The Evil Eye and Evil Averting Charms

Apotropaioi 2  16 x 20 . (counterclockwise:) Bull's horn, amber eye,
 hamsa, cimaruta, coral horn and  natural branch, blue eye

As mentioned in a previous post, my maternal great grandmother was said to be a wise woman—a “witch.”  She had about a dozen children, some of which were lost in the 1918 flu pandemic, and she outlived a few husbands. She divined and cast spells, both healing and threatening, but her main teaching was the same as that of other Italian cunning folk: think positive. The positive-thinking bit was not an extension of the New-Thought Positive-Thinking Manifestation-Spirituality scene, though. It was a strategy to keep the malocchio—the evil eye—away.

Apotropaioi 3 10x12 Bulls horn with eye pendants,
coral amulet (horn and natural coral branch) and
cimaruta

Concerns about the evil eye and apotropaic (evil-averting) magic date back to ancient times and are central to Italian folk magic. It at least seemed to be central to the now lost folk magic tradition of my family. When I moved into my grandfather’s house after his death, I found it chock-full of talismans that were groupings of Christian paraphernalia and evil-averting objects. They took the form of rosaries, blessed Easter Sunday palm and/or devotional scapulars bound up with cornos (“Italian horns”) and similar charms, glass eyes, or horseshoes. Curiously, I found many of these curios dangling from rusted spikes driven into the walls in the backs of closets or concrete pillars in the cellar. A bull’s horn in which two small glass amber eyes were beaded hung over the main entrance of the house. Today that same horn  guards the entrance of my present living space.

What is the evil eye? Simply, it is envy—the green-eyed monster.  The act of turning an envious or covetous glance—or thought—at someone was believed to vampirically sap that person’s life juice. Calamities such as illness (especially the illness or death of a child) or impotence are traditionally attributed to the evil eye. 

Why wear an eye to avert the evil eye? The rationale is that its unwanted energy is being deflected or reflected back on its source, as an image bouncing off a mirror.

In homage to my great grandmother, I went through a period in which I was making eye amulets out of polymer clay and glass. They weren’t really polished enough to market but I used them in these photo still lives celebrating apotropaic charms.

Apotropaioi 1  18 x 24

What have we got here....

Grimoire/spell books.  Modern folk magic practitioners/witches are told to keep grimoire or "Books of Shadows." Historians tell us that some folk practitioners--if they were literate--kept spell books or journals of their magical practice. These journals may have been handed down to an apprentice. "Grimoire" more refer to spell books and journals of ceremonial magicians and sorcerers. A "Book of Shadows" was the name given to a witch's journal by Gerald Gardner (founder of Wicca). It was a term he picked up from a science fiction novel.

Bowl of oil and water. To identify whether the evil eye was afoot and who cast it and to remove the evil eye, the mago or maga would study the patterns of oil dropped in water.

Hamsa hand. An evil-averting charm common to the Judaic tradition. It is said to be of more ancient and ubiquitous Middle Eastern origin and represents the hand/eye of God (or Goddess/Holy Woman).

Nazar.  A Slavic and Middle Eastern version of the evil-averting eye amulet. Why blue? Because blue eyes were uncommon in darker-skinned, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures and symbolized being sapped of color. Amber eyes also are  used as evil-eye averting charms in Italian folk culture. (The bull's horn in the image has an amber eye affixed to it. See the other images in this photo montage. It used to have 2 eyes but one is now lost :-(  ).

Hag stone. Stones with natural holes through them are revered in European folk magic for averting the evil eye and witchcraft. In Italian folk magic, such stones are said to help a person connect with the Fairy realm.

Red coral. Red coral has been used as an evil-averting, health-attracting charm since Roman times. Amulets of coral carved into horns (corno) are meant to protect boys and men from the evil eye. Amulets of natural branches of coral protect girls and women.

Scapular. A tie or fabric necklace of sorts that has lapels with an image of the Madonna or a saint and a short prayer of dedication and protection.

Rosaries. Catholic artifacts used for meditation and prayer that also are used for protection combined with cultural superstitious and magical accouterments in common folk culture.

Blessed palm. On Palm Sunday--a Catholic holy day that precedes Easter, parishioners commemorate the story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, where he was greeted like a rock star. His path was strewn with palm fronds in reverence, and so fresh palm fronds are handed to parishioners on that day. Some folks hang the palm in their homes for blessing and protection (sometimes cutting the pieces to make crosses or other symbols). 

Bull's horn. Another evil-averting items that dates back to very ancient times. The horn represents virility and plenty and is the prototype of the "horn of plenty."

Candle.  A ubiquitous symbol of illumination.

Missing from this image, but seen in the others in this series is the cimaruta. The cimaruta (the "c" is pronounced as "ch") is an amulet meant to represent a sprig of rue. The rue plant is thought to have evil-averting properties in Italian folklore. On each branch of the cimaruta sprig is a magical symbol also meant to avert evil and provide vitality to the wearer.

#evileye

What's a Witch and is a Strega a Strix?

La Striga 14x18 digital image Dee Rapposelli

Many neopagans self-identify as witches. And I did too at one point in my history, thinking myself a chip off the old block when my grandfather, after learning that I dabbled in palm- and card-reading, announced that I was following in the footsteps of his mother. He proudly announced that she was a strega—a witch.

Now, I knew that one of my maternal great grandmothers, who hailed from Bari, Italy, was a wise woman. Like many other people’s Old World great grandmothers, she divined and cast spells and was a living lexicon of folklore, folk healing, and superstition. Her philosophy was that of other Italian cunning folk: keep a positive attitude and not speak of disease or death lest doing so attract negative forces.

           

But my great grandmother was not a strega exactly. Perhaps she was a maga  (a lady mage) or a donna di fiori (an outsider), a fattuchiera (a fixer), or a myriad other regional names that people gave to local healers, diviners, charmers, and “unbewitchers.” No one in their right mind called him- or herself a witch anywhere in Europe until the latter half of the 19^th century when a romantic pseudo-history about paganism and the whole Western Occultist scene began to develop.

For a long blah blah blah about the history of the birth of Neopaganism, Wicca, and modern occultism (plus bibliographical references for claims made in today’s blog), see this post from an old blog of mine from days when I was “in the scene.” Yes, the geek alert is in effect.

Witches were thought to be malignant supernatural creatures that caused disease and ruin. They cavorted with demons and were dedicated to inflicting calamity and despair.  Their imagined human counterparts were bewitchers practicing malicious and coercive magic and diabolism. And the name for such practitioners was streghe.

Strega, the Italian word for “witch” (plural, streghe), is derived from the Latin word for screech owl,  striga. The Greek term, adapted into the English language, is strix (plural, striges). In Greek and Roman mythology striges were vampiric birds of prey that feasted on human flesh and blood—often that of infants. They also liked to seduce and destroy men. By the medieval era, they were equated with vampires.

Striga  14x18 digital print Dee Rapposelli

A strix may basically be a Greco-Roman version of the Semitic Lilith. Although Lilith is nowadays (misguidedly) positioned as an ancient suffragette and paean of female independence and sexual freedom, she originally was a demon responsible for miscarriage, crib death, maternal death, nocturnal emissions, and impotence. The myth of Lilith (beyond the “I wanna be on top” part) was meant to explain why these tragedies occurred. So it seems reasonable to conjecture that myths of striges feasting on human infants and sucking the life out of men were meant to explain infant mortality and emasculation--as the myth of the Semitic demon Lilith was meant to do.

I point this out as a contemplation on what is lost in translation and paradigmatic shifts. Memory, history, and labels are not fixed but fluid, malleable, and fabricated.

Striga/siren studies

For my sirens series, I developed a few pics of creatures that could also qualify as striges. Why? Because I simply have a fascination with mythological forms that, in part, are overtly meant to express something horrifically ambivalent about female sexuality but may have another meaning.  Although the horror of the siren may be a covertext for concepts about sublime spiritual mysteries, the striga is meant to be a monster and explain why monstrous things sometimes happen to human beings—male and female. Until very recently, historically speaking, the strega/witch was meant to explain the same thing.

Let's Get Digital with the Azoth Mandala

An interesting Western mandala, highly searchable on the Web if you type “Azoth” into a Google images search is the twelfth in the series of 14 plates within a 17th century alchemical picture book called Azoth of the Philosophers. It is traditionally attributed to one Basilius Valentinus, said to be a German monk and alchemist, but it is more likely the product of a chemist named Johann Thölde (1565-1614). Valentinus may simply be a legendary character.

Read more details about Azoth on my other blog.  Another one for the intellectually geekier among you.

I took a fascination with alchemy and this particular image several years ago. In fact, I painted a rough image on a board that I used as an altar table for a few years’ foray into Western Occultism. I recently decided to chuck the old, crudely painted image and make a new, improved digital rendering. I even contacted my friend Johnes Ruta, a fine arts curator who runs the Azoth Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, to ask if I could use his likeness as the bearded man who appears in the center of the original image.

Azoth of the Philosophers 24x24 inch digital print by Dee Rapposelli. Want one? Contact me via my Website.

Azoth is a term in philosophical alchemy that refers to latent, transformational energy. Some say that it is derived from an Arabic word for mercury and others that it stands for A-to-Z—a variation on alpha-omega.

The original mandala presumably was a meditation on alchemical laboratory processes as well as a meditation on the transmutation from death and decay to numinous perfection.

The image consists of a 7-pointed star, representing the 7 planets known to the medieval world: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Sol, Mercury, and Luna. Similar to chakras, the planets have symbolic themes that have correspondences with levels of human consciousness. Words that  describe the journey through the spheres are Visita, Interiora, Terra, Rectificando, Invenies, Occultum, and Lapidum (the Visit, the Interiorization, Earth, Rectification, Discovery, the Secret, and the Stone), which have meaning in relation to alchemical laboratory processes as well as the journey toward self-transformation and perfection.

Although the order of the process is intact, I did change the sequence of the planets from the sequence shown in the original image. My intent was to more closely pair the philosophical planets with the chakras of Eastern lore. Why? In part because modern Western folks are more onto Eastern chakra lore—however dummied-down and candy-coated--than their own mystical/Tantric traditions. Medieval alchemists and their forebears did see that planets as energies reflected in their own psyches that had to be journeyed through and transcended in pursuit of freedom and enlightenment. In some systems, Saturn was the viewed as the dastardly demiurge who barred the gates of Paradise and left humans wallowing in their mortality. In others, Saturn was equated with the transcendent godhead and divine ground. My lineup comes from my own personal work with the planets.

The triangle in the image depicts the alchemical trinity of sulfur, mercury, and salt. Sulfur corresponds with the solar principle, mercury with the lunar principle, and salt with matter and the body. The solar principle is symbolized by a king astride a lion, and the lunar principle is symbolized by a queen riding a sea creature.

The doves at the top of the mandala represent the “quintessence”—the fifth element and divine essence to which the alchemical adept aspires. (The traditional image sports a salamander representing the element of fire in the left upper corner and an eagle, representing air in the upper right corner.)

Who is the bearded man in the center of the image?  It is your spiritual ideal and aspiration. Modern-day alchemist Dennis William Hauck claims that medieval alchemists meditated on images like this mandala and that they sometimes placed a mirror in the center of the image to remind themselves that, in the words of an ancient Hindu sage “That thou art.”

Visit Hauck's Alchemy lab  for a more in depth discussion on the Azoth mandala.

Visualizing Your Spiritual Ideal

In traditional religion, the spiritual ideal is the hallowed ideal or personage that a spiritual aspirant wants to emulate or otherwise identify with: Jesus, a saint, a bodhisattva, an avatar, a holy guardian angel, the “higher self” …

(Check out my essay on the Chosen Ideal in a separate blog) For the intellectually geekier among you....

That ideal is usually something treated as “other” although the point is to realize that we are or at least are meant to be that ideal. Most folks opt to idolize their ideal through religious posturing and devotional reveries rather than do the work to really “get,” integrate, and act from their spiritual ideals.

In any case, I tended to think of a “spiritual ideal” in the conventional sense—something having to do with God or angels, devas, avataras, bodhisattvas, or spiritual heroes. My Spiritual Ideal Project was even spurred by an image that popped up during a meditation sit in which I saw myself as a heavenly being—a graceful female entity clad in pink and lime green garb, festooned with flower garlands, sitting on a moon disc and glowing in a sun disc. I began to contemplate what it “feels like” to be that in hopes I could hardwire the thought form into my consciousness. To help solidify the image, I made a picture of it. Then, I began to ask friends what their spiritual ideal was and how I might portray it in portraiture.

I was surprised and impressed by how different folks interpreted the question. Presented here are the first few images of this Project.

My friend DT as The Goddess of Sensual Desire. I was kind of  surprised when DT's response to "What is your spiritual

ideal?" was "I want to be the goddess of sensual desire" because, before beginning this project, I equated "spiritual ideal" with some ethereal lofty religiously spiritual concept. But she honestly really does value the "good life,," and her response helped me get my feet back on planet Earth.  My first thoughts were to work her image into a Babalon Rising type of motif, but I wanted to convey the  luxury, joy, and hospitality that reflects her ebullient personality. I constructed this from freehand drawing and photo manipulation in PhotoShop Elements. It prints as a 24 x 24 inch glicee.

My good friend EC, author of the blog Neognostica's Book of  Thoth--A Modern Translation Ed is into planetary magic inspired by work developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. His response to my question was to say that he wanted the wisdom of the cosmos to be reflected in his actions--like the famous Hermetic adage:  As above, so below. H suggested I make an image of a fellow  walking on a lake in which the planets are reflected. This image, is constructed from freehand drawing and photo manipulation in PhotoShop Elements. It includes pics of planets and landscape from NASA.  It prints as an 18 x 24 glicee.

SS is the head steward of the Scalzi Riverwalk Nature Preserve in Stamford, Connecticut. She intrepidly went into a neglected, overgrown, roadside riverwalk that had become a haven for drug activity and illicit loitering and cleaned it up for safe and thriving community use. Together with a band of volunteers and folks training to be gardeners, horticulurists, and land managers, she is restoring the area to its natural habitat--on a shoestring budget: weeding-out invasive species, planting and protecting native plants, and helping to restore native wildlife to the area.  When I asked her what her spiritual ideal was, she simply replied, " When I die, my remains must be placed in an oak grove." She proceeded to tell me that oak--and trees in general--do not naturally grow as singular plants but grow in groves where their roots intertwine so that that grove is actually one single organism. Her spiritual aspiration is to be one with that. This was the first image I ever made that is completely constructed from photo manipulation (no drawing) in PhotoShop Elements. She would never go for that glam shift I put her in--but I figured she could look a little sexy if she were an oak-grove sylph.  It prints as an 18 x 24 image on paper.

Sirens Energy of the Depths

First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men's bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them.

--from The Odyssey by Homer

Sirens…luridly irresistible mythical creatures that lure men to their deaths with the sweetness of their songs. Half woman, half bird, sirens are most famously known from Homer’s epic the Odyssey. They are depicted as living on the rocky isles off the coast of Sicily. There they entrap passing sailors with intoxicating sounds that cause profound stupor resulting in death. When Odysseus and his crew manage to resist them, the sirens fly into craven tiffs and take fatal nosedives from their perches on rocky cliffs. They descend to the Netherworld where, instead of singing, they wail in mourning for the dead.

So maybe this motif is drenched in metaphors about sexual impulse, gender conflicts, orgasm, loss of self, and death. But I read somewhere some time ago that sirens may be related to the Egyptian Ba—the part of the soul that traverses the underworld. Along those lines, I also somewhere brushed by the speculation that sirens—and mermaids, too—were psychopomps, beings that met folks as they transitioned from life to death and guided them to and through the Underworld. The fatal songs of sirens (later attributed to mermaids) may be symbolic of truths a person can’t handle while embodied. Like seeing the face of God, the song of the siren will wrench you from your mortal existence and deposit you in another mode of being. After all sirens were said to be sisters of the Morae (the Fates) who spun, wove, and cut the thread of life and may have been the collective prototype of the triple goddess.

Is the song of the siren horrible or ineffable, a curse or a grace, does it communicate a wisdom so profound as to snap the mortal coil and its lifeline and lead beyond, beyond to the far shore? Such questions fascinate me along with the idea, derived from dissection of myths and fairy tales, that a dragon (in us) really wants to be a princess and can transform into one when saved (from itself) through a hero’s transformative journey from soul to spirit.

#mermaids