The Spirit LandEmmons, Samuel B. (Samuel Bulfinch)
Religion
The Spirit Land
Emmons, Samuel B. (Samuel Bulfinch)
Occultism -- Early works to 1900; Spiritualism
In Andalusia, a belief in the evil eye is very prevalent among the
lower orders. A stag's horn is considered a good safeguard, and on that
account, a small horn, tipped with silver, is frequently attached to
the children's necks, by means of a cord braided from the hair of a
black mare's tail. Should the evil glance be cast, it is imagined that
the horn receives it, and instantly snaps asunder. Such horns may be
purchased at the silversmiths' shops at Seville.
The Gypsies sell remedies for the evil eye, which consist of any drugs
which they happen to possess, or are acquainted with. They have been
known to offer to cure the glanders in a horse, (an incurable
disorder,) with the very same powders which they offer as a specific
for the evil eye.
The same superstition is current among all Oriental people, whether
Turks, Arabs, or Hindoos; but perhaps there is no nation in the world
with whom the belief is so firmly rooted as the Jews; it being a
subject treated of in all the old rabbinical writings, which induces
the conclusion that the superstition of the evil eye is of an antiquity
almost as remote as the origin of the Hebrew race.
The evil eye is mentioned in Scripture, but not in the false and
superstitious sense we have spoken of. Evil in the eye, which occurs in
Prov. xxiii. 5, 6, merely denotes niggardness and illiberality. The
Hebrew words are _ain ra_, and stand in contradistinction to _ain
toub_, or the benignant in eye, which denotes an inclination to bounty
and liberality.
The rabbins have said, "For one person who dies of sickness, there are
ten who die by the evil eye." And as the Jews, especially those of the
East, and of Barbary, place implicit confidence in all that the rabbins
have written, we can scarcely wonder if, at the present day, they dread
this visitation more than the cholera or the plague. "The leech," they
say, "can cure those disorders; but who is capable of curing the evil
eye?"
It is imagined that this blight is most easily inflicted when a person
is enjoying himself, with little or no care for the future, when he is
reclining in the sun before his door, or when he is full of health and
spirits, but principally when he is eating and drinking, on which
account the Jews and Moors are jealous of strangers when they are
taking their meals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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