Everything You Need to Know about Friday the 13th

 

Here's a bit of a story about why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky

Today is May 13th, it's Friday the 13th of this year!

Superstitions such as the saying "tappy, tappy boo" (oops), the concept of "bag-bag" or the belief in the unlucky nature of Friday the 13th are beliefs that may be difficult for us to explain logically to non-believers, but they are still persistent beliefs/habits that we find difficult to get rid of..

Friday the 13th falls at least once a year, and thanks to the Gregorian calendar we follow, there is an opportunity to experience a maximum of three days on Friday the 13th in one year.

 A clever trick to predict which month the "dangerous" day will be is to look for months that start on Sunday — *whisper*, as it was in May 2022.

The fear of Friday the 13th is so noticeable that quite a lot of phobias are associated with it.

 "Frigaterskaydkaphobia" comes from Frigga – the Scandinavian goddess whose name also forms the word "Friday", the queen of Asgard and the goddess of fertility and love — and the Greek words triskaidka for the number 13 and phobia, which means fear. 

"Paraskevidekatrifobia" is another way to call the phobia of Friday the 13th. 

This version comes from the Greek word "Friday", which means "paraskeva" and "decatria", and is a variant of the saying of the number 13.

Friday the 13th not only causes such a tongue-tied phobia, but also leads to a loss of income in the amount of $ 700 to $ 800 million..

 A large amount is the result of people avoiding getting married and/or traveling on this terrible day.

To understand where the fear of this terrible day came from, you should look at the strange date of each of its components – Friday and the number 13 – separately.

Good days

Before "Friday" and "13" got the frightening connotations they have now, going back to pagan and pre-Christian times, showing us that they were actually famous ideas.

The idea of the meaning of Friday is embedded in its name. 

As mentioned earlier, Friday was formed on behalf of the Scandinavian goddess Frigga (also known as Frigga). The word "Friday" translates as "Friday day".”

Frege was highly respected as one of the most powerful gods of heaven. 

It was believed that he protects families, all kinds of love (for example, marital and maternal), and it was also believed that he has the power to grant or cancel a woman's fertility.

In this context, Friday may also be associated with the goddess Freya, who was closely associated with Frege.

 Like Frigga, Freya defended love and fertility, but unlike her, she also dealt with war. 

It was believed that Freya was a powerful sorceress who could predict the future, including who would die in battle. 

It was also said that she traveled in a carriage pulled by two black cats.

 Because of the strong woman to whom Friday was dedicated, people who believed in Scandinavian mythology considered it good to get married on Friday.

The number 13 also had a feminine power associated with it in pagan culture.

 In addition to representing the lunar cycle, the number 13 may also indicate the number of menstrual cycles (in some) women per year.

 Fertility was regarded with great respect at the peak of these cultures and was often depicted in the art of the time, sometimes adding themes related to the phases of the moon.

But wait, that doesn't reflect at all what we have to do on Friday the 13th, right? Where is the bad luck, the fairy tale?

Well, this change in association with both Friday and the number 13 can be attributed to the emergence of Christianity in the Middle Ages.

 With the spread of the patriarchal faith that dominated the world, cultures that believed in numerous gods, with deities dedicated to love, fertility and magic, were marked as "unholy". 

To further advance the Christian agenda, pagan gods and their believers were also classified as witches.

It was after this shift that the fate of Friday and the number 13 changed to what we know today.

Unlucky number 13

In addition to the fear of Friday the 13th, treskaidekophobia describes people's fear of the number 13 in general. 

The origin of the legends about the number 13 is not as clear as others.

A common misconception about where this fear came from is the idea that an ancient legal document, the Code of Hammurabi, went beyond using the number 13 in listing its set of rules.

 Although it was later discovered that this omission was the result of a clerical error in the first translation of the text and that the rules were not even listed using numerical order in the first place.

The most popular source of people's fear of the number 13 is the "last Supper". 

On Maundy Thursday, Jesus and his 12 disciples had lunch together for the last time.

 There were 13 guests in total, of which 13 were the infamous Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed Jesus, which led to his death the next day, which was, yes, Friday.

Norse mythology also has a story similar to the Last Supper, which warns against eating with 13 guests.

 While the 12 gods of Norse mythology were having lunch in Valhalla, Loki - the God of Evil - decided to break up the party. 

With the help of strategic deception, Loki manages to deceive the blind god Hodder and force him to shoot his brother Balder. 

Because he was wounded by an arrow soaked in mistletoe, Balder was killed instantly. 

God was dedicated to light, joy and goodness.

Two different stories, but the same theme - there are 13 guests - is just asking for trouble that could lead to someone's death.

The apparent perfection of the predecessor number 13 does not help her reputation at all. 

The number 12 is often associated with completeness. 

12 months of the year, 12 zodiac signs, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 tribes of Israel. 

The number 12 is also one of the ways we divide time: by hours and even by the hours of the day (with 24 hours in two parts of 12 hours).

 Some believe that it is very unlikely to achieve perfection twice, and with 12 "perfect", so to speak, there must have been something with his successor.

Of course, you may notice that many high-rise buildings skip the 13th floor altogether.

 Hotels try not to call rooms under number 13, and some airports also do not have a boarding gate under number 13.

Freaky Friday

Just like the number 13, it may not be easy to determine the origin of the fear of Friday myth. Although this is similar to No. 

13, we can see that the beginnings of fear also come from Christianity.

Jesus died on Friday, but this is not the only important religious event that took place on this significant day. 

It is believed that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit on Friday and that their son Cain also killed his brother Abel on Friday. 

Friday was also the site of the fall of Solomon's temple, and on the first day Noah's ark passed through the Great Flood.

In the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in his book The Canterbury Tales that Friday is "a day of bad luck".

 If it is supposed to be a reference to a real anecdote about that day or an example of cult satire and Chaucer's satire, we are not so sure.

200 years later, playwright Robert Green used "Friday's face" to describe someone's appearance expressing depression and anxiety. 

Another example is William Rowley's 1663 play Midnight, where he writes: "The plague of Friday morning is the worst day of the whole week.”

At the moment, Friday was definitely a day that people needed to pay attention to (and not just because it meant the start of the weekend). 

In Britain, Friday was known as "hangman's Day" because it was usually the time when people sentenced to death were hanged.

A killer combination

With dated origin stories from Friday and legends #13, you may be surprised to hear that the unfortunate "Friday 13" concept isn't as old as you think.

Sometimes the belief in the notorious infamous holiday is attributed to Friday, October 13, 1307, the arrest of members of a religious group: the Knights Templar.

 This contact was also continued by Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code", who popularized this statement.

 While hundreds of Templars were arrested and eventually executed on that fateful day, there were no other direct links between this and the superstitions surrounding Friday the 13th.

Friday the 13th really came to light only thanks to the groundbreaking novel by Thomas William Lawson called "Friday the Thirteenth".

 Published in 1907, the novel revolves around a cunning stockbroker who plans a stock market crash on that day.

 Fox described him as "essentially the Wolf of Wall Street at the turn of the century.

A year after Lawson's book, the New York Times became the first media outlet to use the term with its frightening connotation in the context of a former senator who boldly promoted 13 bills, the New York Times stated that "Friday the 13th carries no horror for Senator Owen.”

Perhaps one of the most popular scenes of "Friday the 13th" in popular cultural media is the release of the first film of the franchise "Friday the 13th". 

In 1980, the world met Jason Voorhees, an abusive child who wore a hockey mask on the fateful Friday the 13th.

Since then, the film has released 11 more films (ironically, it did not reach the 13th place in the list of series), TV series, novels, comics, video games and thousands of Halloween costumes.

No global fear

While several tragedies occurred on different Fridays of the 13th, one of which was the infamous murder of Tupac Shakur, there were no consistent links or patterns between the devastating events and Fridays of the 13th.