Superstitions
around My Favorite Number
by Heather Weidner
It’s my birthday, so I celebrate when it lands on Friday, the 13th. I was curious about the superstitions around triskaidekaphobia, and not surprisingly, there are still a lot of mysteries and murders that swirl around the possible origins.
The earliest literary reference to the date is in the Revue de Paris in an article by the Marquis de Salvo in 1834. It is about a Sicilian count who killed his daughter on Friday the 13th. In the same year, the play, Le Chateau de Carini made a reference to the date being unlucky. The date is not considered universally unlucky. In Spain, Tuesday, the 13th is.
Many tie the superstition to the number 13. Twelve is considered the complete or “perfect” number while 13 can often represent imperfection, the introduction of evil, or even death. In Norse mythology, Loki crashed a banquet of 12 gods, and murder and mayhem ensued. The Code of Hammurabi omitted the thirteenth law, and high-rise buildings to this day usually don’t have a thirteenth floor or a room thirteen. As early as 1565, the Death card in a Tarot deck was numbered thirteen.
There are some Christian traditions that have been linked to the superstition, too. Like Loki, Judas is often considered the thirteenth guest at the Last Supper. Eve was supposed to have tempted Adam on a Friday, and Christ was crucified on a Friday.
Friday the 13th also is a day tied to a variety of tragedies. In October 1307, King Philip arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar, and many were eventually executed. In 1888, Jack the Ripper killed his last victim on the thirteenth. The Germans bombed Buckingham Palace in September 1940. In November 1970, a cyclone decimated parts of Bangladesh, killing over 300,000 people. Tupac Shakur was murdered in September of 1996. Franklin Roosevelt was so concerned about Friday the 13th that he refused to travel on that day. Friggatriskaidekaphoia is the term that was coined to describe the fear of the date.
Thirteen also appears in a variety of pop culture references. Thomas William Lawson’s wrote Friday, the Thirteenth in 1907, and the Friday 13th horror movie franchise launched in 1980, making the serial killer Jason a household name. It also spawned its own cultural references in shows like The Simpsons, Highway to Heaven, South Park, Scream, and scads of video games. Countless songs reference the date or the serial killer, including those by artists, TuPac, Alice Cooper, Elvira, Eminnem, and Lynard Skynard.
The date never bothered me, and I was pleased to discover that people who were born on the thirteenth or celebrate a birthday on the date often feel immune to the superstition.
The tradition of “unlucky” thirteen has permeated our culture for years. Do you have a superstition or something that you regularly avoid?
Through the years, Heather Weidner has been a cop’s kid, technical writer, editor, college professor, software tester, and IT manager. She writes the Pearly Girls Mysteries, the Delanie Fitzgerald Mysteries, The Jules Keene Glamping Mysteries, and The Mermaid Bay Christmas Shoppe Mysteries.
Her
short stories appear in a variety of anthologies, and she has non-fiction pieces in Promophobia and The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers’
Cookbook.
Originally
from Virginia Beach, Heather has been a mystery fan since Scooby-Doo and Nancy
Drew. She lives in Central Virginia with her husband and a crazy Mini Aussie
Shepherd.
