The evil eye is one of the oldest beliefs humans have, and one of the most widespread. It appears independently in Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Latin American and Eastern European traditions - mal de ojo, nazar, ayin hara, mati, malocchio. Cultures that had no contact with each other arrived at the same idea.
The core of it is consistent: that concentrated envy or ill-will, often unintentional, can attach to a person and interfere with their luck, health and energy. Traditionally it’s most associated with being admired - praised babies, visible good fortune, a run of things going well that other people noticed.
I want to write about this carefully, because “signs you’ve been cursed” is the single most exploited topic in my industry. Whole businesses run on convincing people they’re afflicted and selling the cure.
So this article has two halves: what the traditions say, and how to tell whether it applies to you.
The signs traditionally associated with it
Across most traditions, the same cluster appears:
- A sudden turn in luck, particularly right after a period when things were going visibly well
- Persistent tiredness without medical explanation, worse in the morning
- Headaches, nausea or yawning that begin in specific company
- Objects breaking or being lost in unusual concentration
- Feeling drained after seeing a particular person, sometimes with no unpleasantness in the interaction itself
- Sleep disturbance - waking at the same hour, unusually vivid unpleasant dreams
- A sense of being watched or weighed down with no obvious source
- Multiple areas going wrong at once - work, health and relationships together, rather than one at a time
Now the honest part
Every single one of those has ordinary explanations, and for most people the ordinary explanation is the correct one.
Persistent tiredness is a symptom of anaemia, thyroid problems, sleep apnoea, depression and about forty other things. If you’re exhausted for weeks, see a doctor before you see me. I mean this literally: I’ve told clients this and I’ll keep doing it. Spiritual work alongside medical care is fine. Spiritual work instead of medical care is how people get hurt.
Feeling drained around a particular person usually means that person is difficult to be around. That’s real, and worth taking seriously, but it isn’t necessarily supernatural.
Runs of bad luck are also how randomness actually looks. Genuinely random events cluster; we notice the clusters and look for a cause. It’s one of the most reliably documented features of how human attention works.
And a sudden downturn after a good period is frequently just regression to the mean, which is unsatisfying but usually true.
How to tell the difference
The traditions themselves are more discriminating than the internet is. Broadly, the signs are taken seriously when:
- The onset is sharp and datable - you can name the week
- It follows a specific encounter, often one involving admiration or envy
- It’s disproportionate - the scale of what’s going wrong doesn’t match anything happening in your life
- It’s resistant - medical and practical explanations have been checked and don’t account for it
- It affects several unrelated areas at once, rather than one
One or two signs on the list above, in an otherwise ordinary period, is almost certainly an ordinary period. Anyone who tells you otherwise before assessing your situation is selling something.
Most bad weeks are bad weeks. That is not a comforting answer, but it is usually the true one.
What you can do yourself, for free
Most traditional protections are things you can do without paying anyone, and I’d rather you tried them first.
Salt. A bowl of salt water left in a room overnight and poured away outside in the morning. One of the most widespread cleansing practices in existence, and it costs nothing.
The blue eye amulet. Nazar boncuğu in Turkish tradition, worn or hung near an entrance. Traditionally, a cracked one is said to have done its work.
Red thread. Tied at the wrist. Common across Slavic, Jewish and South Asian practice.
Ruda (rue). In Latin American tradition, kept in the home or used in a limpia. Note that rue is toxic if ingested and can irritate skin - handle it as a herb, not a tea.
Smoke. Herbs varying by tradition - rosemary, bay, juniper, incense - carried through the house, corners first. If you use white sage, buy from Indigenous sellers; it’s overharvested and it matters where it comes from.
Distance from the source. If a specific person consistently precedes the feeling, less contact with that person is the oldest remedy there is, and it isn’t superstition.
Try these for a couple of weeks. A significant number of people find that’s the end of it.
If everything in your life is evidence of a curse, then nothing is.
When a removal is worth considering
If the pattern is sharp, disproportionate, resistant to practical explanation, has persisted for months, and self-help hasn’t shifted it, an assessment is reasonable.
What that involves, in my practice: I assess first, and I tell you honestly what I find. Often what I find is general accumulated heaviness rather than anything intentional - in which case an aura cleansing is the right service and it costs less than a removal. I say so, and I’d rather have a smaller order than an unnecessary one.
If I find nothing, I tell you that too, and refund you. That happens.
What I’d ask you to remember
The evil eye is a real belief with genuine cultural depth, and dismissing it entirely misses something people across the world have found meaningful for thousands of years.
It’s also the most common lever used to extract money from frightened people. Both things are true. Anyone who diagnoses you with a curse before assessing your situation, who found you rather than the other way round, or who tells you it must be dealt with tonight, is running the second thing while invoking the first.
If you’ve tried the practical things and the pattern hasn’t shifted, submit a free case analysis. I’ll tell you what I see - including if what I see is nothing.