# The eye bead

**Nazar*; *nazar boncuğu**

**Known today as.** A bead of handmade glass worked in rings of dark blue, white, light blue, and black, like an eye.

Kind: Amulet

## What was it used for?

Pinned on newborn babies and hung in houses, shops, and cars and on horses, to draw the first glance of the evil eye away from the wearer.

## What does modern science say?

Many cultures of the Mediterranean and the Middle East keep some such amulet against the evil eye.

## What lore surrounds it?

Eye amulets are old. Elworthy counted the Egyptian “mystic eye” the commonest Egyptian amulet after the scarab, with whole necklaces of them in blue enamel in the British Museum, and found eyes still painted on the bows of Maltese boats, as the Egyptians and Etruscans had painted them.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia holds that superstition's “apparent success … can mostly be accounted for by natural causes,” and that the evil eye “is still dreaded in many countries.” Pliny, in his book of remedies, recalls “certain men of a monstrous nature, whose gaze is endowed with powers of fascination,” and the Roman custom “to counteract fascinations” of invoking “the Nemesis of the Greeks; whose statue, for this reason, has been placed in the Capitol at Rome, although the goddess herself possesses no Latin name.”

## Sources

- Elworthy, F. T. (1895). *The Evil Eye*. London: John Murray.
- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Superstition.” newadvent.org/cathen/14339a.htm
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 28.6, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 28.5, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies, University of Kansas (n.d.). *Nazar*. crees.ku.edu/nazar

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*The eye bead.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-03. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/eye-bead

Historical description, not medical advice.