Object Description
The evil eye dates back to over a thousand years ago. The earliest known indication of it dates back to the classical period, in Ancient Greece and Rome. Besides being mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman texts, it is almost mentioned in texts such as the Bible and the Quran (Radford). It holds the same meaning no matter where or how the story is told to define it. It is a mischievous look that many cultures believe it is able to cause harm and/or bad luck towards the person it casts upon for hatred or envy. The symbol and the superstition of the evil eye is one of the most well known symbolic images throughout the world.
The belief in the evil eye is believed in many cultures, but it continues to be a major influence in the behavior of millions living in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern part of the world, as well as amongst immigrants coming to the Americas. The belief is still active globally. Boris Gershman states, “According to a 2009 survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 16% of Americans believe in the evil eye, or that “certain people can cast curses or spells that cause harm.” So do over 42% of respondents in a 2008-2009 Pew survey conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a substantial variation across nineteen participating countries” (Economic Origins 1). Gershman further claims that lately, a most recent study was conducted in 2011-2012 among different Muslim populations of 24 countries, and it showed that the belief is highly widespread in the Middle East and North African regions, moderate in Central Asia, Eastern and Southern Europe, and less significant in the Southeastern part of Asia. While the evil eye is known in many different cultures, it is also known in many diff...
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Works Cited
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Gershman, Boris. “The Economic Origins of the Evil Eye Belief.” American University. N.p., July 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
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An Analysis of Peter van Inwagen’s The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy
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The Cross-Cultural Articulations of War Magic and Warrior Religion by D. S. Farrer, main purpose of this article is to provide a re-evaluated perspective of religion and magic, through the perspective of the practitioners and victims. Farrer uses examples that range from the following: “Chinese exorcists, Javanese spirit siblings, Sumatran black magic, Tamil Tiger suicide bombers, Chamorro spiritual re-enchantment, tantric Buddhist war magic, and Yanomami dark shamans” (1). Throughout the article, he uses these examples to address a few central themes. The central themes for war magic, range from “violence and healing, accomplished through ritual and performance, to unleash and/or control the power of gods, demons, ghosts and the dead” (Farrer 1).
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Islam has a deep history, beginning with ideas originating before Muhammad and spanning to the present day. Before Islam, the Bedouin people’s faith contained a belief in supreme beings alongside animism. They also put a large emphasis on ancestor worship (Swartz 15). Some groups...
Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye contributes to the study of the American novel by bringing to light an unflattering side of American history. The story of a young black girl named Pecola, growing up in Lorain, Ohio in 1941 clearly illustrates the fact that the "American Dream" was not available to everyone. The world that Pecola inhabits adores blonde haired blue eyed girls and boys. Black children are invisible in this world, not special, less than nothing. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you lesser was cultivated by both whites and blacks. White skin meant beauty and privilege and that idea was not questioned at this time in history. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you less of a person contaminated black people's lives in many different ways. The taunts of schoolboys directed at Pecola clearly illustrate this fact; "It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth" (65). This self hatred also possessed an undercurrent of anger and injustice that eventually led to the civil rights movement.
Rehder, John B. "Folk Remedies and Belief Systems." Appalachian Folkways. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004. 224-43. Print.
With the start of the high Middle Ages came a notable increase in witch-prosecution and an undeniable fascination with all things occult, the devil, demons and the obliteration of such heretics. While the great strife between Catholicism and Lutheranism began the number of those accused of consulting with the devil, and condemned of the heinous crime of witchcraft began to rise. This was due in part of the teachings of the reformers and the church itself, refuting any argument against witchcraft and its infection of traditional catholic, obedient society. In Luther's catechism, the control held by the devil over man's body and soul, life and property, wife and children amounts almost to omnipotence. According to Sister Antoinette Maria Pratt the interest in the occult increased in the 1200s as “Satan became, their whole lives through, the dominant idea. This was particularly true of the fifteen and sixteenth centuries, when the doctrines of Luther had permeated all classes of society and were producing their terrible resu...
Over the centuries, the concept of Witchcraft, as it presented within religion and society, evoked a variety of responses and attitudes that permeated throughout the cultures of the world. Christianity incited wars and hysteria and chaos in the name of extinguishing the practice of Witchcraft. Today there are prominent religions within many cultures that uphold the practice of witchcraft as a feasible manifestation of spirituality. The term conjures a variety of images for a diverse range of people. To the Azande, witchcraft and oracles and magic existed in everyday life as permeation of the Zande culture. In Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande, E.E. Evans-Pritchard focuses on the beliefs associated with witchcraft and how they manifest in the social structure of the Community.
Throughout Toni Morrison’s controversial debut The Bluest Eye, several characters are entangled with the extremes of human cruelty and desire. A once innocent Pecola arguably receives the most appalling treatment, as not only is she exposed to unrelenting racism and severe domestic abuse, she is also raped and impregnated by her own father, Cholly. By all accounts, Cholly should be detestable and unworthy of any kind of sympathy. However, over the course of the novel, as Cholly’s character and life are slowly brought into the light and out of the self-hatred veil, the reader comes to partially understand why Cholly did what he did and what really drives him. By painting this severely flawed yet completely human picture of Cholly, Morrison draws comparison with how Pecola was treated by both of her undesirable parents. According to literary educator Allen Alexander, even though Cholly was cripplingly flawed and often despicable, he was a more “genuine” person to Pecola than Pauline was (301). Alexander went on to claim that while Cholly raped Pecola physically, Pauline and Soaphead Church both raped her mental wellbeing (301). Alexander is saying that the awful way Pecola was treated in a routine matter had an effect just as great if not greater than Cholly’s terrible assault. The abuse that Pecola lived through was the trigger that shattered her mind. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses the characters of Cholly Breedlove and Frieda McTeer to juxtapose sexual violence and mental maltreatment in order to highlight the terrible effects of mental abuse.
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Dossey, D.E. 1992. Holiday folklore, phobias, and fun: mythical origins, scientific treatments, and superstitious "cures”. Asheville: Outcomes Unlimited Press. Quoted in Roach, J. 2004.
While is a common conception that pre-modern societies are primitive compared to their modern counterpart, this is not often the case, theses societies have complex systems within their society especially within their spirituality and religion. It is this complexity that has allowed aspects of pre-modern societies to evolve and adapt into modern societies. Myths, rituals and sorcery have been terms to describe the activities of pre-modern societies, but these activities have also been found to exist within modern society as well. This essay will further discuss the connections between pre-modern and modern societies that has allowed for myths, rituals and sorcery to exist in the modern societies.