Evil eye

The concept of the evil eye is an ancient belief that certain persons can project evil upon others through their glance, causing them injury, illness or even death or the destruction of their possessions.

The origins of this belief have been traced to the ancient Near East, India and the Mediterranean cultures. Tradition defines two types of evil eye, voluntary and involuntary.

Envy was known to be the cause behind the voluntary evil eye, which was characteristic of demons, witches and malicious humans. Thus its powers were especially feared. People considered it unlucky to have themselves or their possessions praised and often wore amulets or words from sacred texts to deflect the malignant glance. Women, children and domestic animals were thought to be most vulnerable to the workings of the evil eye, often called “fascination” or “overlooking.”

The involuntary evil eye was considered an affliction borne by people who did not intend to harm others by their gaze but who were unable to prevent it. A Slav folktale relates how a father blinded himself to avoid inflicting harm on his children. The concept of the evil eye has persisted throughout the centuries to present day cultures in many parts of the world.

Be on guard

The Goddess of Light speaks of the problem of the evil eye and the need to be on guard against it:

Blessed ones, at the behest of the God and Goddess Meru I speak to you, then, of black magic and of witchcraft. But I begin my dissertation on the subject of envy and jealousy, an often-practiced form of black magic that is not seen to be so lethal. Yet I come to tell you that it is indeed lethal!

For when you have something beautiful, when you have the manifestation of joy and happiness in your family and midst your children, there are those neighbors, perhaps unknown to you, or seeming friends or relatives who have a heavy karma in your direction [i.e., are your debtors from past lives], even those on the astral plane, and they do not have what you have; therefore the jealousy grows within them. It grows to a hatred, and to hate [and hate] creation, and even to anger, so that by and by as this builds in them, as it gnaws in them, they through the evil eye may project [evil] against the beauty of your family, your happiness, your success. And you may be [caught] off guard, for you are in the joy of experiencing God’s blessings and grace [as well as] the fruit of attainment from your own tree of life.

Thus, beloved, think about the unguarded areas of your life. For as you move along the Path, the light [you invoke and the light that is your manifest attainment] will deflect from you much opposition and [the] slings sent against you, especially [those which come] through people’s thought and feeling worlds. [And] you will discover that in their frustration and in your continuous victories [people] begin to direct this energy [of envy and jealousy] against you.

Beloved ones, if they respect you as adults or in your respective positions, they may not consciously send this [energy] against you but they will send it against your children or your animals or things you may own. This is an important subject because many of you have increased in light sufficiently, in the first place, to warrant my coming and in the second to be the object of a cruel envy you may not have heretofore experienced.

Beloved, there is no envy like the envy of fallen angels and discarnates and those who have not the light, who do not serve the light, who long ago betrayed the light and took up arms against that light. Therefore, to them anyone who is a lightbearer, even the smallest child, is anathema, a curse in itself; and they can [have no peace] until that focus [of light]—that individual, that property or even that church is destroyed. Thus [their hatred of the light] becomes an all-consuming hatred born of their envy and born of their jealousy....

Be on guard, beloved ones!... Understand that this dispensation, in order to be sustained, as you have been told, requires leadership, requires an avant-garde who will go before the children of the light and who will hold the flame [for them] and be watchful and vigilant. As you make the invocations [to the seven archangels in the name of your mighty I AM Presence] for the binding of black magic and all who practice it, as well as for the binding of witchcraft and all who practice it, you will be invoking the protection of Almighty God for those children of the light who know not how to invoke it for themselves.

For more information

Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Lost Teachings of Jesus: Missing Texts • Karma and Reincarnation, pp. 201–04.

Sources

Endnote from Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 32, no. 54, November 10, 1989.