'Eye medicine'

Among the various local names used to define the magical-therapeutic rite against eye aggression, that of “eye medicine” is the only one that has been found in a widespread way in all the Sardinian provinces. There are 339 healers contacted, including 321 women and 18 men. Those certainly ascertained but not contacted are about 500.

Furthermore, to better understand the spread of the phenomenon, keep in mind that the healers interviewed in Padria have declared that in that country there are at least 100 operators who practice this magic therapy; Sorso's interviewees have declared about 200; the Pro Loco association of Calasetta has reported about 300; in Talana “everyone practices it”, in the sense that there is no family in which there is not at least one who knows how to do it.

Those who have learned this practice in the family are numerically slightly superior to those who have learned it from strangers. The moment of learning presents a wide variety of situations through which to become healers, but for everyone the essential condition is first and foremost to be recognized as a suitable person. Only in very few cases has the transition to the status of healer taken place through verification tests or through a real rite.

It is widely believed that everyone is potentially in a position to trigger eye aggression, the occurrence of which or not depends on the combination of different factors. Many people say that catching an eye is a phenomenon due to blood, so there are people who belong to a family strain that traditionally exercises this influence in a strong and continuous way. Guerci and those with green eyes are also carriers of aggression. In the province of Cagliari, those who provoke this particular state of crisis are said to have a goat in their eye, or that they have a goat's eye, that is, the devil's eye. In all cases, what determines the onset of the crisis is an instantaneous, immediate, difficult to control act, such as the encounter of the eyes, precisely the encounter of the pupils.

To deal with eye damage, numerous preventive interventions and an even higher number of therapeutic rites are planned. As far as the therapy for overcoming the crisis caused by eye aggression is concerned, twenty-four different ways of performing the therapeutic rite have been recorded, ways in which the presence, differently combined, of the following elements is found: the “brebuses”, prayers such as the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, the recitation of the Creed, often together with the use of wheat, water, salt, oil, barley, rice, stone, horn (of mouflon, deer, ox), eye of Saint Lucy, charcoal, paper. To achieve healing, the rite must be repeated a minimum of three to a maximum of nine times. For the resolution of the most serious cases, the intervention of three different operators is generally required.

In Ogliastra alone, and only in a few countries, has the presence of a particular therapeutic rite, called 's'abba faulada', has been found, in which eye medicine takes the form of a real placebo.

Update

6/9/2023 - 03:12