Friday the
thirteenth is considered the unluckiest of days, unless you were
born on Friday the thirteenth. If you were born on this day then
Friday the thirteenth is your lucky day.
According to Fernsler, numerologists consider 12 a "complete"
number. There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac,
12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel,
and 12 apostles of Jesus. In exceeding 12 by 1, Fernsler said
13's association with bad luck "has to do with just being a
little beyond completeness. The number becomes restless or
squirmy."
The origins of Friday superstitions are many. One of the best
known is that Eve tempted Adam with the apple on a Friday.
Tradition also has it that the Flood in the Bible, the confusion
at the Tower of Babel, and the death of Jesus Christ all took
place on Friday. Long before the Bible was written, Friday was
considered an important day. Primitive people set aside Fridays
as a special time to worship their deities and ask them for good
crops, health and happiness. Those who worked on this day were
told not to expect "good luck" from the gods.
The day Friday was named after Frigg (or Frigga) Later she was
confused with the goddess of love, Freya, who in turn became
identified with Friday. The name "Friday" came from a Norse
deity worshipped on the sixth day, known either as Frigg
(goddess of marriage and fertility), or Freya (goddess of sex
and fertility), or both, the two figures having become
intertwined in the handing-down of myths over time (the
etymology of "Friday" has been given both ways). Frigg/Freya
corresponded to Venus, the goddess of love of the Romans, who
named the sixth day of the week in her honor "dies Veneris."
Friday was actually considered quite lucky by pre-Christian
Teutonic peoples, we are told — especially as a day to get
married — because of its traditional association with love and
fertility. All that changed when Christianity came along. The
goddess of the sixth day — most likely Freya in this context,
given that the cat was her sacred animal — was recast in
post-pagan folklore as a witch, and her day became associated
with evil doings.
Various legends developed in that vein, but one is of particular
interest: As the story goes, the witches of the north used to
observe their sabbath by gathering in a cemetery in the dark of
the moon. On one such occasion the Friday goddess, Freya
herself, came down from her sanctuary in the mountaintops and
appeared before the group, who numbered only 12 at the time, and
gave them one of her cats, after which the witches' coven — and,
by tradition, every properly-formed coven since — comprised
exactly 13.
One
theory holds that it came about not as the result of a convergence, but
a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700 years
ago. The catastrophe was the decimation of the Knights Templar, the
legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades
to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the
1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as
a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a
church-state conspiracy.
On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become
a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried
out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several
thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren —
in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and
homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in
France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven
years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating
tortures intended to force 'confessions,' and more than a hundred died
under torture or were executed by burning at the stake.
French Explanation
One theory holds that it came about not as the result of a convergence,
but a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700
years ago. The catastrophe was the decimation of the Knights Templar,
the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian
Crusades to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by
the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived
as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a
church-state conspiracy.
On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become
a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried
out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several
thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren —
in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and
homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in
France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven
years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating
tortures intended to force 'confessions,' and more than a hundred died
under torture or were executed by burning at the stake.
People who lived before the late 1800s perceived Friday the 13th as a
day of special misfortune, no evidence has been found to prove it. It's
a fact that no one has been able to document the existence of such
beliefs prior to the 19th century.
