DanMargarita.com

According to David Emery of About.com, paraskevidekatriaphobia (also spelled paraskavedekatriaphobia, if you want to win a bar bet) is the irrational fear of Friday the 13th. I assume he’s referring to the date Friday the 13th and not the movie Friday the 13th. Of course, the movie title is based on the fact that the date Friday the 13th is supposed to be unlucky, which is why a movie titled Tuesday the 10th wouldn’t likely scare anyone or rake in big money at the box office.

The fact is that the day Friday is in itself supposed to be unlucky as is the number 13, ergo putting them together is a double whammy. Sort of like how thunder is scary and lightning is scary but thunder and lightning is even scarier.

One theory of why Friday is considered an unlucky day is that in some pre-Christian pagan religions, Friday was a day of worship and thus when the Church arose, they wanted anything associated with the pagans to have a bad connotation. However, in pagan Rome, Friday was execution day so I’m guessing the condemned pretty much thought of it as an unlucky day already, as well as a lousy way to kick off the weekend.

The number 13 wasn’t considered bad luck by everybody. The ancient Egyptians, that is the Egyptians from way back, not elderly people currently in Egypt, believed life unfolded in 12 stages, with death being the 13th, an eternal afterlife. That was revered and not feared.

Fear of the number 13 is so pervasive in our culture, that some buildings don’t even have a 13th floor. They go right from 12 to 14. This seems illogical. If you’re on the 14th floor, you’re really on the 13th floor and thus, still doomed. You can call the bubonic plague “Pretty-Smelling Rose Syndrome” all you want, but you’re still going to have fever, chills, vomiting, nausea, bloody diarrhea and die.

Another theory holds that in prehistoric goddess-worshipping cultures, the number 13 was revered because it corresponded to the lunar or menstrual cycle and when the patriarchal religions came along, they denigrated any religions that had a “not-so-fresh feeling.”

There’s also the Viking legend of Loki, the Evil One. It’s too long to explain but to sum it up, he became the 13th person at a party by crashing it and someone wound being killed by a thrown spear of mistletoe. I not only learned of this explanation through my research for this column, but I also learned that mistletoe comes in spears. Perhaps one day I’ll hear of someone being killed by myrrh and through my research I’ll discover just what that is.

Religion plays a big part in these superstitions, as you can see. One mention by Mr. Emery is The Knights Templar, made famous by the book/movie The DaVinci Code. The “warrior monks,” which seems like an oxymoron, were formed for the Crusades to combat Islam and as a silent order, presumably counted heavily on the element of surprise.

They became so powerful that popes and kings feared them and conspired to stop them with a mass arrest on Friday, October 13, 1307. The trumped-up charges were never proven although after brutal torture, some “confessed” to the charges and probably whatever else their captors asked them to (waterboarding, anyone?).

Let’s not forget The Last Supper in which Jesus and his 12 Apostles were having a nosh when one of the dinner guests betrayed Jesus, who wound up being crucified on a Friday. I’m assuming you’ve heard about that one, as it was in all the papers.

If you have 13 letters in your name, you have “the devil’s luck.” Noted serial killers Theodore Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, and Albert De Salvo all had 13 letters in their names. You’re counting the letters in your name right now, aren’t you? “Jack the Ripper” is also composed of 13 letters but odds are that “Ripper” isn’t really the family name, just his stage name.

As for me, I don’t consider Friday to be unlucky. That’s when I get my paycheck.