
Against the Evil Eye - acsillag
http://riowang.blogspot.com/2015/08/against-evil-eye.html
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bitwize
I 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.

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andmarios
The 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. :)

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figrita
Just 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!

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marpstar
a third reference isn't far away, in my experience.

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pavel_lishin
In 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/

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gkya
It may ward off the "evil eye", but at least in italy, it will fail at warding
off a "black eye".

edit: "ward of"

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616c
In 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.

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acqq
The roots of the concept are probably older:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Horus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Horus)

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namanyayg
'Nazar' literally means 'look' (as in 'look away') or 'glance' in Urdu.

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616c
Which comes from nadhar (نظر) in Arabic. It is a loanword.

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eevilspock
I thought this was going to be about the NSA or Google. A lot of people
working on talismans agsinst them!

