Also called lemon in a glass of water by the bed, lemon cleanse, nimbu cleansing
Using a lemon to draw off envy or heaviness, from India's lemon passed around a person to remove the evil eye to the modern practice of leaving a cut lemon in water by the bed. The bedside glass is a recent custom shared online, not an old one.
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
Take care: Lemon juice on skin followed by sunlight can cause burns and blisters, so wash your hands after handling it. Do not drink the water or eat the lemon after it has sat out. Keep glasses where children and pets cannot spill them.
To remove drishti, the evil eye, a lemon, sometimes smeared with red kumkum, is circled around a person or a new possession and then thrown away, cut, or burned outside, carrying the envy with it.
Uses: lemon, kumkum
A lemon threaded with seven green chilies is hung on shop doors and vehicles, often renewed every Saturday, to catch envious looks before they land. See the dedicated entry.
Uses: lemon, green chilies, thread
Elworthy illustrated a lemon stuck full of nails, a curse object from Italy that is now in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. It shows that the lemon could be used to harm as well as cleanse. Documented here as history only; do not copy it.
The lemon's place in folk magic is strongest in South Asia. In India it is circled around a person, a baby, a new car or a shop to lift drishti, the harm of an envious look, and the nimbu mirchi charm of lemon and chilies still hangs over countless doorways. Its sour juice and sharp smell made it a natural choice for something meant to cut through and absorb.
In the Mediterranean, the folklorist Frederick Thomas Elworthy recorded in 1895 a darker use, a lemon pierced with nails as a curse. The popular bedside custom, a cut lemon in water left near the bed to soak up negativity, spread through social media and modern spell books in the 2010s and has no clear older source. It is best understood as a recent folk habit with deep roots in older lemon lore.
A blue glass eye bead hung in the home or worn on the body so that envious or admiring looks are caught and reflected before they can do harm.
The folk belief that a cut onion left in a room soaks up germs and sickness, best known from a story set in the 1918 flu. It is a charming kitchen custom but does not prevent or cure illness.
After an egg is passed over the body in a limpia, it is cracked into a glass of water and the yolk, white and bubbles are read for what the cleanse drew out. This page covers that reading step and its long history of egg divination.
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