Friday 13 June, 2003 at 1:48PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (1)

I began to wonder how this whole unlucky 13 superstition started, particularly when it's in conjunction with a Friday. The Friday the 13th movie series certainly contributed in recent years, but what about before that? I decided to have a sift around the net and see what I could find.

The answer, as with so many superstitions, appears to be biblical. Thirteen people were at the last supper - Jesus and 12 apostles. As they sat and ate, Jesus said something like "One of you which eateth with me shall betray me.", therefore twisting into the belief that 13 is an 'evil' number. But wait! It does not necessarily end there. Here's an excerpt written in 1925 by Charles Platt:

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 tables, though there is absolutely no reason whatsoever 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.

Hmm ok, so what about Friday? Again it appeared to be for religious reasons, notoriously unlucky largely by association with Good Friday, the day of crucifixion. This trick of attributing to Friday all the disasters that have ever befallen Mankind is a very general one - in addition to Eve's 'indiscretion' in Eden, Friday is also supposed to have seen the murder of Abel, the stoning of Stephen, the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod, the flight of the children of Israel through the Red Sea, the Deluge, the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel and others, right up to William Tell and the other Apple.

So there ya have it, or at least some possibilities. If you have some other theory, write it down in the comments