Superstition, evil eye and superstition difference of perception by young people and the elderly of Sicily

Abstract

Superstition is a set of beliefs and ritual practices of irrational nature, typical of the underdeveloped background. It found its own space and its followers in every age and culture by meddling on thought and people’s behaviours in decisive way. Christianity, for instance, ended up by assimilating all the things remaining from the ancient pagan worships in the first centuries of life. Also in the sphere of laical culture, the term superstition housed in all the beliefs contrasting with rationality and belonging to the imagery universe: from astrology to various forms of divination. Even today, superstition survives by all the people and settles in different social classes, from the lowest to the highest. The primitive man, searching for answers to events such as thunder and lightning, eclipses, birth and death, knowing not the law of nature and having not acquired sufficient scientific knowledge yet, began to ascribe the reasons of those events to invisible spirits. Different are the forms through which superstition reveals itself. Among these, we will mention touching wood, four-leaf clover, thirteen people. To these forms it is associated the belief very common of the existence of months and lucky and unlucky days. The evil eye is one of the most rooted popular belief in humankind; it gives to the gaze of certain men and women the power to produce some effects on the observed person. The traditional “it’s not true, but I’ll believe”, is genuinely logic: maybe it does not work, but avoiding a specific behaviour costs nothing so it is better to be on the safe side and be relaxed.