How to Wear an Evil Eye

Which wrist, what metal, day or night, one or many — the practical rules and where they come from.

The most-asked practical question has the clearest traditional answer: the left side. The left is the receiving side in most Mediterranean and Levantine folk systems — the side of the heart, the side through which fortune and misfortune enter. An evil eye bracelet therefore goes on the left wrist, a pinned charm over the left breast, and a necklace naturally hangs at the centre where it guards the throat and heart together.

Visibility is a genuine fork in the tradition, and both branches are legitimate. The Turkish habit is conspicuous protection — the bead at the door, big and unmistakable, warning the gaze off before it lands. The quieter Levantine habit wears the charm under clothing, on the logic that a guard does not need to be seen to work and that advertising protection can itself invite testing. Choose by temperament; the tradition supports either.

The practical rules beyond that are few. Wear it as continuously as is comfortable — protection is not an occasion piece — but remove it where it would be damaged; a charm does not have to drown with you in the shower to be loyal. Multiple eyes are fine and traditional: a bracelet's worth of small beads is one guard with many faces, not superstitious excess. And metal matters only aesthetically, with one folk exception: silver is held in several traditions to sharpen protective charms generally, which is why so much nazar work is silver-set.