NARROW HOUSES; Copyright:1994 Douglas E. Winter. "Of all superstitions, perhaps the most pervasive -- and yet least explicable -- is the aversion to the number thirteen. Many buildings (particularly hotels) tall enough to have a thirteenth floor will not number it as such. We are told that the registration of Princess Margaret's birth was delayed so that she would not be entered as number thirteen. So firm is its grip upon us that even hospitals, those supposed bastions of rational thought, decline to label their operating theaters with the number. What is it about the 'devil's dozen' that poses such evil portent? The answer, as with so many superstitions, is biblical. Thirteen gathered in the upper room on the night of the Last Supper. 'And in the evening he cometh with the twelve. And as they sat and did eat, Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, One of you which eateth with me shall betray me.' (Mark 14: 17-18). 'Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spake of Judas Iscariot . . for he it was that should betray him.' (John 6: 70-71). As for Friday the 13th: a lamentable intersection of unlucky number and dire day. 'And on a Friday fil al this meschaunce,' wrote Chaucer in 'The Nun's Priest's Tale'. The superstitions surrounding this fateful day -- particularly Good Fridays -- are numerous: a child born on Friday is doomed to misfortune; do not feed anyone butter churned or eggs laid that day. Courting, and especially marriage, on Friday is a folly. Do not move to a new home or new job on that fateful day; do not rise from an illness; and please, please do not take a journey -- for as the fishermen say, 'A Friday's sail, always fail." This had more meat to it, more background--but was it still too neat? Well, this one appeared to back Winter up: MAGIC AND SUPERSTITION; Copyright 1968 Douglas Hill Published 1968 by the Hamlyn Publishing Group "Thirteen is especially unlucky terms of dinner parties, referring back to the Last Supper or the Norse feast: it is believed that one of the thirteen diners will die within a year. But the fear exists in every occurrence of the number. Throughout the western world people can still be found numbering their houses '12 1/2,' to avoid living in number 13. The state lotteries of France, Italy, and elsewhere never sell tickets with that number. Hotels and hospitals, and similar institutions, often have no room numbered thirteen; and many big hotels, like the new Cavendish Hotel completed in London in 1966, also have no thirteenth floor. Fear is also aroused if the thirteenth of the month falls on a Friday--in itself a notoriously unlucky day, largely by association with Good Friday." Last Supper, Good Friday...yup, got all the elements. But what’s this about a Norse feast? Is that pre-Christian? Better look some more. Hmmmm, what’s this, then: EVERY MAN'S BOOK OF SUPERSTITIONS; Christine Chaundler Copyright A. R. Mowbray & Co Ltd 1970 Published 1970 by Philosophical Library, Inc. "When making beds, mattress should never be turned on a Friday or a Sunday. Sunday is taboo, of course, because of the biblical prohibition working on the Sabbath--the Jewish Sabbath being transferred to the first day of the week in Christian practice and Friday because of the general bad luck attributed to it. Many people consider that this attribute of Friday is due its being the day of the Crucifixion, but the belief in its ill luck probably goes much farther back in history and m have something to do with the sacrifices offered to the goddess Friga in Norse mythology. And there is still an uneasy feeling among both seamen and passengers when a voyage begins on a Friday. If the Friday happens also to be the thirteenth day of the month apprehension is doubly strong. Perhaps the best known of meal-time dangers is the belief that it is unlucky to sit down thirteen to table. So widespread is this superstition that most hostesses will go far out of their way to avoid such a catastrophe. Should any invited guest unexpectedly fall out leaving only thirteen for the meal, almost anyone will be dragged in to fill the vacant chair. The old belief is that the first person to rise from the table will die within a year. Slight protection against this fate is supposed by some to be afforded if all the company rise together. Nevertheless it is safer to avoid the unlucky number if possible. Usually the host or hostess will try to arrange matters so that neither a person falling out nor an unexpected guest will leave thirteen. It is thought that this superstition may have had its origin in the Gospel story of the Last Supper in the events which followed the Passover meal partaken of by the twelve disciples and their Master. Judas, who rose first from the table, was the first to die as recounted in the New Testament It is probable, however, that it goes back farther in time than that, for divination by numbers played a large part in ancient religions." So here we have Norse Mythology again being used to link the bad character of Friday to a much earlier time than the previous references. Well, there was only one other book in the library that might be of use in the research project. Of course, it was terribly old, and written in such a fey voice! But never mind--I can make one last attempt to pin down the Norse reference: POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS; Copyright: Charles Platt 1925 Republished by Gale Research Company, Book Tower, Detroit, 1973 "The rise of the compound Three-Ten for Thirteen is so very general all over the world, that it seems clear that to the primitive mind of early Man it had no real meaning--he stopped at Twelve. So persistent are these old instincts that, even today, we stop at "Twelve Times Twelve "in our school multiplication triplication tables, though there is absolutely no reason whatever why we should do so, except for our inherited instinct that it was, and therefore still must be, the utmost limit of mathematical thought. Thirteen, therefore was not used as number, but as a vague word meaning anything beyond Twelve. To the untutored savage, as to the animal mind of today, anything unknown conveyed an immediate sense of danger. Thirteen was not really an unlucky number, but a fateful one--a number full of vague and unimaginable possibilities and therefore a number to be avoided by any peace-loving man. This curious point is amply proved by the many superstitions that cluster round this number, for they are all based upon the number itself. In the majority of hotels, for instance, there is no room bearing this number, and the visitor who sleeps in the thirteenth room slumbers quite peacefully because it bears the number 14 on the door. The ill-luck, you see, is not attached to the room, but to the number, which carried to the savage mind such dreaded fear of the Unknown. Possibly that may have been a million years ago, but the fateful character still clings to the number. Many people believe that the superstition about sitting thirteen at table dates from the Last Supper and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. That is not possible, for the idea goes back centuries earlier: but it does seem clear that this world fatality gave the idea new life and sent it bounding forward along the years to come. As a matter of fact, this was not an isolated case of at thirteen at table, for Christ and the chosen disciples worked together regularly every day, and must, surely, have risked the fateful thirteen many thousands of times. In Scotland, Thirteen is known as the "Devil's Dozen"--a title characteristic of the worst associations of this much abused number. I have already made reference to the question of Thirteen sitting at table together. But the Romans considered that the fatality followed the number whenever and for whatever purpose thirteen people gathered together. The Fish was an emblem of Freyja, and as such was associated with the worship of Love. It was offered by the Scandinavians to their goddess, on the sixth day of the week, i.e., Friday. I have already pointed out that many primitive customs were "adopted" by the early Christians, in order to make life easier for their converts--this was a case in point. Fish has been accepted by Catholics as the correct diet on their sixth day fast. Unfortunately this worship of Love on the Friday of each week gradually developed--or degenerated--into a series of filthy and indecent rites and practices. Here then we have the obvious clue to the Day's bad name--no decent man would be associated with such practices! Friday started its career as a good day, almost a sacred day--and in many countries it is still the day of all days for lovers. Then love degenerated into lust, and now the day is universally shunned! This trick of attributing to poor old Friday all the disasters that have ever befallen Mankind is a very general one--in addition to Eve's "indiscretion," as I may call it, Friday is popularly, but not historically, supposed to have seen the murder of Abel, the stoning of Stephen, the Crucifixion, the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod, the flight of the children of Israel through the Red Sea, the Deluge (of course !), the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel and many others, right up to William Tell and the other Apple! Give a poor dog a bad name, and you might as well hang it!" Wow! Thirteen has been ‘fateful�?as long as there have been numbers, and Friday has been disastrous since ‘Eve.�?I think Mr. Hitt may have been misled by Spanish conspiracy theorists, anxious to give more importance to the Knights Templar, their attackers, and their defenders. And guess which group succeeded the KsT? So that’s what I found out about the background of Friday the thirteenth. My sources weren’t impeccable, but they were the only ones available to me. I’m sure there are many other sources with other derivations. Who’s got another version? Which one’s right? Who knows? |