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Against the Evil Eye
- figrita 11y agoJust got given a "evil eye" bracelet today. Never heard about it before. Don't know why this is on hacker news and I am sufficiently wierded out!
- pavel_lishin 11y agoIn the mediterranean, apparently the "horns" hand gesture is also used to ward off the "evil eye": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_of_the_horns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_of_the_horns \m/
- bitwize 11y agoI see a nazar behind the cashier's counter almost every time I go to a Mediterranean cuisine place in eastern Massachusetts. I also love the anime fairy design on the Azerbaijani candy package. Anime is turning into a truly global visual language.
- andmarios 11y agoThe talisman (called just eye in Greece) isn't a cure but protection. Garlic —real or a ceramic one— may also serve as protection. The bad eye (bad as in person) is something like a mini curse, usually caused by envy. It is generally accepted that some people cause it more easily than others, whilst others are incapable to cause it. It may have to do with the character of the person. The cure, or antidote is an encantation which would roughly translate to ”eye gouging”. The encantation is also interesting. It is believed that each encantation can only be owned by one person and should be kept secret or will lose its power. The owner may transfer it under certain conditions and usually old people transfer it to younger ones. It is monks that usually are able to create new encantations and pass them to the rest of the society. Also some encantations can only be passed to one sex. Although it sounds crazy, both evil-eye (or eyeing) and eye-gouging seem to work but it probably is a placebo like effect. :)
- acqq 11y agoThe roots of the concept are probably older: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Horus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Horus
- namanyayg 11y ago'Nazar' literally means 'look' (as in 'look away') or 'glance' in Urdu.
- 616c 11y agoWhich comes from nadhar (نظر) in Arabic. It is a loanword.
- 616c 11y agoIn Egypt, this is also thing. When you have kids and anything bad happens to them, people will say they were envied (Had Hasadoo), which is referring to this evil eye stuff. As an outsider looking in, it drives me nuts.
- eevilspock 11y agoI thought this was going to be about the NSA or Google. A lot of people working on talismans agsinst them!