The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

68 .
THE
EVIL EYE chap.
period of the year, as its axis points north of that of
its greater companion. All the Egyptian temples
are carefully orientated with the sanctuary at the
west, so that the sun's rays enter at the east end
and light up the sacred statues only on certain dedi-
cation days. The same system was adopted by the
Greeks, and later by the Romans in their temples.
The Roman basilicas were also constructed in like
manner, and have thus left their mark on the
churches now called Basilicas, where the main
entrance— as at St. John Lateran, St. Peter's, S.
Paolo fuori le mura, Sta. Maria Maggiore, and
others— is at the east, and the sanctuary at the west.
These facts all tend to show a general adaptation of
what had been good, or unobjectionable, in pagan
customs to the requirements of the Christian faith ;
just as the pagan and Jewish lustrations, ancient and
almost universal, were perpetuated in the Christian
rite of baptism, both by the example and precept of
the Church's divine Master ;
proving
that practical
customs, harmless in themselves, were not forbidden,
but were consecrated by adoption as sacred cere-
monies into the then reformed Jewish worship which
we call Christianity. We find, too, that baptism it-
self was in the early Church closely allied to Orientation,
in the position in which the catechumen was
placed.^°^
It is not generally known that in pagan temples
there was a vessel of stone or brass, called
irepippavri'ipLov, filled with holy water, with which all
those admitted to the sacrifices were sprinkled, and
1^^ As we proceed we shall see other striking examples of this eclecticism
of modern Christianity, and a lesson of tolerance may well be learnt from the
spectacle.