Dive into the mysterious world of the evil eye with expert Antonio Pagliarulo on this edition of The Paranormal Podcast. Is there more to those envious glances and negative vibes than we think? Antonio reveals how this ancient belief still impacts our modern lives, recounting spine-chilling real-life stories of those who’ve felt its malevolent touch.
Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, Antonio’s insights will compel you to reconsider the energies you invite into your life—and the ones you ward off. If you’ve ever felt the unexplained cloud of negativity affect your relationships, health, or good fortune, this is one episode you can’t afford to miss. Equip yourself with the knowledge to turn the tables on the evil eye and reclaim control over your own destiny.
You can find Antonio’s book, The Evil Eye, at Amazon: https://amzn.to/44E115d
Thanks Antonio!
JIM’S MAUSOLEUM OF MERCH
Support the shows! Get spooky gear from Jim’s Mausoleum of Merch: https://jimharoldsmausoleum.etsy.com
This post contains Amazon affiliate links that benefit Jim Harold Media when you make a qualifying purchase. Thank you for your support!
TRANSCRIPT
Announcer:
This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.
Jim:
Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I’m Jim Harold, and so glad to be with you once again. And today we’re going to talk about a fascinating subject, one that I’m familiar with because my wife is of Italian descent and that is of the evil eye, and I think that you’re really going to enjoy it. And something else I hope you enjoy is my new mausoleum. You may have heard about this on the Campfire, but if you haven’t, let me introduce you to my new mausoleum. Now, I don’t mean that kind of mausoleum. Hopefully there’ll be many decades from now before I need one of those. But we have our new Mausoleum of Merch, and it is great because that’s where we have our Campfire t-shirts, our stay spooky t-shirts, guest books, all kinds of things. I think that you’re really going to enjoy it, and you can check that out over at jimharold.com/merch. M E R C H, that’s jim harald.com/merch, M E R C H.
And the cool thing about that is it takes you to my influencer storefront on Amazon and you can purchase through that storefront and we get a commission on what is earned, and it helps support free shows like this one. So for example, if you wanted to get my t-shirt, you would go over there, jimharold.com/merch. Click on the link there, take you to my storefront. You can pick out the t-shirt. And the t-shirts are really nice. They’re made by Amazon Merch on Demand. Also, you can shop for other recommended things we have over there. We have a Campfire Essentials section. We have a guest book section. We are, for example, today’s guest, his book will be on there and a number of books over the years, and we’re trying to build that out. So please check that out.
It’s a brand new thing. We’re really excited. The great thing I love about it is if you’re an Amazon Prime member, for example, in the States, you can order from there. And many of the items, including our merch, has prime delivery, free delivery, and just a very cool thing. Check it out, jimharold.com/merch and it does help support our shows. And speaking of shows, we’ve got a great one here for you today, all about the evil eye.
Now, I’m really excited about this interview because it has a personal connection for me. And today we’re going to talk all about The Evil Eye: the History, Mystery, and Magic of the Quiet Curse. And our guest is Antonio Pagliarulo, and we’re so glad to have him with us. He is the author of that book, and for me, it has a personal connection because as I was telling Antonio off the air, my wife Dar, who many of you know from our shows and our live streams, her parents were, well, her dad was directly from Italy. He immigrated to the US in the 1960s, and then her mom was a first generation Italian in the States, and her grandfather was also directly and grandmother were directly from Italy. So the family’s very steeped in Italianism, I guess. So when I saw this, I’m like, oh my God, I’ve heard about the evil eye, I’ve heard about the Maloik, and I want to talk about this. Is it real? Do we need to protect ourselves from the Maloik and the evil eye? Is it just Italians or is it broader cultural phenomena, this idea of an evil eye? And Antonio has a great background to discuss this. He writes regularly about spirituality, witchcraft and Paganism, and the intersection of folk magic with popular culture and religion. He’s been published by the Washington Post, NBC News, the New York Daily News, Religion News Service, and the Wild Hunt. He is the son of Italian immigrants and he has been schooled since childhood in the ways of Italian folk magic. As such, his practice draws from Paganism, Roman Catholicism, evil eye magic, and the tarot. Antonio holds a BA in sociology from Purchase College State University of New York, and he lives in New York City. You can find him online antoniopagliarulo.com, and we’re so glad to have him with us. Antonio, thank you for joining us today on the program.
Antonio Pagliarulo:
Oh, thank you, Jim. It’s a great, great pleasure to be here.
Jim:
Well, I just have to say that I’m really glad to do this. I’m really excited to do this. I actually saw the book in a bookstore and I said, how did we miss this one? And reached out to your folks, and they were kind enough to get us on the schedule. So thank you for taking time. So when we talk about the evil eye, when did you first become aware of the evil eye as an Italian and children of immigrants or child of immigrants?
Antonio Pagliarulo:
So as you said earlier, yeah, my parents are from Italy. We grew up, my siblings and I grew up, in what you would call a two family house in the Bronx, and we lived upstairs and my grandparents, my maternal grandparents, lived downstairs in the apartment. And growing up, there was never a time when I didn’t see it because I would come into my grandmother’s kitchen and there would be bowls of water, sometimes two, sometimes five, and they’d be all over the kitchen on the counter here and there. And she wasn’t cooking. This was, as I learned later on, when you ask and you see it, she was diagnosing and in some cases removing Maloik or the evil eye from people. And this was something that she had been passed, it had been passed on to her from her own mother. And then she of course passed it on, and it’s something that had been in the family and has been in the family for a very long time.
So I grew up always seeing it, and people would call all the time from – not only people she knew, neighbors, but she’d get phone calls from other states and people would say, oh, I’m so-and-so’s friend. They said, you can do this. And she would always do it. She would always accommodate people. And she wasn’t also the only person from her town in Italy. There were other women and other men who had been passed down certain prayers or certain incantations and certain methods to do it. And those methods differ from region to region, from family to family. So they’re all different prayers and ways to diagnose it and remove it. But I just grew up seeing it all the time. And with regard, my grandfather believed profoundly in the power of nature, and he did all of his planting. We had these lush Italian, as I call them, the tomato gardens and the basil in the backyard.
And he would do all of this according to the phases of the moon. He also made wine in the basement of our home.
Jim:
That sounds familiar.
Antonio Pagliarulo:
Sounds familiar, huh?. And he would do this after we made the wine when I was a little older, we would always, my brother and I would help him, and sometimes my sister and I would join and help him, and he would put the wine in these big jugs and jars, and then he would move them up further and further based upon the phases of the moon. He was also very, very big arms, hand gestures. And once I remember, I got sick with just a really bad sore throat, and I was standing there and he sat in his chair and he made me do all these hand gestures and I would have to lick my thumb and apply it to somewhere on my throat. And then I had to do this weird hand gesture back and forth, and it was touching this finger to your wrist and this finger to your knuckle.
So he grew up with these things as well. And yet the fascinating thing is that when I say, well, it’s folk magic because this is what they grew up with and what they learned. My grandparents from Italy were devout Roman Catholics. If I said, oh, my grandparents are witches, my grandmother would be standing here right now slapping me with a shoe. She’d say, what are you talking about? That’s not true. We’re Catholics. But they did these things because it’s what they had been taught and it’s what they had been raised with. Did the priest, the local priest or the church necessarily agree with it? No, but she did have a priest ask her to take off Maloik for one of his family members, came right to the back door. I remember that distinctly. So it’s this interesting, as you say, in the intersection of the folk magic and the religion and how it all sort of blends together in its own way. But yes, I grew up with it and saw it, and I always say I feel very blessed to have been raised with the tradition of magic and the magic of tradition.
Jim:
Yeah, it’s really interesting because you actually kind of anticipated what I was going to mention, the fact that you have these folks who are devout Roman Catholics. If you said you’re a magician, they would say, get out of here.
Antonio Pagliarulo:
Yeah, they had what was called in my grandmother’s town, you would sometimes go to a woman who would take off the Malocchio, but they also had men and the man was called, or in dialect, it was Magone, and they would say, you go to Magone to take this off. And that was known as really sort of the magic guy, the guy who would sort of, I think in his case he would take a ball of something and do a prayer and throw it in the fire, but they had these people in these practices. But it was all very much done within the ring, yes, of Catholicism. And they saw no sort of no problem with that. It was a very easy sort of transition to go from the rosary to oil and water and an incantation. So they’re very much so.
Jim:
And just as an aside, it’s interesting you see the parallel and maybe some Caribbean kind of cultures or in places like Louisiana and things, and you see kind of folk magic blending in with Catholicism, and that parallel is kind of interesting. Now, maybe taking a step back, maybe if we can just define the evil eye. Maybe for people who have kind of heard of it, they’re not sure what it is, they kind of have a general idea, but how do you define the evil eye?
Antonio Pagliarulo:
So I define the evil eye. In Italian you refer to it as Malocchio. In Spanish, it’s Mal de Ojo. So it’s called many different things. Ayin Hara in Yiddish, so it’s many different things, but it’s ubiquitous. It’s all around the world, so many cultures, so many countries. But I define the evil eye in three ways. The first is that, well, first of all, let me just say the evil eye is a negative force that is cast via a glance and a look, a certain look. And that force is born from emotion, it’s born from envy, it’s born from greed, resentment, anger, and it is cast, one way is, someone does it very deliberately. They mean to do it. They really are angry at you. They are jealous that you got the job that they thought they had. They’re jealous of what you have. They’re envious of maybe the new relationship, maybe the money in your bank account. Maybe they’re envious of your good health or just the prosperity you’re experiencing, and they genuinely want you to get some bad juju, and they will give you that look because they have it and they intentionally know they’re doing it and they go ahead and do it. That’s one way.
Second way is unintentional, and people get very much, um, I get a lot of questions about what do you mean unintentional? Well, sometimes you can very much give someone a compliment and say, oh, your home is beautiful, and not know that you have a bit of subconscious envy there, and that’s where the practice is. Have you ever seen, people will often spit after a compliment? Sometimes people will make a hand gesture after. In Italian, we made hand gestures all the time when someone gave us a compliment. People will knock wood. People will often say, oh, your home is beautiful, God bless you; your child is beautiful, God bless the child. So they’ll follow it up with something and that those practices are actually to divert the lie in case you’re giving it unconsciously. So it could still be there and we can be present, but you might not really be connected to it or aware of it. So you’re going to go ahead and say, God bless you. You’re going to, some people again will spit. There are all sorts of little sort of rituals that people will do or say. Some people might silently invoke the name of a saint or a certain deity. And the third way that the evil eye is born basically in your life or is cast into your life, is through boasting. This is when people stand on up and you’re constantly, and I always talk about in this instance, the social media aspect of it.
You should absolutely be proud of your achievements. You should be proud of the achievements of your family. You want to share in that happiness. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, but there’s a fine line between celebrating something and really boasting about it. Do you need to post 15 pictures of the new house or just that one? Do you need to constantly talk about how great everything is? Maybe just talking about it briefly and letting everyone know that I’m okay and I’m grateful and I’m doing fine. That’s enough. Versus the doing it so much and talking about it so much and letting everyone know about your plans and how much money you’re going to be spending on this grand vacation next month and my first class tickets and this and that, that’s when you boast about things and it’s tempting fate. You sort of poke the eye and you make it look in your direction because you’re talking too much about your good fortune.
And this was a very, very big deal growing up in my house. Any single time something good happened, I remember my grandparents would very much say, oh, this is wonderful. Congratulations. It was wonderful. You’d get the kiss, you’d get the hug, and all of that was swallowed down. Now, be quiet. Don’t go out there and talk about it. Don’t tell too many people, even the new toy, you got a new toy as a kid, it’s expensive, it’s flashy. You’re going to reveal it little by little. You’re not going to go on out and ride that brand new bike because someone’s going to give it malocchio and it’s going to break or something’s going to happen. So it’s three ways. It’s intentional, it’s unintentional, and then it’s through your own self boasting. And what’s interesting is I always tell people that it’s, the evil eye is the supernatural phenomenon, but it’s born from a very natural place, which is our emotions.
It’s born from envy and what we feel inside and every human being has either felt envy for someone or something. We have also all been on the receiving end of someone’s envy. And so that’s why I think it’s so universal because it’s not something that just a certain group of people have experienced. This is all about being human. This is the human condition. We do feel these emotions. And the book is, I often say the book is a friendly reminder about an unfriendly topic because people don’t want to talk about jealousy and envy and maybe what they’re feeling. But it’s important to recognize that because once you’re aware of the evil eye, that’s half of the journey.
Jim:
I don’t even know if I should mention this, but I had had a situation recently where the show had a milestone, an anniversary, a big one, and I posted about it several times. I’m like, okay, time to cool it now.
Antonio Pagliarulo:
God bless that anniversary
Jim:
A little too much. And also I would think, not saying that there’s anything to it, but it’s also kind of, I don’t know, a governor on behavior. You know what I’m saying? It’s like be humble, be humble, be humble. So not only to protect yourself, but also because it’s a good thing to be humble. I would think that comes into place too. Oh yes. So the question is this, how does, when I have some ideas from my wife’s background and I’ll share some things about what she has had since birth, but you tell me because you’re the expert, how does one protect themselves from the evil eye?
Antonio Pagliarulo:
So there are various ways you can protect yourself from the evil eye. And as I said, I’m going to go the first step in protecting yourself is understanding what the evil eye is and how it manifests. So the first step is being aware of it. So understanding it is how you’re going to get to protecting yourself, your loved ones, your livelihood, your property, because it can strike any aspect of your life. It can have physical symptoms, it can have little blowups in your financial life, in your home, in the car. It’s like when I tell people you look and you say they’re having some bad luck. Well, you could be having some bad luck. Yes, that’s normal, but is it really normal when you think about it that you’re in one week, you’ve gotten two flat tires, the pipe in the basement burst, you had five arguments, now you’ve got some sort of terrible headache that won’t go away.
This is when you start looking up and saying something is just off here that’s defying really any logic. And what the beginning process, I explained this in the book, is learning how to diagnose the Evil Eye, and there are various methods to do that. I was raised and taught with the oil and water method, and anyone who has done this or had a family member do it understands that something happens scientifically or supposed to happen when oil and water don’t mix, but you say a prayer and I go over this in the book. So the first step, and there are various ways to diagnose the evil eye. Once the evil is diagnosed and you say, you know what? I have the eye. Or even if some people can just intuitively sense, you know what I really know, this is the evil eye. I feel it. Various ways to protect yourself.
Number one, I write a lot about the amulets that are very important. Amulets are incredibly significant because they hold great power and they have for extremely historically, very, very, very long time. So amulets are one way. You choose your amulet. You basically form a relationship with your amulet. Just like people form a relationship with certain pieces of jewelry. I’ve said to people, oh, that’s a nice metal around your neck and that’s an amulet. Oh, no, it’s not. What do you mean I just wear it because someone gave it to me? Well, yeah, but you put it on every day and it’s part of you energetically. So amulets are one way. Then there are different herbal remedies that people can do. Something as simple as you’re going out, you think you’re going to a new meeting, you’re meeting new people, maybe you’re going to get the evil eye on you, or you suspect people might be looking at you and thinking, ah, what’s this one doing?
And bring sage leaves, for example. Take two bay leaves, carry them with you, carry them with you. You get home. You can burn them. You can also do that with a sprig of rosemary. So there are many herbal remedies as well, simple ones. Some are a little bit more specific. Then there are hand gestures, there are gestures you can make. There are prayers, there are incantations. It also depends on what you are comfortable with because I have had people come to me when I’ve done readings and I’ve had people come to me and say, I’m not too comfortable with, maybe you grew up Catholic or Christian, or you did or you didn’t, but maybe I’ve had people say, I’m not too comfortable saying this prayer. That’s okay. You don’t have to. There are many remedies that I discussed in the book that have nothing to do with prayers or incantation, but then some people come to me and say, I’ve always been curious, and this is also fascinating.
So many people have come to me and said, I’m not Christian, I’m not Catholic, I’m not any religion, but I’ve been fascinated by the story of a particular saint. And is it true that St. Benedict has this thing about evil and casting off evil or the Archangel Michael can cast away evil. So saints, deities, spirits, amulets, herbal remedies, looking at some sort of what in Italian folk magic or Italian culture, we call it mano cornuto, which is the hand with the horns. These are gestures that will ward away the evil eye. And then sometimes you want to sort of keep that practice going, and that’s where you can look at amulets that you’re going to hang up on your wall, the Nazar, which is what the most popular one you see that the concentric circles, the blue, the white, the black dot, that it looks like an eye and it’s extremely popular.
Now, of course, people wear what they call the evil eye jewelry. It’s in fact you’re wearing Nazar. But any of these things that you hang up on a wall, you put it in a bedroom, you put it when you first walk into the house, mirrors are incredibly important. Put a mirror right there when you open up your front door so that as soon as somebody walks in, there’s a mirror. What does that do? It deflects. So if someone’s coming in and they’re jealous or they got the idea of the eye on them, that’s going to bounce it right back and bounce it out.
Jim:
Aha. My wife, when we got our house two years ago, you know where she put a mirror? Right there.
Antonio Pagliarulo:
Right here, right there. See, she gets it. She knows what I’m talking about. This is what, and these are practices that are simple, but highly effective. Also, think of your home. Okay? I always tell people to think of the home. Look at your windows. The windows are the eyes of your home. You look out at them, people look into them. They’re warm too. Something as simple as putting, this was something that I did growing up there. At certain times of the month, there was a spread of rosemary that was taped, literally a piece of tape and a spread of rosemary into the window, and that was a way to ward away or cure the evil eye. Things were put right there on the front door, right over the step. There was a line of salt, sometimes not even a line. Actually, there was a sprinkle of salt that was believed very much toward the way the evil eye, something as simple as carrying salt. I’ve told many people do this. They’ve said, I don’t know where to get the, I can’t get herbs. I can’t do this. I don’t know what to do. Don’t panic about it. There’s so much that’s here for you. Take some salt and put it in your pocket. That’s literally going to work for you.
Go ahead. There are so many methods. Yeah, I’m sorry. So many methods.
Jim:
We are having a very interesting conversation today with Antonio Pagliarulo, and we’re talking all about his new book, the Evil Eye, the History, Mystery, and Magic of the Quiet Curse. And we’ll be back right after this.
The Paranormal Podcast is brought to you by Grammarly, and when it comes to writing, Grammarly is there to support you from beginning to end. Because let’s face it, even for those of us who consider ourselves pretty good writers, sometimes it’s really tough. In fact, a pretty good writer, a guy by the name of Hemmingway said basically, there’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. Well, luckily with Grammarly, there’ll be a lot less bloodletting because for over 10 years, Grammarly has been powered by AI technology you can trust and rely on to help you across all the places you write the most.
And it makes writing easier. And I have been using it for several years because I love it. In fact, I use it every week on my email newsletter that I send out. I am a user and have been way before they advertised this show, and Grammarly has only improved. Now, Grammarly helps you do even more. With one click, you can easily brainstorm, rewrite and reply quickly with suggestions based on your context and goals, so you can improve productivity for you and your teams. Now, for me, Grammarly is great to make sure that I phrase things in the best way. It can enhance creativity, it can help me accomplish more, and it helps me immensely. And I use it as a double check on my important writing to make sure that I am on point and not just for me. It could help so many people, people in business, people who are job hunting, new graduates, pretty much every occupation these days requires some writing and Grammarly can help.
For example, let’s say that you’re feeling stuck writing at work. Grammarly now can help you get started with ideas, outlines, and even tips. For example, you could ask it for 10 possible taglines for a video thumbnail, and it’ll give it to you. It can help you polish your writing. You simply select the text that you want to rewrite and give Grammarly a prompt. And there you go. It is fantastic. Need to draft an important email and don’t know where to start. Well, Grammarly has suggestions to jumpstart your writing. The best part of it is that it’s free to use. Get that. You’ll be amazed at what you can do with Grammarly. Go to grammarly.com/go to download for free today. That’s G R A M M A R L Y.com/go. And we thank Grammarly for their support of the Paranormal Podcast, and we also thank them for their support at helping me write for years. Thanks, Grammarly.
Announcer:
If you love the Paranormal Podcast, be sure to check out Jim Harold’s Campfire, where ordinary people share their extraordinary stories of ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and terrifying encounters. Find it for free wherever you listen to this podcast. Tune into Jim Harold’s Campfire today. Now we return to the Paranormal Podcast.
Jim:
We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast. We are having a great conversation with Antonio Pagliarulo, and we are talking about The Evil Eye: the History, Mystery, and Magic of the Quiet Curse. Now, Antonio, you’re a very erudite guy, a very educated guy, a very smart guy. And when I talk to people in general about these kinds of topics, a lot of times people who have a good academic background, very smart, write for all these publications, I’ll talk to them about something like Folk Magic, and many times it’ll be kind of like this. Well, very interesting rituals, very interesting tradition, fascinating to take a look at what people believe and why they believe it. Kind of an academic look at it. But it seems like while you have that, you also have a belief in this. Do you believe the evil eye is a thing and that it does work?
Antonio Pagliarulo:
I absolutely believe it’s a thing. I believe it manifests in people’s lives and does create negative conditions. And I also believe that we have the power to negate, to not only detect those conditions, but negate them and banish them. And I’ll tell you why I believe that. Because, well, first of all, as I explained earlier, yes, I did grow up with this, but as I grew up with it, I had periods of course where I questioned it and said, wait a minute, what’s going on? What am I looking at? Is this just a practice? Is this real? And I went through the period, but then as a practitioner myself, I have had so many experiences, not only myself, but doing readings for people as I’ve done people who have shared stories with me. Some of those stories I shared in the book, people who I interviewed, I’ve spoken to.
And also when we look at evil eye, the evil eye, what is it? Ultimately, we’re talking about energy. And scientifically we know that energy exists. Energy actually never just disappears, it just changes form. So energy is all around us. Even people will tell you, you stretch your arms out and you think that’s where you sort of end. Actually, it’s not. There’s an energetic, there’s an arc field sort of around us, and we are energy ourselves. Everything is energy there. When you’re looking at things, what is the energy that is running through your body? I know, yes, we can talk about the physiological things here and how your heart, the blood and oxygen and all that, but I’m talking about the energy that also runs through our daily lives. I think people don’t often sit and think about it, but when they do, I have found, and they do it with an open mind and an open heart in a way.
And they look at it and they say, I do understand what you’re saying in terms of this idea of energy. It’s this nebulous concept. But it’s a very real concept because, and if anyone wants to Google things and look at things on the science of energy, you’ll find a wealth of information on how real energy is. And let’s not forget that a long, long time ago how people thought, even some philosophers thought that a site was accomplished vis a vis the process of extra mission, which was they thought energy was emitted from the eyes and actually touched sort of the things that you were looking at versus intermission, which is how now it’s believed that that’s how vision is accomplished. But that was a longstanding belief a long, long time ago. People believed that it was pure energy that came through your eyes, which is how they believed it could touch people and it could affect things.
So the idea is extremely old. It goes as far back as ancient Egypt, certainly even farther than that to Mesopotamia, some scholars believe. And it can be, you can trace this throughout history, the symbology of the eye and how powerful it’s so for all of these reasons, it is very, very real to me. It’s not just a practice or this ritual or this cultural thing. It’s a very real, very, very, it’s just a fact for me, and that’s why I’m so much, I think it’s so important to let people learn about it and know about it.
Jim:
Well, it certainly was important. My wife’s family, I think when she was born, she was given a horn for protection and still has it.
Antonio Pagliarulo:
Yeah, of course, a cornicello, sure.
Jim:
And then she writes this, when I was little, I remember them taking a dish of water and holding a threaded needle over it to test to see if someone had malocchio. I can’t seem to find this anywhere, only putting the oil in the dish. Ask if he has heard of this testing mechanism. Have you heard of something like that?
Antonio Pagliarulo:
I have heard of people dropping the oil, a method in the oil and water sort of universe as I talk about it, dropping oil into the water and then using needles to then pierce what they see in terms of the formation of what they see in the water, the threading of the needle in terms of that I have not heard specifically, but the needle itself, yes, I have also heard of people dropping two needles in an X formation over the dish and the water and the oil to sort of burst the evil eye.
Jim:
And what are some other ways that one can find if the evil eye has been put upon them?
Antonio Pagliarulo:
So in terms of, well, oil and water methods, those ways are pretty, are fairly simple. I talk about in the book, there’s a method I give using the tarot. There’s a method I talk about with using certain herbs, a packet of certain herbs that can be thrown on the fire, smelling certain things. When you use an herb and say, you know what, how does this, what’s the odor that emits from that? And these are all practices, many of them that were shared with me from other people. There are, one is chili peppers and mustard seeds, and you fold this all up and you get it into the fire. And how does it pop? Does it smell? These are indications of diagnosing the evil eye. Then you have the egg, test the egg in terms of rituals and finding out if you have the evil eye is also very old.
Some people will break an egg in a glass of water and read what happens there. In terms of the way it bubbles, some people will leave the yoke overnight and read the results. There’s a method of literally dropping breadcrumbs into the water. Another one utilizes matches, which that’s actually something that I was taught in terms of using matches for the evil eye. One that I think is incredible. That also uses an egg, which is fascinating that someone taught me that someone will basically write names on an egg. And as they go about this ritual, which I described much more in detail, at a point where the egg shell cracks, it’ll usually crack on the name. That’ll tell you who gave you,who gave you the evil eye. There are also methods there that will lead you and give you very clear clues about who gave you the evil eye prayers. In the Eastern Orthodox. And in Greek culture, there are specific prayers that are recited. And if your eyes, for example, tear up or if you yawn, or if someone with you yawns, that’s an indication that you have it and that it’s being removed. So many various methods. Various methods, I didn’t even have room to include all of them, but all across many cultures. So there are many, many ways people can find out how to diagnose it.
Jim:
Can this be put on inanimate objects, a car, a house, or does it really follow the person?
Antonio Pagliarulo:
Oh, no, absolutely. I write about this as well. This can be put on inanimate objects. Objects we do growing up, the whole ritual in Italian, and again, you ask your wife if this is something she grew up with, many Italian Americans who are hearing this will understand this. You got a new car. The first thing your relatives did was rush over and throw change or coins into the car. They threw them at the bottom of the car and they hung, of course, the “red pepper” on the rear view mirror. It’s not a red pepper, it’s actually a horn. And there’s a wonderful, in one of his shows, the comedian Sebastian Maniscalco talks about this, about how he had this pepper hanging from the mid, well, the ohrn and the cord hanging from his mirror. And he was with a girl, I believe, and she said, why is there a red pepper hanging your car?
And he explains about the evil eye. This is something, an example of how it is believed that the evil eye can attack an inanimate object,can attack your car. Your home? Of course, this is where the hanging of the mirror comes from in the hallway. This is where you hang up a hamsa or an amulet in the house. And also you can tell by the way, when an amulet breaks, people will call me very often. They’ll write to me very often and say, so I put on this amulet, or I hung up this amulet, and all of a sudden it broke. I went to put it on, and there’s a huge crack running through it. Or all of a sudden it slid off the wall and it just cracked. And they think that this is, they get kind of spooked about it. Oh, this is bad, this is bad. And I remind people, no, if your amulet breaks, if your amulet cracks, if you see something unusual in it, that’s an indication that the amulet has done its job.
Jim:
It absorbed the attack
Antonio Pagliarulo:
It took the hit, yep, took the hit for you. So this is where you’re going to see an amulet at work more and more. So inanimate objects are huge. In fact, I would say growing up, probably 30% of, if not 40 people would come to talk about their il malocchio or the evil eye being on their house, the car, the new, I remember someone once came to my group, it, a young woman came because her engagement ring, which was specifically very, very beautiful and expensive and all this, and she wore it, and it was this rock on her finger. It was incredible. But it kept, it literally just once the band was breaking, there was all these things happening. And she was convinced that there was evil eye on this ring. It happens all the time with inanimate objects, because again, this goes back to the concept of energy. Everything is energy and nothing escapes energy.
Jim:
Stories. We love stories on these shows, and I know you have some stories of people who maybe came to you as skeptics. Maybe something changed their mind and they may have actually asked you for help. Tell us about those.
Antonio Pagliarulo:
Oh, so the funniest for me, years ago when I was working at, I worked for years at a specific place. I’m not going to name everything, but I was known. I’ve always been this way from the very beginning. I had in my office, excuse me, I had in my office, my amulets hanging on the walls. I had my books on every aspect of the occult, I had and I wore, if you saw me right now, you would see that I’m wearing about 15 different amulets. Often people joke about how I hold my head up because I have so many amulets, and I also have a lot of amulets on my wrist. That’s how I’ve always been. I had candles in my office, and people would come in there and either say, oh, this is really spookier. They’d come in and say, oh, wow, I feel relaxed in your office.
In any event, I had two coworkers in particular at this job who were just adamant that nothing of this existed. It was a joke. In fact, they used to go about literally mocking me. And this would go on at meetings and they would say things like, oh, there was something fell inexplicably off the wall or something. There must be a ghost. Go call Antonio, ha ha. Or, oh, you don’t feel well today, Antonio, did you summon a ghost here? Or if something bad happened to someone, they’d make, oh, did you go put a demon on them or something? This is literally what happened. And it was the time years ago. They were able to get away with it, but it never bothered me, per se. But these two people, on two separate occasions, both on separate occasions, one knocked on my office door, closed it, and sat down at the chair near my desk. I was sitting there, literally looked at me and said, I heard, is it true that you can diagnose and cure the evil eye? I’ve heard that someone said that, because I have a real bad curse on me. Stuff is going on in my life.
And of course, this was a shock to me because I was like, wait a minute. You just spent the last three years making fun of me everywhere or sort of mocking the beliefs that I have about the evil eye or about this force. But in private, they absolutely were panic stricken about the events that were unfolding in their lives. And of course, this 10 months later, the second person who came to my office, and I was just sitting there, and I was actually outside my office at that, the second one. And this person came up to me and said, can I talk to you in your office?
And I said, sure. And closed my door. I thought we were going to talk about stuff that we had on the agenda that was going on. And this person said the same exact thing, only related to not only himself, but basically his family, all these things. And he went on to list this sort of spell of, spate of bad luck that had just befall them. And again, these were people who said absolutely, unequivocally, emphatically, they believed in nothing. It was a joke. It was a lie. Ha ha, you’re crazy. But they wanted help because in those moments where you look up and you’re realizing that stuff is getting a little out of hand here, and I can’t explain this, and I can feel that I need some sort of help or direction on this, people get scared or people get, sometimes it’s not even scared. They can get intrigued by this idea that maybe something else is happening here. And if I’m willing to go to look at it from that perspective, now I have to think about how do I get rid of this? Or how do I get away from this? Or how do I get it away from me? So in both of those instances, people who were claimed to be non-believers in anything, absolutely 100% believe.
And over the years, I have had people who have come to me, and very recently, people do contact me through my website and ask me sometimes things. And I’ve had people come to me and say, here’s what happened in my life. And then here’s what happened after I did a particular ritual or a prayer or something that I had given them and said, try this and see what happens. So there are so many experiences. And growing up, I remember sitting here sitting at my grandmother’s table, and people would talk about, oh, do you remember that woman who came to you or who talked about how she believed the evil eye was on her because she wanted to have a baby. And there were issues, and there was this idea about the evil eye being upon cast upon the fertility. And my grandmother said, yep, here it is. Let me take it off. And yeah, now she has a child and she’s happy.
I’ve had many people come to me right before a wedding and have said, can you come and make sure that you don’t, there’s no evil eye upon us the day of the wedding or right before we go on. People often have come afterwards, after the reception. It’s 200, well, I was about to say 500 people because I’m thinking of the Italian weddings I go to, but sometimes it’s only 20 people. But they’ve had a lot of eyes on them. And afterwards people have said, can you tell us what to do? Or this is what happened after the wedding. This is what happened after. I’ve had someone come to me fairly recently again, who’s bought a home, had a series of unfortunate things go on. And after doing some simple ritual work and some things said, this fixed, it fixed itself.
I didn’t even have to call someone. I didn’t have to do this. I’ve had people who have told me that they’ve read the book, they’ve done certain rituals, or they’ve done certain prayers or kept certain herbs and a condition, a physical condition, a headache that was nonstop. People who have told me they have all of a sudden started dropping things, and this is something that lasted forever. They never used to drop things. And suddenly they’re dropping three plates and four glasses, and they’re tripping down the stairs, and nobody can find anything medically wrong with them. So what’s going on? People have said, I’ve done this, and it seems to have dissipated. So, many, many stories. And this goes back to people becoming aware of it and understanding that they can take control of those situations and they can change that energy for their lives, for the lives of their loved ones. And just to banish the evil eye, to make sure that they’re keeping it bay.
Jim:
It is a fascinating, fascinating subject. So do you have any final thoughts? I mean, certainly I think that we have just scratched the surface here, and I highly recommend that people pick up the book The Evil Eye if they’re interested in learning more. I’ve got the book in front of me, and it’s a great read, and it’s very substantial and very, very well done. But we’ll tell people where they can get the book and all of that. But first, do you have any final thoughts on the evil eye that you’d like to share with our listeners today?
Antonio Pagliarulo:
The thoughts I always give people are, sit with yourself and really become aware of what the evil eye is and the energy of envy and the energy of jealousy. Become aware of the fact that it exists. You’re not going to escape it, because like I said earlier, we’ve all experienced it. But when you recognize, and it’s an unfortunate thing to recognize that not everyone in your life wants you to live your best life, okay? It’s a bitter pill to swallow there. And I’m not only talking about the 20 years ago, your ex boss, the ex friend, and you know, have that fight 10 years ago, five years, whatever it was, and they don’t wish you well. I’m talking about people in your life right now who you might really think, wish you well, and maybe they don’t. That’s, it’s a sad reality, but it is true.
And that kind of energy is invasive and it can be harmful. But once you become aware of it, and once you’re willing to open your eyes and open your mind to that possibility, your life changes because you begin to work with the basic principles of energy. And in terms of the evil eye you get to, then you become empowered and you understand that you can, there’s so much in life that we just cannot control that we all know. But in certain aspects like this, where you can look at the evil eye and learn about the methods, and learn about the energy, and learn about amulets, and learn about certain remedies, you change your life. You change the lives of your loved ones. And these are simple things, but they have enormous, enormous effects going forward for you. So I often tell people to just become aware of it.
That’s my first advice, my first bit of advice. And from there, you will embark on a very, very meaningful journey from there. And it will end up being with you for the rest of your life. And it’s something that I think many people end up passing on to their loved ones because they realize the practice is not something that’s necessarily governed by religion or culture, or it’s just something that is ingrained in the human condition. Because we all experience these emotions and this kind of, we’re all comprised of energy, and this is a reality. So become aware of it and understand it, and from there, you’ll be led to the right places.
Jim:
Well, thank you again for being on the show. I’ve really enjoyed this. So where can people find The Evil Eye and also more information about all your work?
Antonio Pagliarulo:
Well, people can find the book anywhere where books are sold. Certainly your local bookstore, your local occult shop, certainly Barnes and Noble, certainly Amazon, certainly other online retailers, they can go to Weiser Books, my publisher online or The Weiser, they can go there if they wish to. The book is available everywhere also as an ebook, also as an audiobook. So it’s pretty widely available. Just go online, choose your retailer. If you have a favorite local independent bookstore that you support, by all means, ask them to get it. A local occult supply shop or a witch shop, new age/spirituality store. If they’re there, ask them. They can order it for you. They can. So it’s thankfully very widely available.
Jim:
Well, again, it’s been a great time. The book is The Evil Eye: the History, Mystery, and Magic of the Quiet Curse. Our guest has been Antonio Pagliarulo. Antonio, thank you for joining us today.
Antonio Pagliarulo:
Thank you, Jim. It has been a tremendous pleasure, and it’s been my honor. I’m a great fan of your work, and thank you for all you do for the community today.
Jim:
Thanks so much for joining us today on the Paranormal Podcast. I really enjoyed that episode. That was a lot of fun and learned a lot, but also kind of reinforced a lot of things that I’ve talked with Dar about over the years, about this idea of the evil eye. And may you never encounter the evil eye and only good things happen to you. And speaking of good things, as I said at the beginning of the show, I hope you check out my mausoleum, my Mausoleum of Merch that is, over at jimharold.com/merch, Jimharold.com/merch, M E R C H. So thank you so much for that, and we will talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Stay safe and stay spooky. Bye-bye.
—
For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE