Talk:Evil eye

The evil eye in Christianity

Neither of the examples cited in Protective Talismans and Cures > By Religion > In Christianity purporting to indicate Christianity's beliefs on the evil eye have anything to do with the subject. Luke 11:34 is not talking about the evil eye in the mythological/paranormal sense; it is essentially talking about the effects of turning one's "eye" towards things Jesus considered wicked. (See Pulpit Commentary on Luke 11:34 - "If they gave way to passion, jealousy, prejudice, impurity, lawlessness in its hundred forms, then for them the spiritual eye of the soul would become diseased, and therefore incapable of rightly discerning any heavenly sign. It was this danger that the Master was pointing out to the crowd.") Mark 7:22 is cited, because the Greek words ὀφθαλμὸς πονηρός literally translate "eye evil", but this is translated "envy" in most modern translations (https://biblehub.com/mark/7-22.htm). Even if this were to be translated differently, the verse is a list of sins and is not talking about "the evil eye" in the sense of the supposed supernatural phenomenon. Zomwolf (talk) 06:25, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Exactly. The proposed bits in "In Christianity" are of Hollywood and hearsay. I recently edited out said bits, leaving in place a sentence of the "evil eye" not having any significant meaning or value in Christianity. I also wrote that even if some translation could possibly come to the word pair of "evil eye" somewhere in the Bible it doesn't mean it would still be of the "evil eye" as per the article.

All my edits were reverted. How does this work - how do we replace the current sham with facts?

Thanks. Jaakko.pontinen (talk) 20:17, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

I feel obliged to agree with you @Jaakko.pontinen; the section you originally axed is a disgrace. "Original research" doesn't even begin to cover it; whoever wrote it extrapolated very obviously false information from primary sources, if you can even call the 1897 novel Dracula a primary source on christian beliefs.

The user who reverted your edit didn't justify or explain their revert in any way, which by itself straddles the line of acceptable conduct. I can only assume they mistook your contribution for vandalism. I invite you to re-submit your changes, citing this discussion thread and any wikipedia policies you find fit to support it. If they still find your contribution unacceptable, they're welcome to explain their concerns here.

Heck, I'd do it myself, but I'm too lazy to log in :P 83.5.139.163 (talk) 05:41, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

I just ripped out the bit for which we're citing Dracula. It is obviously nuts to assume, with no source saying so whatsoever, that the superstitions of one fictional group of 1890s Romanian peasants in a novel are representative of "folk Christian" belief in Europe in real life.

After reading the comments here and taking a look myself at the remainder of the "In Christianity" section, I am inclined to agree that the rest is garbage too. The citations are basically just of Bible passages (and their translations in different versions of the Bible), with no secondary sources indicating that any of those passages relate to the evil eye in the sense that this article is about. Even the versions that include the phrase "evil eye" don't clearly mention the evil eye, and in context the text does not appear to be at all connected to the superstition this article is about - "an evil eye"/"envy" is described (along with many other sinful thoughts) in Mark 7 as an "evil thought" that comes from within a person's heart and defiles them.

(I suspect that if there is any connection here at all, it might be a linguistic one - perhaps the supernatural concept of "evil eye" and the mundane concept of envy being conflated into a single word in the dialect of Greek in which the Gospels were written? But even if that's the case, absolutely nothing in the text of cited Bible passages seems on its face to hint at belief in the supernatural evil eye discussed in this Wikipedia article, even in the versions that use the phrase "evil eye".)

I'm simply going to delete the section; if there's an actual case to be made that that section of the Bible really does refer to the superstition of the evil eye, it should be backed up by secondary sources, not just editors' own Biblical interpretations which are WP:OR. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 11:50, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Media and press coverage

I am confused by the Media and Press coverage section. I see that they mention a book but there is nothing related to the media or press? I feel that the information contained within should be moved and the section should be deleted unless there is actual information relating to the Evil Eye's representation in the media/press. Middle Mac CJM (talk) 03:47, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, absolutely nothing in there is relevant to the section heading. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 07:00, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Furthermore, almost everything there is already in the article elsewhere. I see exactly one fact that's missing from the rest of the article, which is this bit...

Indians and Jews use charms with palm-forward hands with an eye in the center

... which seems to be describing the Hamsa.

But I'm sceptical for a few reasons:

• As noted elsewhere in the article, Muslims and Christians also use this charm; at the very least this description is incomplete.
• I can't find any sources describing use of it by Hindus (nor have I ever witnessed it among the many, many evil-eye-related rituals I've seen among the Indian half of my family), nor is there any mention of Hindus or Indians at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamsa. (I realise the quoted text doesn't actually mention Hindus per se, but if by "Indians" they purely meant "Muslim Indians" then that's misleading in and of itself; the only way the claim would be defensible as phrased is if it's either a Hindu Indian or a general Indian practice.)
• The claim about Jews is sort of contradicted by the information in our Hamsa article which says the Hamsa has fallen out of popularity among Jews.

Ideally I'd take a look at the National Geographic article that's cited, but the magazine's archives are paywalled. However, the fact that some of the information is contradicted by other articles and that I can't find any other source whatsoever to substantiate the bit about Indians makes me feel like it's probably okay to just drop this detail, though. I will put in a resource request at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Resource_Request to try to get a look at the NG article, though, and possibly come back to add to the existing section about Indian practices. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 07:35, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

A helpful person pointed out that the NG article is publicly available at https://archive.org/details/nationalgeograph0223unse/page/22/mode/2up?view=theater. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 08:26, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

So the quoted content was at least present in the cited source. I am inclined to continue to think it is incorrect, though. I can find no corroboration and the flippant, casual nature of the small National Geographic article we were citing doesn't fill me with confidence that it was meticulously researched. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 08:32, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Addressed by https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evil_eye&diff=1262037287&oldid=1260940441. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 07:41, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Equitable Futures - Internet Cultures and Open Access

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 January 2025 and 16 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Delephia (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Sofiamiller14.

— Assignment last updated by WikiEdit7205 (talk) 15:36, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Delephia, some comments on your edits:

• the Mexico section now begins with a controversy over the origins of "mal de ojo", and only later introduces and defines the term. Surely that can't be the right way round!
• you state there are "contrary details" about the origins of the concept in Mexico, which I would take to mean that there is contradictory evidence (e.g. some pointing to Spanish origins and some pointing to indigenous origins)... but you don't actually present any. I'm left a bit confused about your intended meaning.
• the wording of the second sentence seems a bit clumsy. Surely the concept necessarily now has at least "Spanish influences" since it has a Spanish name? I assume what we're really trying to say is it's unclear whether belief in the evil eye in Mexico has its origins in Indigenous culture or Spanish culture?

• If I am understanding your intended meaning correctly, there's a further problem: the claim here flatly contradicts the definitive statement earlier in the article that "Spain is the origin of this superstition in Latin America". I don't know which is correct, but it can't be right to definitively say it has Spanish origins and then a few paragraphs later say it's impossible to say whether it has Spanish origins.

• it's not clear how "Indigenous rituals related to witchcraft" are relevant to the evil eye at all, since the article doesn't actually mention any such rituals - let alone how they were misrepresented. The whole sentence about rituals related to witchcraft seems like a non-sequitur.
• this sentence, after the mention of witchcraft, doesn't really make sense: Of all these practices, the only one that bears a faint resemblance to the European idea of the evil eye is the notion of envy and the damage it can cause. But... "the notion of envy" isn't a "practice" at all, nor even a witchcraft-related concept.
• Journal articles should be cited with Template:Cite_journal rather than a Template:Cite_web pointing to a Google Drive PDF
• You deleted a bunch of existing citations - why?
• Removing the Template:Lang templates that were marking "mal de ojo" as Spanish text, while not very consequential, is theoretically bad for blind people reading via a screenreader, since without knowing it's Spanish the screenreader won't be able to pronounce the phrase correctly. (See an example I once recorded using Windows Narrator showing how pronunciation of French text gets butchered if the screenreader thinks it's English; the same will happen with the Spanish here.)
• Does the cited source really say anything about prioritising treatment of adolescents? In the paragraph I assume you're basing that on, I see only discussion of treating "niños", which I understand to more generally refer to children, not adolescents specifically? (I am relying on Google Translate here so forgive me if I am confused.)
• The Cloudfront link is dead; I get an AccessDenied error if I try to access it
• There's some clumsy and confusing English again after the mention of ethnomedicine. You say "such as addressing symptoms like phlegm in children with asthma" but this is not in itself ethnomedicine; presumably you have some particular ethnic way of addressing those symptoms in mind.

Since you were brought here by a course assignment, I'm not sure whether you're planning on sticking around or will even see this message, but I'll wait a while and see if you fix the points above. Otherwise I'll have a go myself at some point.

(I do realise there are already many, many, many major problems with this particular article that predate you ever touching it, but it'd be nice to try to gradually drag the quality level up, and scrupulously trying not to introduce yet more problems seems like a good start there!) ExplodingCabbage (talk) 21:52, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Nazar amulet circular links

All the links on this page leading to Nazar amulet are just redirects to this same article. There isn't even a section on it. There are pictures of it, but clicking the link, you have to find them yourself. There must be a better way to handle this. GlacialHorizon (talk) 06:04, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

I suggest the best fix is to simply remove these wikilinks, and probably all other wikilinks in the article that just redirect back to the article. MOS:OVERLINK says Do not link to pages that redirect back to the page the link is on (unless the link is to a redirect with possibilities that links to an appropriate section of the current article). which is also what my common sense would tell me. But there is no appropriate section to link to since information about the Nazar amulet is spread around multiple bits of the article. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 09:04, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

@GlacialHorizon This appears to have all been fixed. however, the "Turkey" section says nothing about the Evil Eye, and could perhaps be moved to that page. Else deleted? Mastakos (talk) 16:19, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Article has lots of stylistic issues and IMO is generally badly written

Lots of things about this article are just bad right now. Some examples:

• Lots of repetition of information in different sections, and lots of choices about section headings that inherently introduce redundancy. e.g.

• "Masha'Allah" is explained four times: in the intro, the "Around the world" section, the "Islam" section, and the "Pakistan" section)
• We have a "Spain and Latin America" section but also a "Mexico" section and a "Brazil" section (that are siblings, not subsections, of the Latin America section), a structure that means anything universally true across Latin America needs to be duplicated in three sections

• circular links, noted above by @GlacialHorizon
• a bajillion specific issues with the Latin America section, noted above by me
• missing lang templates on foreign terms
• an intro that - at least after the first two paragraphs - is more an arbitrarily-chosen collection of facts from later in the article than an intro
• lots of awkward writing. e.g. in the intro we have a paragraph starting "Different cultures have pursued measures to protect against the evil eye" followed by another paragraph starting "In different cultures, the evil eye can be fought against with yet other methods" - i.e. effectively repeating the same thing
• many paragraphs without citations, including 8 consecutive paragraphs in the Caribbean section
• various bits of confusing & questionable phrasing where I'm not sure what the editor was even trying to say. Example: "Authentic practices of warding off the evil eye are also commonly practiced by Muslims" - wtf is the distinction between "authentic" practices and other practices meant to be?
• some content of questionable noteworthiness. For instance, do we really need to mention an entirely unrelated meaning of the term "evil eye" in broadcasting, or list a handful of (apparently arbitrary and unremarkable) advertising campaigns and fashion collections that have referenced the Evil Eye?

The article would benefit greatly from an editor spending half a day just trying to clean it up - not adding new information, but just fixing stylistic issues, rearranging what's already here into a more reasonable article structure and deduplicating the duplicate content, variously purging or finding citations for uncited content, and eliminating dubious content. I might have a go, but no promises. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 09:03, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

the main picture is really creepy and doesn't provide any additional context

how we know she "possesses the evil eye"? what does that even mean. who is accusing her of possessing it Safethirdcountryagreement (talk) 00:47, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Yeah it seems to be a random old picture of a Muslim woman with an unsettling-to-look-at eye disorder but otherwise no real connection to the content of the article. I'd favour removing it.

The concept of "possessing" the evil eye comes up in lots of sources if I google for "possess the evil eye", though; I have not read carefully but I would assume the idea (in some but not all cultures) is that only someone who possesses the evil eye is capable of cursing you. This idea is not explored in the article body whatosever, of course, but it looks to me like that's a shortcoming of the article that it would be good to remedy, rather than the caption being nonsense. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 09:45, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

I've removed it. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 16:21, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Emergence of artificial intelligence and cameras/sensors

Perhaps a chapter is needed on First Nations people considering cameras evil or the 'evil eye'. Nowadays, when artificial intelligence and the internet are doing not only morally neutral things, as psychiatrists aspire to, it is worth adding here that many First Nations people consider technocrats bad. This perspective is visually echoed in the logo for the NSA's PRISM program—a globe with an eye—which serves as a stark symbol of the invasive, all-seeing gaze that many indigenous cultures associate with the 'evil eye'. Editorq35 (talk) 18:37, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

@Editorq35 But it would need at least one professional source for reference. Mastakos (talk) 16:18, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Right point, added one refrence. Editorq35— Preceding undated comment added 14:49, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Editorq35 edited their previous comment today to add the PRISM sentence, I don't know if they intended that to be adding a reference. --Belbury (talk) 14:54, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Why just Central/Eastern Europe?

The evil eye was and still is an important part of both Irish and Scottish culture, and quite a bit of the rest of Western Europe. Why does this specify these specific regions when simply Europe could be used? Especially given it generalizes to all of Africa and Latin America. I dont see why this implies Northern Europe doesnt have a concept of the evil eye. What is the reasoning for this wording?Taylor Lane (talk) 11:19, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Pope Pius IX

The section on ITALY gives an unsourced statement about him: "Pope Pius IX was dreaded for his evil eye, and a whole cycle of stories about the disasters that happened in his wake were current in Rome during the latter decades of the 19th century."

There is nothing in the article on Pope Pius IX that contains any hint of this; given that lack, and the lack of any source, I recommend this sentence be removed. Unless someone can come up with a reference?? Mastakos (talk) 22:10, 2 February 2026 (UTC)