E is for Evil Eye

Evil Eye – The Evil Eye is one of the oldest and most widespread curses, and simultaneous superstition to some, around the world.  You can find instances of the Evil Eye and protection from almost everywhere.  What is the origin and history of the Evil Eye and what are some of the charms and spells used to guard one against it?  What can happen if someone puts the Evil Eye on you?

We have an Evil Eye hanging from the rear-view mirror of our car. It was given to us by our dear friend Melanie who bought the glass eye from Dilly's, placed it on a leather thong and gave it to Damon for protection on the road. 
Since we received it we've had 2 cars and have been careful to cleanse and transition it between the first and the second. Other than some vandalizing (and we knew immediately who had done it) we've had no issues with the car. The first care was a POS (piece of something-not-so-good) and I'm really shocked that it didn't fall apart on us when driving. Our new one is a Scion xB (the toaster looking cars) and its our baby. 

I strangely feel safer with our evil eye hanging from the rear view. I don't mean that we drive crazy and rely only on it, but we've missed dozens of would-be crashes and I do think that that piece of protective blue glass may have had a hand (or an eye) in it. 

But what is an Evil Eye?

I knew it was supposed to be protective and I've read bits and pieces about them in such books as Dracula and what not but I didn't know all that much about it until I took Anthropology 101 with Dr. King. 

I was meeting Dr. King in her office to discuss making Anthropology my major (didn't happen but...) and she had various types of evil eyes all over her office. I pointed them out and said we had been given one for our car. 

Dr. King then explained why the evil eyes are blue.

Supposedly evil eyes are made by people in countries like India and South America where people usually have brown eyes. When western explorers and the like began to invade and explore they were called many names but one of them is Blue-eyed Devils. 

Evil eyes are made from blue glass or paint to resemble blue eyes, meaning they reflect back any evil the Blue-eyed Devils sent out to the people. 

I was intruiged by this so I began to do some more research...

There are more types of Evil Eyes than just the blue disks like the one we have in the car. 

There's simply looking at a person with ill-intent in your heart, which is a sort of laying the evil eye on someone. There's also looking at someone who owns something with jealousy (which is why the blue evil eyes are placed on babies, cars, houses, anything someone might covet).

Other ways to break these evil eyes and prevent them from doing harm is cleansing, placing salt or mojo bags on or around effected objects or people, and counter-curses. 

All in all, I'm very grateful to Melanie for giving us our evil eye and I will be using it in our car for a long long time.