New light on Lucifer

by Nadia Theuma

Nowadays, jealousy gets you nowhere. But in the not-too-distant past belief in the power of the “evil eye” was rife. People who had it I in them could, it was thought, destroy or damage the object of envy, whether it was a quality in a person or a material possession Jon Mitchell spent two years, from 1992 to 1994, roving the streets of Valletta and talking to the people who inhabit this “interesting and beautiful place”. One of the his aims was to discover why, at the same time as the belief in the evil eye has waned, there seems to have been a resurgence in belief in the power of the devil.

He attempted to explain this phenomenon in a paper called “Where power lies: transformations of evil in contemporary Malta”

On one level, he maintained, the transformation relates to the institution of the Church itself. The Church regards belief in the evil eye as superstition, while the belief in God comes with the inevitable belief in the devil and in the power of evil. In a context where the Church has a great deal of authority, this means people are discouraged from belief in the evil eye.

A second level of explanation concerns the way the Maltese view traditional beliefs on the one hand and progress on the other. A belief in the evil eye is nowadays associated with “ignorance of medieval peasants”. On the other hand there is a very real fear of progressing too fast.

“A belief in the devil is one way of expressing people’s anxieties about change” said Dr Mitchell. “People are anxious about what will happen to morality, what with the influence of Italian TV, growing materialism and the impending entry in to the European Union. Belief in the devil and the power of evil puts these anxieties into an objective form.”

Dr. Mitchell suggested a third explanation of why belief in the devil seems to have grown in strength. It has to do with how it is possible to experience the “devil” directly for example in cases of possession, while the evil eye can only be felt indirectly, through the damage it causes.

The devil is something “out there” which can affect a person while the evil eye is inside someone else or inside a person. The person who has it does not necessarily realise it whereas if one is possessed one will experience the devil directly. This means that belief in the devil is relatively more persuasive than belief in the evil eye.

Furthermore, said Dr Mitchell, learning about the power of God and His goodness through religion implies the potential to feel the devil’s power over oneself.