Evil Eye, the power of exerting an evil influence or fascination on any one by a glance from the eyes, one of the most venerable and widespread of human beliefs, sanctioned alike by the classical authors, the Fathers of the Church, the medieval physicians, savage races everywhere, and modern usage in many countries within the range of Christianity. Readers of Virgil will remember the complaint of Menalcas in the third Eclogue that some evil eye has bewitched his tender lambs, and every one is familiar with St Paul's bold metaphorical use of the idea to express the spiritual perversion of the Galatians (iii. 1). By the ancient Greeks it was called Baskania, by the Romans Fascinum; and to both it was an integral part of the popular belief. Amulets of very various forms—the most common those shaped like horns, like a frog, or like a hand—were worn to counteract its effect, and such devices adopted by way of safeguard as spitting on the ground or on the breast, showing something ridiculous to the fascinator, dissimulating good fortune, or doing something unpleasant by way of a counter-penance, like Polycrates of Samos throwing his ring into the sea. It was supposed that fascination was most often due to envy; hence the philosophy of overcoming it, and converting it into laughter and safety, by the exhibition of some ridiculous amulet, often of most indecent description. Such also were the oscilla or little masks of Bacchus hung upon fruit-trees to avert the fascinum and keep them fertile, and the phallus borne about in procession at the Dionysia. Of similar origin is the fact that stated numbers are particularly liable to the fascinum, and hence the deep-rooted Jewish disinclination to number flocks or the like, and the no less strong objection of Neapolitan and Scotch fishermen to state the number of their catch. In the folklore of almost every people it is considered unlucky to be praised with any particular warmth, and it is a point of prudence to use certain formulas immediately thereafter. We find this not only among the ancient Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Teutons, but among such people as the Turks, Italians, Spaniards, as well as the Chinese, Japanese, Negroes, and Red Indians. Thus, in Carniola and Corsica a mother does not care to hear her baby praised or a farmer his crops, while even in England here and there sick people still feel uneasy at being told that they are looking much better.
Nowhere at the present day has the belief in the evil eye a more real power than among the Neapolitans. The Jettatura is one of the common dangers incident to life, and every one wears his amulet against it. These are usually of silver, in the form of an antelope horn, a hand with the first and little finger doubled down, a key with a heart in its handle, a crescent moon with a face in it, or a sprig of rue. Other very common forms are the cimaruta, an emblem combined of all the foregoing, none of which are directly Christian symbols, and the cavallo marino ('sea-horse') and sirena, the last two being very common in Pompeian paintings. The horror of this fatal gift of fascination with its blighting influence is deepened by the fact that it is exerted upon any object upon which the eye may first light, often, if not indeed usually, in opposition to the will of the person who is cursed with it. Men now possess it more commonly than women—nay, the jettatore is often a priest or monk, and it was long a matter of common belief that it was an unhappy attribute of Pio Nono himself. In ancient times, on the contrary, it was more common in women than men, and was possessed most often by little old women with squint or deep-set eyes, especially those who were lean and melancholy, and had double pupils. The Neapolitan jettatore is traditionally a morose and sallow man, eager to cast his blighting influence over men and women, but most commonly children, and usually he is a mean-looking personage, totally unlike the portentous figure idealised in the Corrìcolo of Dumas. Many of the medieval philosophers have seriously discussed the rationale of the evil eye, with its relations to the poisonous rays emitted by toads and basilisks, and the fascination of terror exerted by the serpent upon the bird through keeping its eyes fixed steadfastly upon it. Grimm notes as one of the best means of recognising a witch, that when you look into her eyes you see your image reflected upside down, and suggests that the peculiar conformation may have had something to do with her evil eye. At any rate this baneful property is characteristic of witches everywhere, of none more than in those of Teutonic mythology.
See the learned discussion of the subject in W. W. Story's Castle St Angelo and the Evil Eye (1877); G. Pitré, La Jettatura ed il Mal'occhio in Sicilia (Kolozsvar, 1884); chap. vi. of E. N. Rolfe and H. Ingleby's Naples in 1888 (1888); Tuchmann's papers on 'Fascination' in Mélusine (1884-89); and Elworthy, The Evil Eye (1895). See also the article FASCINATION; and, for eastern evidence, papers by John de Cunha and Purushottam Balkrishna Joshi in part iii. of the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay (1888).