A mother whose child has once been struck by the evil eye will soon take the advice of the other women in her community and acquire an amulet for the child to wear to repel the evil eye in the future. This sort of charm is called a repellent talisman or apotropaic charm.
The design of these charms varies from one area to another. The simplests are threads or cords, often red. More conspicuous are the amulets, often in the form of an eye, a hand, a horseshoe, or a combinations of two elements, such as the popular eye-in-hand and horseshoe-and-eyes. There are other, locally popular charms as well that derive from other iconographic and symbolic sources.
In Greece and Turkey, the most common form of apotropaic charm is the blue glass eye charm, which "mirrors back" the blue of the evil eye and thus "confounds" it. Turks make beautiful blue blown glass charms in the all-seeing eye and eye-in-hand patterns, as well as in regionally-specific forms i call the horseshoe-and-eyes and eyes-all-over styles. |
