The Evil Eye

The 'evil eye' traditionally refers to an envious or harmful gaze — the belief that a look charged with envy, jealousy, or even excessive admiration can bring misfortune to the person or thing being looked at. The concept is ancient and appears across many cultures, from the Mediterranean to South Asia and beyond.

A nazar (Turkish: nazar boncuğu) is an eye-shaped amulet — most commonly made of blue glass — designed to ward off the evil eye. Rather than being the 'evil eye' itself, the nazar is the protection against it: it 'stares back' at the envious gaze and deflects the harm. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.

Blue glass beads have been made in the Eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia for centuries. The colour blue is traditionally associated with protection in the region. Some scholars suggest the choice of blue was also connected to the rarity of blue eyes in parts of the Mediterranean and Middle East, where a blue gaze might have been considered particularly striking — and therefore particularly in need of a counter-gaze.

The belief in the evil eye is one of the oldest and most widespread protective beliefs in human history. It appears in ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, and Roman texts, and continues in folk traditions across the Mediterranean, the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America. The specific glass-bead form now called nazar boncuğu is strongly associated with Turkey, where glass eye-beads have been hand-made for generations, particularly in the town of Görece.

These terms are often used interchangeably, but they describe different things. The 'evil eye' is the harmful gaze — the thing you are protecting against. The 'nazar' is the amulet — the thing that provides the protection. Saying 'evil eye bracelet' to mean the amulet is common in modern usage, but technically it conflates the threat with the shield.

The hamsa (or khamsa) is a separate, hand-shaped amulet also used for protection against the evil eye, particularly in North African and Middle Eastern Jewish and Muslim communities. While the nazar uses an eye to deflect the gaze, the hamsa uses an open hand. The two are distinct symbols with distinct histories, though they are sometimes combined in modern jewellery.

Eye amulets have been pinned to the clothing of babies, hung above doorways, attached to animals, placed in vehicles, and displayed in shops and businesses. In many traditions, anything that might attract envy — a new baby, a new home, a beautiful possession — was considered vulnerable and was given protection. When a nazar cracks or breaks, it is traditionally believed to have done its work by absorbing a harmful gaze, and is replaced.

Today the nazar and related eye amulets are found worldwide as jewellery, home décor, phone charms, and fashion accessories. They have crossed well beyond their original cultural context and are often used as a general 'good luck' symbol or simply for their aesthetic. The original protective meaning is sometimes preserved, sometimes softened, and sometimes lost entirely.

The most common misconception is that the amulet and the harmful gaze are the same thing. Another is that the evil eye is exclusively a Turkish or Islamic belief — in fact, it is one of the most cross-cultural protective beliefs in the world, found in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and folk traditions. The modern rainbow of evil-eye colours (see our Colour Guide) is also sometimes presented as an ancient system, but most of the non-blue colour meanings are modern additions drawn from general colour symbolism.