EVIL EYE AND OTHER SORCERY. WITCHCRAFT AND HEALING IN EUROPE AND AMERICA: MEXICO, SPAIN, ROMANIA AND PORTUGAL

The popular tradition has collected and maintained over generations, the belief in the evil eye. The base of this superstition, connected with envy, has its origins in antiquity and there is evidence that both Greece and Rome were ritual practices for bewitch and curse, ie, to cause evil through the look or the voice. On the other hand, in the Middle Age, already almost at the dawn of the Renaissance, The Pope’s licence of Pope Innocent VIII, Summis desiderantes affectibus (1484), and the subsequent publication of inquisitorial manual, Malleus Maleficarum (1486), would have a harmful influence for those, mainly women, who practiced such rituals. In this study a brief tour will be made by the evil eye amulets and protection against the evil spell; who is likely to suffer and why; what are its symptoms, how it is detected; who check, for what reason and how it does it; and who can remove and what methods used to it. Furthermore, and to illustrate this analysis, some cases of evil spell will be compared in Mexico, in contrast to some European evidence gathered in fieldwork (from 2011 to 2015) and among interviewees from diverse backgrounds: Madrid, La Carlota (Córdoba), Canillas de Aceituno (Málaga) and Los Navalucillos (Toledo) in Spain; Aveiras de Abaixo (Portugal) and Buzău (Romania)