Eye Scream/Myth, Legend and Folklore

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Norse legend has the god Odin gouging out his own eye and dropping it into Mimir's Well, in exchange for supreme knowledge.
    • Also, as punishment for the conspiration to kill Baldur the gods chained Loki to a rock for all eternity. Skadi (the goddess of winter, skiing and hunting) wasn't satisfied and had a snake eternally drop corrosive venom into his eyes.
  • The Greek legend of Perseus includes the Graeae, creepy old witches who all share one eyeball and tend to pass it around in turns. Perseus stole the eyeball and threatened to smash it to get from them the location of Medusa's lair.
  • When Oedipus realizes what a literal *and* figurative motherfucker he's become, he blinds himself with a brocade pin.
  • Saint Lucy of Syracuse (see in Real Life)
  • From The Odyssey, there's Polyphemus the Cyclops, who got his eye gouged out by a certain "Nobody, Son of Noman."
  • This is how Lugh killed the deformed Formor king Balor: namely he shot his highly destroying eye with a sling, with so much strength that that the stone perfored his head and brought the eye on the other side.
  • The Hindu/Buddhist goddess Ekajati had her right eye pierced by the sage Padmasambhava, although unlike most other examples here it actually made here more powerful, allowing her to more effectively kill Tibetan demons.

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