The haunting Triangle: Evil Eye, Envy, and Black Magic in the Light of Consciousness

When I was a university student in Malaysia, a Chinese classmate sitting beside me caught sight of my watch. He stared at it for a few seconds, then exclaimed with amazement, “Wow! It’s beautiful!” In that moment, I had a strong urge to ask him to say “masha’Allah”, fearing the evil eye. But he didn’t share my cultural background, and I couldn’t find a way to explain it, so I let it go.

Yet that brief encounter stirred a quiet reflection within me that echoed for years: Why do we feel that a simple look of admiration could threaten a blessing? Why do we say “masha’Allah” after every compliment, as if we’re placing a hidden fence around beauty to shield it from fading? Why do we say it as a kind of disclaimer, to prove our admiration carries no harm? These questions didn’t fade with time; they grew, branched out, and led me into the profound depths of our shared consciousness—where the haunting triangle lies: evil eye, envy, and black magic.

How many times have I admired something someone owned, only to see wariness flash in their eyes? As if your compliment became a threat—not because you're envious, but the culture we were raised in instilled in us the belief that even a glance could harbor harm, and praise might conceal an unseen danger.. We began to hide our joys and conceal our good news, not out of humility, but fear. And so, we find ourselves facing a cultural reality that goes beyond customs and traditions—it has seeped into our very beliefs about how the world works. What starts as cautious superstition soon swells into deep-rooted conviction, nourished by anecdotes and inherited tales, echoed across media that reinforce the narrative without question.

So I wasn’t particularly surprised when I watched an interview with a man introduced as a “former sorcerer.” He spoke with the tone of someone revealing precise knowledge, explaining rituals and incantations in detail that dressed delusion in the robes of expertise. The interview went viral across social media, as if it touched something primal in our collective mind—something that believes black magic is real, and that every failure must have an unseen hand behind it, not a missed opportunity or neglected choice. I felt a quiet frustration. How do these narratives still command such attention in an age that is supposed to be governed by reason? How do they slip into our lives through modern screens and fresh voices—yet carrying ancient tales?

Perhaps it’s because, in a way, we all benefit from them. Not just the ones who market such ideas with polished TV programs, but even those who consume them. These myths assign everyone a role: seller and buyer, afflicted and healer—and they keep the marketplace wide open. The marketplace of fear, where peace is sold as incense, incantations, and whispers in the night.

And to be honest with myself, I wasn’t always far from that scene. At one point, I was part of it—not as a seller, but as a worn-out receiver reaching for an explanation when none made sense. I found myself descending into desolate inner worlds, a dark spiritual tunnel some call “the dark night of the soul,” where meaning collapses and the values we thought were unshakable begin to fracture. In that shadowy space, life feels merciless, stripping you bare of every certainty, pulling you into the unknown depths of yourself. It felt like life refused to explain itself—events piled up, setbacks followed, as if some hidden hand was toying with the strings of my fate, stealing from me, blocking me, planting doubt where peace once was.

In the midst of that confusion, I came across a woman who claimed to see what I could not. Her voice trembled with prophecy as she told me, “You’re under a pharaonic curse from a past life. You and your wife were once powerful figures, but the pharaohs sought to destroy you. Your soul has since wandered, life after life, without success or stability.” Then she asked, “Do you have children?” At the time, we had just said goodbye to an unborn child who never made it to the light. She added, with finality, “We must break this curse immediately—or your power will remain bound, and you’ll be denied offspring.”

There was something in my expression—hesitation, maybe even a fleeting wish that she was telling the truth. Though I recognized the pattern: turning tragedy into flashy myth to sell fear wrapped as hope. Yet I wasn’t immune to her words. They slipped in like a seductive whisper, touching a buried longing for fatherhood and a stumbling desire for success, both craving even the faintest glimmer of hope, even if it came dressed as a pharaonic curse. For a moment, I wanted to believe I was a victim of an ancient spell. It felt easier than admitting I had, through a thousand small choices, constructed the very reality I now struggled against.

Had I believed her, had I paid for her to “break the curse,” I would’ve stepped onto a path with no return—a road paved with endless external causes for every pain and setback. I’d have become addicted to the idea of escape, running from the responsibility of the decisions that had shaped my life. Instead of facing myself, I’d turn to rituals that soothed me with false comfort.

It seems that the urge to flee from responsibility—and to pin our pain on some external force—is not just a fleeting weakness. It’s a deeply rooted instinct in the human psyche, showing up in different disguises across contexts. When facing suffering, we don’t just avoid responsibility—we reach for stories that offer meaning and comfort, even if they come wrapped in myth and mystery.

And this tendency isn’t random. It reflects the nature of early human consciousness—what Ken Wilber describes in his Integral Theory as a stage of development ruled by magical thinking. In this stage, the mind attributes anything it cannot grasp to invisible forces—magic, the evil eye, or envy. The goal isn’t to understand the unknown but to control or contain it through myth, much like ancient humans who saw celestial rage in thunder. Rather than integrating painful experiences, we split reality into safe binaries: “I am the victim,” “The eye took me down,” “I am pure,” “The other is envious.” With each failure, we add another scapegoat to justify our suffering, avoiding the hard questions. In doing so, we turn loss into fuel for illusion, preventing ourselves from stepping into a deeper consciousness—one that sees pain not as a curse to be expelled, but a call to awaken.

But as this awareness begins to mature, slowly and quietly, the angle from which we view pain starts to shift. In the higher stages of consciousness, as Wilber describes, we let go of the psychological tricks that project our wounds outward, and we begin to realize that control doesn’t come from explaining everything—but from accepting the mystery without losing our balance. Our perception moves from searching for blame to recognizing participation, from the illusion of “I am a victim” to the awareness of “I am a co-creator of my experience.” This doesn’t mean one is responsible for every painful event or that harm is justified—it means one begins to see themselves not as a passive sufferer, but as an active soul in a web of complex life experiences. Suffering is not erased—but it is understood outside the framework of punishment.

At this level of integrated awareness, the fear of the evil eye transforms into a deeper understanding of relationships. It is no longer merely a belief in a negative force, but a recognition of the energy within our connections—their balance, and how they can be either uplifting or draining depending on intention and interaction. The evil eye becomes a symbol of inner openness or closure, a call to learn how to face the influence of others without allowing it to disturb our inner equilibrium.

Envy is no longer seen as a malicious force directed at us, but as a mirror reflecting our emotional and personal boundaries. We learn to protect our inner stability not by fleeing from negative energies, but by not allowing them to infiltrate us. External forces only disrupt us when they find an inner gap we have left unnoticed. And once we become aware of that, we grow less reactive and more capable of maintaining healthy distance—preserving our clarity and reclaiming the sovereignty over our experience.

And as this sense of sovereignty returns, so do the illusions that once shackled our awareness begin to fall away. We start to see magic not as an external threat, but as a symbol of the latent power within. Magic is no longer merely an explanation for mysterious events—it becomes an expression of our own capacity to shift, transform, and redirect the course of our lives through a deeper understanding of inner strength.

Integrated awareness is an invitation to inner balance. It does not deny mystery; it expands to hold it. It does not mock belief, but reinterprets it as a reflection of our internal struggles. In doing so, we do not reject our former selves, but embrace those stages as part of our growth—and transcend them toward deeper, wider insight. Between hollow denial and blind surrender to superstition, we choose honesty with ourselves. We confront what we once didn’t dare to face. We rewrite our story, not to erase the past, but to free ourselves from the need for a “hidden enemy” to explain our pain.