Happy Friday the 13th ** A Health Issue?? ** Why It Is Unlucky For Some Folks?? ** Part I

[Guest guest]

From .. Urban Legends .. by David Emery

Paraskevidekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday the 13th

 

I have before me the abstract of a study

 

http://clk.about.com/?zi=1/XJ & sdn=urbanlegends & zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.\

gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Fcmd%3DRetrieve%26db%3DPubMed%26amp%3Blist_uids%3D829\

2946%26amp%3Bdopt%3DAbstract

 

published in the British Medical Journal in 1993, entitled " Is Friday

the 13th Bad for Your Health? " With the aim of mapping " the relation

between health, behaviour, and superstition surrounding Friday 13th in

the United Kingdom, " its authors compared the ratio of traffic volume to

vehicular accidents on two different days, Friday the 6th and Friday the

13th, over a period of years.

 

Surprisingly, they found that in the region sampled, while consistently

fewer people chose to drive on Friday the 13th, the number of hospital

admissions due to accidents was significantly higher than on " normal "

Fridays.

 

Their conclusion:

 

" Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a

result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52

percent. Staying at home is recommended. "

 

Paraskevidekatriaphobics — people afflicted with a morbid, irrational

fear of Friday the 13th — are no doubt pricking up their ears just now,

buoyed by evidence that their fears may not be so irrational after all.

But it's unwise to take solace in a single scientific study (the only

one of its kind, so far as I know), especially one so peculiar. I

suspect it has more to teach us about human psychology than it does

about any particular date on the calendar.

 

The Most Widespread Superstition

 

The sixth day of the week and the number 13 both have foreboding

reputations said to date from ancient times; their inevitable

conjunction from one to three times a year portends more misfortune than

some credulous minds can bear. Folklorists say it's probably the most

widespread superstition in America (and no doubt in other parts of the

world, as well) — some people won't go to work on Friday the 13th; some

won't eat in restaurants; many wouldn't think of setting a wedding on

the date.

 

How many people at the turn of the millennium still suffer from this

condition? According to Dr. Donald Dossey, a psychotherapist

specializing in the treatment of phobias and credited with coining the

term " paraskevidekatriaphobia, " as many as 21 million do in the United

States alone. If that figure is correct, something like eight percent of

Americans are still in the grips of an old superstition.

 

Exactly how old is difficult to say, because tracing the origins of

superstitions is an imprecise science, at best. In fact, it's mostly

guesswork.

 

The Devil's Dozen

 

It is said: If 13 people sit down to dinner together, all will die

within the year. The Ottoman Turks so disliked the number 13 that it was

practically expunged from their vocabulary (Brewer, 1894). Many cities

do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue. Many buildings don't have

a 13th floor. If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the

devil's luck (Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore

Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names). There are

13 witches in a coven.

 

Though no one can say for sure when and why human beings first

associated the number 13 with misfortune, the belief is assumed to be

quite old and there are any number of theories purporting to trace its

origins to antiquity and beyond.

 

It has been proposed, for example, that fears surrounding the number 13

are as ancient as the act of counting. Primitive man had only his 10

fingers and two feet to represent units, so he could not count higher

than 12. What lay beyond that — 13 — was an impenetrable mystery, hence

an object of superstition.

 

Which has a lovely, didactic ring to it, but one is left wondering: did

primitive man not have toes?

 

Despite whatever terrors the numerical unknown held for their

prehistoric forebears, ancient civilizations weren't unanimous in their

dread of 13. The Chinese regarded the number as lucky, historians say,

as did the Egyptians in the time of the pharaohs.

 

To the ancient Egyptians, life was a quest for spiritual ascension which

unfolded in stages — 12 in this life and a 13th beyond, thought to be

the eternal afterlife. The number 13 therefore symbolized death — not in

terms of dust and decay, but as a glorious and desirable transformation.

Though Egyptian civilization perished, the death-symbolism they

conferred on the number 13 survived, only to be corrupted by later

cultures who associated it with a fear of death instead of a reverence

for the afterlife.

 

Anathema

 

Other sources suggest the number 13 was purposely vilified by the

founders of patriarchal religions in the early days of western

civilization because it represented femininity. Thirteen had been

revered in prehistoric goddess-worshiping cultures, allegedly, because

it corresponded to the number of lunar (menstrual) cycles in a year (13

x 28 = 364 days). The " Earth Mother of Laussel, " for example, a

27,000-year-old carving found near the Lascaux caves in France often

cited as an icon of matriarchal spirituality, depicts a female figure

holding a cresent-shaped horn bearing 13 notches. According to this

explanation, as the solar calendar triumphed over the lunar with the

rise of male-dominated civilization, so did the number 12 over the

number 13, thereafter considered anathema.

 

On the other hand, one of the earliest concrete taboos associated with

the number 13 — a taboo still observed by some superstitious folks

today, apparently — is said to have originated in the East with the

Hindus, who believed, for reasons I haven't been able to ascertain, that

it is always unlucky for 13 people to gather in one place — say, at

dinner. Interestingly enough, exactly the same superstition has been

attributed to the ancient Vikings, though I have also been told that

this and the accompanying mythological explanation are apocryphal. In

any case, the story has been handed down as follows:

 

Twelve gods were invited to a banquet at Valhalla. Loki, the Evil One,

God of Mischief, had been excluded from the guest list but crashed the

party anyway, bringing the total number of attendees to 13. True to

character, Loki raised hell by inciting Hod, the blind god of winter, to

attack Balder the Good, who was a favorite of the gods. Hod took a spear

of mistletoe offered by Loki and obediently hurled it at Balder, killing

him instantly. All Valhalla grieved. And although one might take the

moral of this story to be " Beware of uninvited guests bearing

mistletoe, " the Norse themselves apparently concluded that 13 people at

a dinner party is just plain bad luck.

 

As if to prove the point, the Bible tells us there were exactly 13

present at the Last Supper. One of the dinner guests — er, disciples —

betrayed Jesus Christ, setting the stage for the Crucifixion.

 

Did I mention the Crucifixion took place on a Friday?

 

Bad Friday

 

It is said: Never change your bed on Friday; it will bring bad dreams.

Don't start a trip on Friday or you will have misfortune. If you cut

your nails on Friday, you cut them for sorrow. Ships that set sail on a

Friday will have bad luck – as in the tale of H.M.S. Friday ... One

hundred years ago, the British government sought to quell once and for

all the widespread superstition among seamen that setting sail on

Fridays was unlucky. A special ship was commissioned, named " H.M.S.

Friday. " They laid her keel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday,

selected her crew on a Friday and hired a man named Jim Friday to be her

captain. To top it off, H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden voyage on a

Friday, and was never seen or heard from again.

 

Some say Friday's bad reputation goes all the way back to the Garden of

Eden. It was on a Friday, supposedly, that Eve tempted Adam with the

forbidden fruit. Adam bit, as we all learned in Sunday School, and they

were both ejected from Paradise. Tradition also holds that the Great

Flood began on a Friday; God tongue-tied the builders of the Tower of

Babel on a Friday; the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday; and,

of course, Friday was the day of the week on which Christ was crucified.

It is therefore a day of penance for Christians.

 

In pagan Rome, Friday was execution day (later Hangman's Day in

Britain), but in other pre-Christian cultures it was the sabbath, a day

of worship, so those who indulged in secular or self-interested

activities on that day could not expect to receive blessings from the

gods — which may explain the lingering taboo on embarking on journeys or

starting important projects on Fridays.

 

To complicate matters, these pagan associations were not lost on the

early Church, which went to great lengths to suppress them. If Friday

was a holy day for heathens, it must not be so for Christians — thus it

became known in the Middle Ages as the " Witches' Sabbath, " and thereby

hangs another tale.