Seen and Unseen The Persistence of the Evil Eye in Greek Culture

Abstract

In her home’s living room in Evros, yiayia Zoe sat beside me. The lace curtains fluttered gently in the summer breeze, and the room was fragrant with herbs laid out to dry. To investigate and potentially remove the evil eye, yiayia Zoe, one of the village healers in my mother’s village, performed a ritual using three dried cloves and sewing needles. She began by tracing the sign of the cross on the table with each clove and then securing them onto the needles. According to yiayia Zoe, the cloves symbolize different sources: male, female, and those linked to divine forces or illness, and the sequence in which they are arranged is crucial—God created Adam first, and consequently, any suspicion regarding the source of the evil eye should begin with a male figure. She lit a match and
held the flame to the first clove, waiting for a popping sound. There was no discernible sound as the dry bud blackened and curled inward. She then moved on to the second, followed by the third, but still nothing. “You’re fine,” she told me. “No evil eye.” Since yiayia Zoe had concluded that I had not been affected by the evil eye, she would not need to recite the incantation.