July 8th, 2022

It’s funny how much people will dismiss the concept of the evil eye as an outdated superstition, and then 5 minutes later rant about how a narcissistic mother or a jealous “friend” has sabotaged their success and happiness. The envy of others does have a palpable effect, you’ve just been conditioned to devalue ancestral and cultural knowledge and terms for things, so you don’t want to call the evil eye what it is.

My psychology professor once explained that pop psychology does a lot more harm than good, robbing important terms of their meaning and context and reducing vital nuance in one's understanding of the self. I agree with him. Reducing folk beliefs and traditional knowledge to "spicy psychology" (literally just a way of saying "pop psychology but more exciting") is damaging to a critical understanding of both psychology and magic. It's also whitewashing. Yes, your mom was a narcissist, yes other people's jealousy is damaging to you, but for literally thousands of years humans have been aware of that phenomenon and have been developing and using tools to overcome that. If the Lindy Effect/Lindy's Law is true, then those tools that your ancestors found effective will remain effective, even long after the popular self-help fads of today have faded into irrelevance.

Obviously if you have been dealing with narcissistic abuse or emotional sabotage by fake friends, then you should probably seek professional therapy if you can afford to do so. However, acknowledging that the psychic damage of other people's envious projections towards you is real, is to acknowledge that the evil eye in the folkloric sense is objectively real, and therefore a folk magic ritual to alleviate it may be worth a shot.

If you're new here: I'm currently on a hiatus from public spiritual service and don't post much, but if you like nuanced witchcraft takes and you hate wellness cults then stick around.

- B.M.