to the reenactment of the original murder. [...] As ritual becomes less and less violent and animals and plants replace human victims, the victimization mechanism moves increasingly toward its goal: the eradication of violence.  Next >>>