Mal oik help desk
The other day my father told us about our grandmother who was one of the senior Italian women gifted with the ability to lift the curse of the evil eye, called the mal oik. According to Italian folklore, the source of many untoward personal conditions like headaches originated from someone having been cursed, often for some social infraction. The cure involved a complex ritual of incantations and annointings with oil that revealed the nature of the curse and delivered a remedy for it.
The interesting part of the story was that, although this traditionally involved a hands-on interaction, my grandmother got to the point of being quite successful removing mal oiks over the phone. A true pioneer in using new technologies in ancient cultural rituals.
