Pagans, Slashers, and Wall Street Psychos: The True Story of Friday the 13th
Is it bad luck... or just the Christian church's fear of pagans?
Friday the 13th: the very phrase can send a chill (of gleeful excitement or dread, depending on who you are) down the spine. Few days of the year are so notoriously unnerving and so profoundly associated with bad luck. But where did our fear of this date come from, and why does it persist?
Mythical Origins of Friday the 13th: Loki, Jesus, and the Knights Templar
Today, we typically associate Friday the 13th with slasher movies, but the day's ominousness has holier roots.
No one is exactly sure where our fears of Friday the 13th came from, and its origins are shrouded in a mythological haze. According to some biblical sources, Friday the 13th was the day Eve offered Adam the apple and launched humanity out of paradise. It was also supposedly the day Jesus was crucified, just before the dawn of modern times.
Another popular theory about the beginning of Friday the 13th proposes that the date marked the downfall of the Knights Templar, a group of militant monastic Christians. On Friday the 13th, 1307, the French king is said to have ordered the arrest of hundreds of Knights Templar members, thus collapsing the society.
This idea was popularized in The DaVinci Code, in which Dan Brown wrote (in his typically dramatic fashion), "On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force 'confessions,' and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake."
It's not entirely clear how much of this occurred, and it's also unclear whether Friday the 13th was even feared before it was popularized in the 19th century. Still, seeing how badly Christians typically behave when faced with even the most minute deviance from the Holy Book, it's unsurprising that the church's superstition had something to do with our modern fears of the day.
The Witchy Pagan Origins of Our Fear of Friday and 13
The number 13's unlucky connotations are as ancient as human civilization itself. Across religions and time periods, the number 13 tends to have special implications. One ancient Norse myth tells a story of a dinner party intended for 12 gods. Of course, a 13th guest appeared uninvited. That uninvited guest was Loki, the trickster god (and notorious Avengers nemesis), who not only crashed the party but also immediately killed Balder, the god of joy and happiness.
Having 13 guests at dinner seems like a bad decision all around. In some narratives, Judas is described as the 13th guest at Jesus's pre-crucifixion dinner. Also, Hindus are thought to have believed that 13 people gathering in any one place is instantly bad luck.
On the other hand, Ancient Egyptians believed life was a twelve-step quest for spiritual ascension, and the eternal afterlife at the end of this quest was represented by a thirteenth step that marked not an end but an ultimate transformation into something eternal.
Naturally, as civilizations evolved to fear death instead of celebrating it, 13 became feared. Some speculate that our fear of the number 13 was–as most things are—manufactured by the patriarchy thanks to fear of women. It's believed that 13 was sacred in ancient goddess-worshiping cultures because there were 13 lunar and menstrual cycles in a calendar year. But as the patriarchy began to take power, the "perfect" number twelve and the 12-month year, the "imperfect" number 13 became feared and demonized.
In general, Fridays also don't have the best reputation (regardless of what the Rebecca Blacks of the world have to say). In Rome, executions happened on Fridays. Friday was also a holy day for pagans, meaning that the church had to immediately condemn it.
Just as they influence our fears of the number 13, the old Christian fear of Fridays might have roots in fears of paganism. The term "Friday" has been traced to a norse deity known as Frigg (goddess of marriage and fertility) or Freya (goddess of sex and fertility). Of course, when the church became determined to control the world, they recast Frigg and Freya as witches. Friday is the sabbath for pagans and Jews, so no wonder it was vilified by the church.
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Angelo Kritikos
