The Seba library treats Evil Eye in 8 passages, across 5 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Padel, Ruth, von Franz, Marie-Louise).
Nothing is more valuable to the evil one than his eye, since only through his eye can emptiness seize gleaming fullness. Because the emptiness lacks fullness, it craves fullness and its shining power.
Jung renders the evil eye as a metaphysical principle: the eye of existential emptiness that feeds upon beauty and fullness, identifying it with the devil as the shadow of all that is radiant and life-bearing.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
In cultures where there is alert belief in the evil eye, as there was in fifth-century Greece, eye contact is a charged symbol of the relationship human beings make with the world about them... The eye... devours. It... would gain for oneself what others have.
Padel situates the evil eye within Greek and modern Greek village culture as a culturally embodied symbol of envy and social surveillance, in which the eye functions as an instrument of devouring acquisitiveness directed at the success and beauty of others.
, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994thesis
Fire, rays, or liquid, the eye's outflowing stream endangers others. The eyes of some animals, like Democritus's owl, held 'noxious fire,' which poisoned or petrified those who looked at them.
Padel traces the ancient Greek extramissive theory of vision, in which the eye emits dangerous emanations — fire, rays, or venomous fluid — establishing the phenomenological basis from which the evil eye belief derives its logic.
, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994supporting
If one looks at something evil, Plato once said, something evil falls into one's own soul. One cannot look at evil without something in oneself being aroused in response to it, because evil is an archetype, and every archetype has an infectious impact upon people.
Von Franz draws on Plato's dictum to argue that the act of looking at evil constitutes an archetypal infection, rendering the prohibitions associated with the evil eye psychologically intelligible as defenses against projection and unconscious contagion.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974supporting
Maybe it's fear of the Evil Eye. I am afraid to express too much joy for fear it will be taken from me.
Woodman documents the evil eye as a living clinical fear among women with eating disorders, manifesting as an inhibition of self-expression and joy rooted in the dread that conspicuous wellbeing will attract destructive envy.
, The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Repressed Feminine: a Psychological Study, 1980supporting
Evil eye
Von Franz's index to Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales includes the evil eye as a discrete entry cross-referenced within her broader taxonomy of evil, confirming its status as a recognized analytical category in her comparative fairy-tale work.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974aside
eye, 21, 31, 33, 42, 45, 59-63, 74, 78, 84, 123, 141, 146, 189; bloodshot, 60, 176; evil, 49, 61-62; fire in, 60-61, 117
Padel's index confirms that the evil eye is a recurrent and substantively treated motif throughout her study of Greek tragic selfhood, co-located with fire, the Gorgon, and the physiology of emotion.
, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994aside
If therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
Coniaris cites the Gospel of Matthew to present the evil eye in its Orthodox spiritual register as the moral condition of a darkened intellect, contrasting single-eyed luminosity with the corrupting effect of an eye turned toward evil.
, Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998aside