Evil Eye In Christian Orthodox Society

Evil eye is a phenomenon observed globally and has to do with the misfortune and calamities that we can cause to someone else out of jealousy of their possessions. The book engages with evil eye beliefs in Corfu and investigates the Christian Orthodox influences on the phenomenon and how it affects individuals’ reactions to it. Developing an interdisciplinary dialogue, it offers a fresh view of evil eye as a facilitator of wellbeing rather than a generator of calamities.

Evil eye is a phenomenon observed globally and has to do with the misfortune and calamities that we can cause to someone else out of jealousy of their possessions. The book engages with evil eye beliefs in Corfu and investigates the Christian Orthodox influences on the phenomenon and how it affects individuals’ reactions to it. Developing an interdisciplinary dialogue, it offers a fresh view of evil eye as a facilitator of wellbeing rather than a generator of calamities.

By examining the ongoing tension between popular and official religion in Europe, this collection of essays contributes significantly to the continuing effort to understand the religious experience of ordinary people. Ranging from the Mediterranean to northern Europe and including both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the ethnographic contexts evoked in these essays enable us to see people actively and creatively shaping their religious domain, sometimes in collaboration with official ritual specialists, often in open rebellion against them. The use of folklore texts and extensive narrative quotations, combined with an approach highlighting key symbols such as pilgrimages and festas, provides a common theoretical orientation throughout the bookone that considers how religious discourses are formed by social disciplines and relationships of power and subordination. This volume includes "Spirits and the Spirit of Capitalism" by Jane Schneider, "The Priest and His People: The Contractual Basis for Religious Practice in Rural Portugal" by Caroline B. Brettell, "The Struggle for the Church: Popular Anticlericalism and Religiosity in Post-Franco Spain" by Ruth Behar, "Pilgrimage and Popular Religion at a Greek Holy Shrine" by Jill Dubisch, "Breton Folklore of Anticlericalism" by Ellen Badone, "Stories of Power, Powerful Stories: The Drunken Priest in Donegal" by Lawrence J. Taylor, and "Reflections on the Study of Religious Orthodoxy and Popular Faith in Europe" by Stanley Brandes.

1. Introduction -- 2. The New Age of Greek Religiosity: Orthodox Christianity and Beyond -- 3. Matiasma : the Energetic Interplay of Senses and Emotions -- 4. Ksematiasma : Healing, Power, Performance -- 5. Creative Syntheses through Material Culture: the Evil Eye in the Spiritual Marketplace -- 6. The Pluralistic Landscape of Greek Religiosity: Religion and Spirituality at a Global Age -- 7. Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems – both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

This anthropological work thoroughly illustrates the novel synthesis of Christian religion and New Age spirituality in Greece. It challenges the single-faith approach that traditionally ties southern European countries to Christianity and focuses on how processes of globalization influence and transform vernacular religiosity. Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in Greece, this book demonstrates how the popular belief in the 'evil eye' produces a creative affinity between religion and spirituality in everyday practice. The author analyses a variety of significant research themes, including lived and vernacular religion, alternative spirituality and healing, ritual performance and religious material culture. The book offers an innovative social scientific interpretation of contemporary religiosity, while engaging with a multiplicity of theoretical, analytic and empirical directions. It contributes to current key debates in social sciences with regard to globalization and secularization, religious pluralism, contemporary spirituality and the New Age movement, gender, power and the body, health, illness and alternative therapeutic systems, senses, perception and the supernatural, the spiritual marketplace, creativity and the individualization of religion in a multicultural world.

Examining every aspect of the culture from antiquity to the founding of Constantinople in the early Byzantine era, this thoroughly cross-referenced and fully indexed work is written by an international group of scholars. This Encyclopedia is derived from the more broadly focused Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition, the highly praised two-volume work. Newly edited by Nigel Wilson, this single-volume reference provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the political, cultural, and social life of the people and to the places, ideas, periods, and events that defined ancient Greece.

Social scientists and philosophers confronted with religious phenomena have always been challenged to find a proper way to describe the spiritual experiences of the social group they were studying. The influence of the Cartesian dualism of body and mind (or soul) led to a distinction between non-material, spiritual experiences (i.e., related to the soul) and physical, mechanical experiences (i.e., related to the body). However, recent developments in medical science on the one hand and challenges to universalist conceptions of belief and spirituality on the other have resulted in "body" and "soul" losing the reassuring solid contours they had in the past. Yet, in "Western culture," the body–soul duality is alive, not least in academic and media discourses. This volume pursues the ongoing debates and discusses the importance of the body and how it is perceived in contemporary religious faith: what happens when "body" and "soul" are un-separated entities? Is it possible, even for anthropologists and ethnographers, to escape from "natural dualism"? The contributors here present research in novel empirical contexts, the benefits and limits of the old dichotomy are discussed, and new theoretical strategies proposed.