January 17th

 

From Aegean boats,

To the blood soaked mud and sand,

Evil eye protects.

 

Close ups of two tanks housed in the Imperial War Museum below. I was fascinated to see that the crew (I assume) had painted Evil Eyes on their tanks. The first was a World War 1 tanks, the second from World War 2.

In Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures, the Evil Eye is a powerful talisman to deflect evil. You see it all over the med, painted on the bow’s of boats, on the top of doorways, around peoples necks, to bring protection, to ensure safe passage, it’s used like a St Christopher. The stylised blue eye is the symbol of choice. Blue eyes are considered to be the eye colour of the devil in the med… so if you mark yourself with a blue eye, you protect yourself, in a kind of perverse backwards logic.

People wear them, not just as a travelling talisman, but to deflect ordinarily well intended compliments. Yes, compliments. As these compliments, whether the person delivering them is genuine or not, have a tendency to turn into a curse when they are intercepted by demons or the devil and actually deliver you the direct opposite of the compliment. For example “your little boy has a beautiful smile” will put that child at risk of some sort of mouth injury.

Hence a compliment is sometimes accompanied by a spit (especially when you are complimenting a child!), to show your good intentions! (This is a double protection on top of the recipient wearing an eye stone). So some older people will be offended if you compliment their children without that going hand in hand with spitting at them! The spit although aimed at the person you are complimenting, is actually trying to shoo a spirit or the devil away from the child to ensure the compliment isn’t going to be turned into a curse. Complicated and weird? Yes. But don’t worry, you don’t have to hoke up a big green grolly and flob it on the childs head… it’s just a pretend spit, a spit sound. So it’s vaguely civilised.

It isn’t so widespread now, but I certainly remember it from my youth and from my mum’s generation. So if you do meet a 95 year old Greek lady, don’t make compliments, don’t spit either. Just smile lots!

Anyway, back to the tanks, I wonder how the idea or the superstition came to these fighting men.

 

Must go back and do the museum justice, the art gallery looked amazing from a brief look and the holocaust exhibition is very moving