The oil separates in the water. She stirs with her finger and splatters some on her daughter's face.

The evil-eye spell is removed. Maria Koulianos' headache and nausea are gone.

Other relatives and friends who think they've been cursed seek relief regularly from Koulianos' mother, Fanny Tsangaris, at the family's Greek bakery at the Sponge Docks.

Across the way, a tanned, burly man bellows to strolling tourists, enticing them to take a boat ride. His hand goes to a pendant hanging from a silver chain around his neck.

Alex Myrhorodsky, 44, never removes the charm, his evil-eye protection with 12 blue stones representing Christ's disciples. He clutches the amulet when something bad happens, sometimes kissing it.

"This necklace has as much meaning as a cross," said Myrhorodsky, who is Russian and Greek. "It gives me that little concentrated edge to get rid of a problem.

"People believe in the evil eye, but behind closed doors, maybe because they feel outdated or embarrassed."

Such belief in the mystical power of the human eye dates back before Christianity and is found among cultures in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa and Asia.

The Greek word for eye is mati. The seat of the soul and the power of evil are believed to be in the pupil, and the "magnetism" of the eyes is bewitching.

The evil eye usually is cast by a stare or glance while thinking bad thoughts, even if the person is giving a compliment. It's a form of maya, Greek for sorcery, and includes elaborate spells to bring on hiccups, fever, depression, loss of appetite, impotence, infertility, paralysis -- even death.

Greek immigrants brought their superstitions with them to Tarpon Springs and elsewhere. While many in the younger generation say they don't cling to such practices, they still wear or carry good-luck charms.

The Greek Orthodox Church also recognizes the power of maya, and the Rev. Tryfon Theophilopoulos regularly removes spells.

"I've seen things around here that I really do believe, passing the evil eye through jealousy and viciousness," said Theophilopoulos of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral. "Some people don't want others to be happy or successful."

The evil eye can be cast at nearly anything: people, animals, houses, plants. Sometimes it's inadvertent -- a woman cooing over an infant might accidentally cast a spell. And blue- or green-eyed people are supposed to be better at matiazma, or giving the evil eye.

People who have been cursed are hesitant to talk about it. But good-luck tokens are displayed, and sold, at the Sponge Docks.

Blue beads and glass eyes, some intricate and others monstrous, dangle from rearview mirrors, above doorways, on windows, on sponge boats. They're pinned to babies' clothing, hung from necks and ears, and used as key chains.

Despite all the protection, evil-eye spells are cast and women who remove them are sought, even though priests consider the layperson's ritual a type of witchcraft.

Valantou Koulianos, 16, gets bad headaches, like her mother, and feels drowsy at least every other day. People who come to the National Bakery, where she works, compliment her dark-haired beauty -- and, she thinks, often give her the evil eye in the process. Her 63-year-old grandmother, Tsangaris, performs the evil-eye rite, called xemetrima.

"I feel better after she does it," said Koulianos, who doesn't like taking aspirin. "My headache goes away. It's weird."

Tsangaris learned the water and oil ritual 37 years ago from an old woman on the Greek isle of Kalymnos. Some Greek women burn cloves instead.

The secret incantations can be passed on from one woman to another only through a male. But many Greek men don't believe in the evil eye.

"It's like voodoo," said Koulianos' father, George, 43. "If I feel sick, it's natural. I don't think it's the evil eye. All the old people are superstitious."

Lifelong Tarpon Springs resident Goldie Tagarelli estimates 90 percent of Greeks believe in the evil eye and maya -- including her.

"It's more prevalent in Tarpon Springs because there are more old-timers," said Tagarelli, 64, who usually wears a blue bead and carries a phylacto -- a pouch with holy relics sewn inside.

"I've seen people get sick to the point that they can't move, and I've seen people get well from the evil eye."

Some Greeks point to Proverbs 23:6 in the Bible as proof the evil eye exists: "Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his daintily meats. For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." Eat something he gives you, the proverb says, and you'll become ill.

There are ways to avoid inadvertently giving the evil eye: spitting three times after admiring a baby; intoning "I take the devil away from you"; saying Kyrie eleison ("Lord have mercy") and making the sign of the cross three times.

Blue beads or glass eyes aren't the only things used to ward off bad luck. Old-timers believe garlic, old coins, crab claws, salt and charcoal also work.

Greek Orthodox priests advise wearing a baptismal cross or a phylacto, which must be on a chain and pinned to a piece of clothing or carried in a pocket. It doesn't work if kept in a purse or wallet.

"People who cast the evil eye and maya are uneducated and resort to those types of things that are against their religion," the Rev. Theophilopoulos said. "Psychologically, people just want a reason for something that's happened that they can't explain."

Still, he regularly holds private 45-minute exorcisms, which include seven prayers.

"The evil eye doesn't go away," he said. "The girl or man is possessed."

Two years ago, a frantic woman begged him to come to her house. There, she led Theophilopoulos to a videocassette box unearthed from her front yard. Inside were her photograph, hair and fingernails, incense, needles and candle wax.

The priest blessed the house and took the box to the church courtyard. He doused it with gasoline, burned it, blessed the ashes with holy water and sprinkled them in the lawn.

Four years ago, a woman demanded Theophilopoulos look into the eyes of a small doll she had brought. She insisted he keep it in his office or something bad would happen. But the priest wanted no part of it.

"I burned it to the ground," he recalled. "I dropped a whole bucket of holy water onto it. Ashes to ashes, nothing will happen."

Earlier this month, a couple brought their unruly 22-year-old niece to St. Nicholas cathedral. The woman said someone did black magic on her in Greece.

"She was rolling all over the floor, foaming from the mouth and making noises," Theophilopoulos said.

She yanked off part of his vestments and was restrained at the altar as the priest read prayers and sprinkled holy water on her.

The woman calmed down, but the next day was brought back to the cathedral because she was having fits again, the priest recalled. Unable to handle her, the aunt and uncle sent her back to Greece.

Finally, consider the woman in her 50s who has told few of her ordeal in the past two years. Sunglasses only partially conceal her grief.

"I'm not superstitious, but I've noticed a lot of things in my life that I can't explain," she said.

She had a large, blue glass eye in her home for good luck. One day, while walking to her car in a mall parking lot, she looked at her watch and told her friend it was 5:03 p.m.

When they got home, the woman's boyfriend told them he had written 5:03 on a yellow pad. At the time, he was in his bedroom when the glass eye shattered as if hit by a great force.

But no one else was around.

Peculiar things began happening in their home, such as pictures shifting on walls and strange noises. The woman went to a Greek medium, who said her live-in boyfriend, in his 60s, would die soon.

A couple months ago, the woman said, her companion of 24 years died of an unexpected heart attack.

"I have good reason to believe somebody purposefully did it to me -- the maya," she said.

Inside the Sea Horse gift shop at the Sponge Docks is a room called "The Mati," where talismans are sold. Glass eyes hang above every doorway. Shop owner Katherine Simeon hands out cards explaining the mati.

She isn't sure if the protection really works. But it can't hurt, and she has heard of weird things happening to others.

"I don't so much believe in the kako mati, the evil eye," said Simeon, 57. "I don't have to be one of those people who have to wear blue all the time to ward off evil."

But around her neck she wears a couple chains with a gold cross, an old coin and a blue bead. And Simeon has pinned a phylacto on the clothing of her 22-month-old granddaughter.

"Tarpon Springs keeps the mati alive," she said, "because there are Greeks who haven't changed the traditions of their homeland."

Here's one to win an intended lover's affections: A woman gathers milk from two mothers nursing firstborn sons. She mixes the milk with wheat flour and leaven.

Then, she somehow gets the man to drink it and recites this chant: "As the infants now cry and throb with desire for the milk which fails them, so may you throb with desire for me."

Another love potion involves burying a bat at a crossroads. Burn incense over it for 40 days at midnight. Dig it up, grind its spine to powder and put the dust in the man's drink.

A jilted woman can take revenge by casting a spell at his wedding. She makes three loops with a piece of string, and during the gospel reading, tightens the loops into knots and recites a chant. The thread is hidden. Unless it's found and burned or the knots untied, the man becomes impotent.

A story repeated for years in Tarpon Springs is of the "woman in black" who supposedly had the power to cast evil spells. If the old woman was seen on the dock as a sponge boat prepared to leave, the crew canceled the trip and left the next day.

It happens when people socialize in homes and in restaurants. Most of the time, it's just for fun, although some take it seriously.

Coffee cup fortunetelling is called fleetsani. The ritual is simple: Syrupy residue from Greek coffee is swirled three times inside a small cup, which then is placed upside down on a saucer or napkin. Five minutes later, the reader flips over the cup and "reads" the dribblings inside it.

"It's sorcery. It's magic. It's bad," said the Rev. Tryfon Theophilopoulos of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral. "It's prohibited by the church because those things were exercised by witches, by pagans."

The practice dates back thousands of years to the Byzantine Empire, the priest said.

Locals say a Greek woman living near the Sponge Docks once told fortunes from coffee cups. People paid money to hear their past, present and future. But the woman quit after Theophilopoulos scolded her.

Emmanuel Psomas, 34, who works at Hellas restaurant at the Sponge Docks, has read coffee cups numerous times.

"It's psychic ability," said Psomas, who learned it from his mother and other Greek women. "It's insight and premonition."

The best time to read is during a new or full moon, Psomas said. The darker the pattern inside the cup, the worse the fortune. Seeing a four-legged animal foretells adversaries.

"I saw numbers in the cup that represent hours, days, weeks and months," Psomas said. "I saw people who hurt them in the past and would in the future."

He got frightened and stopped.

"I was doing it for entertainment, and I got good."