Friday 13 is it unlucky Usually Friday occurring on the 13th day
of any month is
considered to be a day of bad luck in English, German, Polish and Portuguese-speaking cultures around the globe. Similar superstitions exist in some other traditions. In Greece or Spain, for example, Tuesday the 13th takes the same role. The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaph obia. It’s a Greek words. Phobia respectively. Alternative spellings include paraskevodekatriaph obia or paraskevidekatriaph obia) or friggatriskaidekaph obia, and is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a phobia (fear) of the number thirteen.
History of Friday the 13th
No historical date has been verifiably identified as the origin of the superstition. Before the 20th century, although there is evidence that the number 13 was considered unlucky, and Friday was considered unlucky, there was no link between them. The first documented mention of a "Friday the 13th" is generally listed as occurring in the early 1900''s.
However, many popular stories exist about the origin of the concept:
The Last Supper, with Judas numbered among the thirteen guests (Jesus plus his 12 apostles), and that the Crucifixion of Jesus occurred Friday. However, Judas was not actually present for the latter part of the meal.
One theory, recently offered in the novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’, holds that it came about not as the result of a convergence, but a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700 years ago.
The catastrophe was the decimation of the
Knights Templar, the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in Tales of the Knights Templar (Warner Books: 1995):
"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 is said: If 13 people sit down to dinner together, all will die within the year. The Turks so disliked the number 13 that it was practically expunged from their vocabulary (Brewer, 1894). Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue. Many buildings don''t have a 13th floor. If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil''s luck (Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names). There are 13 witches in a coven.
It may be true or a blind belief. But our former and famous Pri-Minister Atalji’s lucky number is 13. What’s your opinion? Share it in the comments box.