malocchio

She avoided looking at it, as if it were the malocchio, the evil eye, out to curse her worse than she already is.

How she could ward off the malocchio, the evil eye, with a prayer and the dip of her pinkie into a bowl of water sprinkled with a few drops of olive oil.

He sang of wolves and demons, toured with an animatronic dragon and supposedly introduced the splay-fingered “devil horns” headbanger’s salute, which he claimed his Italian grandmother used to flash as an old-world method of warding off the malocchio and other forms of bad luck.

He would sweep up and attach key rings to little red horn amulets that resembled chili peppers and were used for protection against the jealous curse known as the “malocchio,” or the evil eye.

The central character in Janice Maffei’s new play, “How to Bury a Saint,” Patsy has a procedure for combating the malign effects of what she calls the “malocchio.”