Tempting Fate : superstitious origins of Friday 13th
If you feel like flirting with Lady Luck this Friday wear red underwear.
Today – Friday 13th April – is the second of three Friday 13ths we will have in 2012, each falling thirteen weeks apart. Every calendar year has at least one of these inauspicious days, but three is an unusually high number and they say bad luck comes in threes …
How is it that Friday the thirteenth has gained such a strong hold on our collective consciousness? It is one of the most widely spread superstitions – with a recent study at the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina showing that between 17 and 21 million Americans (more than the populations of Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria combined twice over) suffer from the phobia of the day; a fear known as paraskevidekatriaphobia – if that doesn’t make you feel cross-eyed trying to read it then it will certainly twist your tongue when you try to say it. But for such a widely accepted belief the origins of the superstition are hard to find.
The first solid mention of Friday 13th as a fateful day was as recent as Victorian times. The date probably gained its significance by being a combination of two older superstitions: that Friday is an unlucky day, and that thirteen is an unlucky number. If we are to avoid the bad luck awaiting us today, we might be better equipped to do so if we remove some of the mystery that surrounds it.
Friday has long had a reputation as an unlucky day: don’t set sail on a journey or your crew will lose heart, don’t start a new job or you’ll end up bankrupt, don’t change your sheets, don’t trim your nails, don’t cut your hair … there is an endless list of things to avoid. As with many common superstitions our mistrust of Fridays is rooted in religion: Christianity maintains that Eve gave Adam the forbidden apple on a Friday; that they were expelled from Eden on a Friday and then died on a Friday. And of course Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, celebrated just last week. But it is not simply amongst Christians that Friday is maligned. In ancient Rome Friday was the normal day for executions, and England shared it as the customary day for hangings.
The number thirteen has an even worse reputation. Most cultures are so anxious to avoid the misfortune that the number might import that there are no thirteenth gates in airports, or room number thirteen in hotels or floor thirteen in high buildings: Cape Town’s Taj Hotel skips straight from floor 12 to floor 14, and neither it or the world famous One and Only Hotel have a room number thirteen. Following two fatal accidents in the mid-1920s in cars bearing the number thirteen, Formula One racing dropped the number completely and in this season’s premiership Arsenal, Chelsea and Aston Villa are amongst teams that have no player thirteen in their squad lists.
Twelve is a number associated with completeness: twelve months in the calendar, twelve hours on the clock, twelve gods on Olympus, twelve tribes of Israel, so thirteen is the number that overloads the fullness of its more perfect predecessor. It so happens that there are thirteen lunar cycles in a year and therefore it is also a number associated with femininity – something most patriarchal societies are always wary of, and there were apparently thirteen witches in a coven.
The belief that thirteen around a table is bad luck can be traced as far back as the Vikings, who tell a Norse myth of a banquet held at Valhalla by the god Odin for twelve guests. Loki (god of Mischief) gate-crashed the party and then incensed Hod (the blind god of winter) to kill Balder the Good with a spear of mistletoe and thirteen at the dinner table gained the reputation of being unlucky. The Bible also reveals that there were thirteen seated at the last supper – Jesus and his twelve disciples – and the thirteenth at the table was Judas the betrayer.
Friday 13th is a hybrid of these already powerful superstitions. Recently there have been theories that it became known as a menacing day because on Friday 13 October 1307 King Philip IV of France ordered the arrest of thousands of the Knights Templar, who were then tortured, forced into confessions, and hundreds were burned at the stake. Friday 13th forever afterwards became associated with ill fortune. So they say.
There have been a few attempts to prove the superstition wrong. Legend has it that the British Navy built a ship and named her H.M.S. Friday, laid her keel on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday and found a man named Jim Friday to be her captain. H.M.S. Friday set sail on her maiden voyage on a Friday and was never seen again. In the 1880’s the Thirteen Club was started to attempt to remove the superstitions grasp over us. Its members met on the thirteenth of the month, walked under ladders to get into the room and sat down to dinner at tables of thirteen. The club has had five US Presidents (none of whom were assassinated) as members, and many believe that membership is blessed.
We love trying to make sense of life and recruit signs and omens to help us do so. We are inclined, however, to have selective memories and to remember the times when something extraordinary really did happen rather than the times when it was just a normal day and are particularly alert to anything that happens on such a notable day as a Friday thirteenth. On Friday 13 January this year the Italian cruise ship the Costa Concordia ran aground killing at least 16 people. Friday 13April 2012 is the 146th birthday of Butch Cassidy – infamous American train and bank robber – and the 112th birthday of playwright Samuel Beckett. Both of them were born when the date fell on a Friday. Other people of note whose birthdays have fallen on a Friday thirteenth are Nathan Bedford Forrest (Friday 13th July 1821), one of the nastier figures from American history: he was a confederate general, slave trader and Grand Wizard of the KKK; Fidel Castro (Friday 13th August 1926),former Prime Minister of Cuba; and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (Friday 13th June 1986).
So if you woke up today with a foreboding feeling, then here are some ways to try to fend off any bad luck that might be waiting to ambush you. Start your day on the right foot – literally get out of bed on the right side; it is meant to be luckier than the left. Wear red underwear: red is a colour that attracts good luck. Don’t clean, do laundry or change your sheets: they say Friday thirteenth is a bad day to hold a broom and new sheets is a sure way of inviting bad dreams. Cross your fingers, hold your thumbs, touch wood and forget all this superstitious nonsense and think positively; believing in bad luck will only encourage it.