Belief in Evil Eye among People of Antiquity and Divine Religions(مقاله علمی وزارت علوم)
Common culture is the basis of exact identification of nations and the manner of their distinctions from others. Cultural and social beliefs are inseparable parts of human lives as they always lived with human beings right from their creation. In a way that even today a number of beliefs of civilized people, with regard to a chain of appropriate or inappropriate rites and ceremonies, have roots in ancient days. As such, identifying and presenting an exact analysis could be possible only through the investigation of past cultures of different people and nations. A common and deep belief among human being is evil eye that too has an ancient precedence. Documents acquired from cave paintings, medieval historical records and number of repelled witchery stones narrate and confirm the prevalence of this particular belief among people through centuries and ages. The present paper tries to respond to the question that whether evil eye being one of the ancient cultural beliefs of our people prevailed among other nations around the world, too? In case of its prevalence, whether or not religious sources confirm it? As such, the authors have tried to study ancient people and important world religions in order to reach to conclusion. They finally came to the point that different religious sources—including Islamic ones confirm the prevalence of witchcraft/evil eye among nations and people around the world.