土耳其人家门口挂着的蓝眼珠，是用来防“恶眼”的

When you travel to Turkey, Greece and similar places, you can see a blue glass disc almost everywhere: at shop entrances, on taxi rearview mirrors, and on children's clothes. Deep blue, with a white ring in the middle, then a lighter blue ring inside that, and a black dot right in the center, like a wide-open eye. Turks call this thing a "nazar."

It is used to ward off the "evil eye."

The concept of the evil eye works like this: if someone looks at your child, your new car, or your business with envy or admiration, their gaze carries a kind of power that brings misfortune to whatever is being looked at. A child suddenly running a fever, a cow stopping milk production, a newly opened shop getting no customers, or a new car having an accident the next day—all of these could be the result of someone looking at them.

The most troublesome part is that this look isn't necessarily malicious. Often, the person looking doesn't even realize it themselves. So in Turkey, when you compliment someone's child, you must say "Mashallah" (meaning "God has willed it"), which means: I am sincerely complimenting you, please don't let my words bring him bad luck. If you compliment without saying this phrase, the other person's mother will get very nervous, and some will even spit lightly on the ground three times, meaning to break the effect of what was just said.

The function of the nazar is to catch that gaze. It acts like an eye; when someone stares at you, they see it first, and the gaze is drawn to it and reflected back. If it cracks, or falls and shatters on the ground, the family doesn't get angry—instead, they breathe a sigh of relief: it means that this time, it took the hit for you. A broken one must be replaced with a new one.

After a child is born, the mother will pin a small nazar onto the child's clothes with a safety pin, and keep it pinned there until the child can walk.

Some say this custom has a history of three thousand years. Ancient Greek pottery was painted with eyes, and ancient Egyptian tombs had the "Eye of Horus"; people over two thousand years ago were already dealing with this sort of thing.

Today, in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, thousands of blue eyes hang at shop entrances, spinning in the wind, all staring at the people passing by.

#Folklore #网络转载 #世界民俗