The LUCKY EYE (Evil Eye) is the name for a sickness transmitted
-- usually without intention -- by someone who is envious. It is also called
the invidious Eye and the envious Eye. The Evil Eye (Lucky Eye)belief is that a person
can harm you, your children, your livestock, or your fruit trees, by
“looking at them” with envy and praising them. The earliest written
references to the ‘Evil Eye' occur on Sumerian clay tablets dating to the
third millennium BC. Agate
beads of exceptional quality, worn to protect the wearer from the influence
of the Evil Eye were also discovered in the royal Sumerian graves at Ur.
The most
common article of “decoration” (as perceived by a European) in any Turkish
house, car, on a person, children or property is the mysterious staring
“Eye”, set in blue glass called the “Nazar Boncugu”, ‘Eye Bead'
or "Lucky Eye".
Amulets, which are worn to repel the Evil Eye are known as repellent talismans. In Greece and Turkey, the most
common form of these talismans is the blue glass Eye charm, which mirrors
back the blue of the Evil Eye and thus confounds it.
In regions
where the Lucky Eye (Evil Eye) belief occurs, the All-Seeing Eye is one of many forms of
reflective eye-charm used as a talisman against this danger. The All-Seeing Eye – a single human eye surrounded by
radiating beams of light – appears on the Great Seal of the United States,
can be seen on at least one North American Good Luck Coin to “guard” the
bearer "from bad omens”, and is among the many beautiful symbols of Freemasonry,
where it represents the Great Architect of the Universe.
From
Turkey to Cyprus through the Central Asian Turkic republics to the Uygur
Turks of China - and all those beyond and between - the belief in the
effects of the “Eye” are not only believed but genuinely feared. To show the
universality of the belief in The Eye, and of ceremonies and rituals used to
avert it, we need only to look at just some of the names given to this
worldwide phenomenon in: |
