Belief in the bad eye, in “counter-magic”, charms and blessings is a hallmark of the primitive mind and of humanity’s earliest, superstitious attempt to “protect” itself from dark forces believed to be plotting against it. Today science has definitively answered our metaphysical fears, has dethroned god, and boundless technological capability has armed modern man for the fight against the supposedly supernatural and the absurd.
In the photograph we see a reenactment of a medieval religious ceremony. The inhabitants of a remote village, largely uneducated, have brought the sacred objects that protect them from chthonic forces to the temple so that the tribe’s sorcerer may bless them. (France, January 2017, feast of Saint Francis De Sales, patron saint of journalism, broadcasting and communications).