Envy causes harm
An envious or admiring glance can bring illness, bad luck or breakage to the person or thing admired.
Protection superstition
The evil eye
The evil eye: a look of envy causes misfortune; blue glass charms deflect it. First recorded: Sumerian texts, roughly 3000 BC. That makes it roughly 5,000 years old — the oldest of the 45 superstitions we have dated.
- Earliest record
- c. 3000 BC Sumerian texts
- Written down in
- 1867 Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire
Record: John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore (London: Frederick Warne, 1867).
When it actually starts
How old is this one
First recorded
Sumerian texts, roughly 3000 BC
That makes it
roughly 5,000 years old
Rank by age
Oldest of 45 dated here
Category
Protection
The oldest belief in this set by a wide margin, appearing in Sumerian, Greek, Roman, Jewish and Islamic sources. The idea is consistent across all of them: envy directed at someone can harm them, particularly the admired and the newly fortunate.
No dated superstition here was written down earlier; the other 44 all came later.
18 pages · printable
The 2027 Sky Calendar — free PDF
Every retrograde, eclipse, new and full moon of 2027 to the minute, already converted to your city. A month to a page, ready to print.
Primary source
As it was written down in 1867
“The influence of the ‘evil eye’ is felt as strongly in this county as in any other part of the world, and various means are resorted to in order to prevent its effects. ‘Drawing blood above the mouth’ of the person suspected is the favourite antidote in the neighbourhood of Burnley…”
“Spitting three times in the person’s face; turning a live coal on the fire; and exclaiming, ‘The Lord be with us,’ are other means of averting its influence.”
John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore (London: Frederick Warne, 1867) — read the original text.
The remedies Harland and Wilkinson heard of in Lancashire and the Yorkshire Dales in the 1860s.
The versions people follow
What exactly is believed
Children and animals are most at risk
Babies, livestock and new possessions are thought to be especially vulnerable to praise.
Blue eye amulets
The nazar, a blue glass eye, is hung in homes, cars and on babies in Turkey, Greece and the Middle East to reflect the gaze back.
Compliments with a caveat
Praise is followed by a protective phrase — "mashallah", "ptoo ptoo", "God bless" — to take away the envy.
How the bad luck is traditionally undone
Remedies vary by region: dropping oil into water to see if it spreads, prayers said by an older woman, burning salt, or spitting lightly after a compliment.
Where it lives today
Belief in the evil eye is recorded across a vast area from the Mediterranean to South Asia, and nazar amulets have become fashion jewelry far beyond it.
What people say
A look of envy causes misfortune; blue glass charms deflect it.What is going on
The one superstition here that describes something socially real — envy exists and does affect how people are treated. The charm is the fictional part, not the problem it addresses.Where it applies. Mediterranean, Middle East, South Asia, Latin America. Strongest continuous tradition of any belief on this list.
Other protection superstitions
Nearest in age
The evil eye is the oldest of the 45 dated superstitions here. Of those, 3 date from 1900 or later and 14 predate the common era.
First-recorded dates are the earliest documented appearance in written sources, not the earliest possible origin — an unrecorded practice can be older. How the dating works and where it is uncertain →
Sources
Statements of fact on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. How we choose and check sources: editorial policy.
Cite this page
AstroHot. “Evil Eye Superstition: Origin, Meaning and When It Began.” Accessed October 28, 2026. https://astrohot.com/superstitions/evil-eye/
For Wikipedia
{{cite web |title=Evil Eye Superstition: Origin, Meaning and When It Began |url=https://astrohot.com/superstitions/evil-eye/ |website=AstroHot |access-date=2026-10-28}}