Christopher
Johnson IV
Writer/Producer/Director
Writer/Producer/Director
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Christopher
Johnson IV
Writer/Producer/Director |
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| Christopher Johnson IV: Archives | |
| PARASKEVIDEKATRIAPHOBICS Paraskevidekatriaphobics — people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th. The number of reasons that one can find to relate bad luck to “Friday the 13” are numerous, no doubt. Stemming from the idea that Christ was crucified on Friday the 13 to the idea that a witches coven consists of twelve individuals, the 13th being the devil I find these superstitions interesting and decided to educate myself on the origins of this irrational fear of the number 13. I have long since considered it a rather lucky day/number (the Chinese also consider the number 13 lucky) and my first cat, Thomas, was all black which appears to have brought me bucket loads of good luck; he spent most of his wonderful long life crossing my path. I have taken the liberty of plagiarizing a number of sources and rewording said source material to make it appear as if I know a lot about this, which I didn’t before, but do now. If you’re going to stand on someone’s shoulders, stand on the tallest of them that you can find. Perhaps that will be my new motto. So let us begin: ETYMOLOGY: The name “Friday” came from a Norse deity worshipped on the sixth day, known either as Frigg (goddess of marriage and fertility), or Freya (goddess of sex and fertility), or both. The two figures have become intertwined in the hading-down of myths over time. Frigg/Freya corresponded to Venus, the goddess of love of the Romans who named the sixth day of the week in her honor “dies Veneris.” Friday was actually considered quite lucky by pre-Christian Teutonic peoples; especially as a day to get married because of its traditional association with love and fertility. Christianity came along and changed all that. The goddess of the sixth day, most likely Freya in this context, given that the cat was her sacred animal, was recast in post-pagan folklore as a witch, and her day became associated with evil doings. 13: THE DEVIL’S DOZEN: It has been said that if 13 people sit down together, all will die within a year. This is one of the earliest concrete taboos associated with the number 13, said to have originated in the East with the Hindus. The exact same tradition has been attributed to the ancient Vikings. Also, there were 13 people at the last supper (though not all of them were purported to die within a year of their evening together). Then there is the above mentioned witches coven. NAMESAKE: It has been demonstrated that if you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil’s luck. For example: Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names. FEMININITY: God forbid woman should rise to power and distract from the nobler pursuits of man. Apparently it has been suggested that the number 13 was vilified by the founders of patriarchal religions in the early days of western civilization because it represented femininity. 13 had been revered in prehistoric goddess-worshipping cultures, allegedly, because it corresponded to the number of lunar (menstrual) cycles in a year (13x28 = 364 days). Apparently the solar calendar triumphed over the lunar with the rise of male dominated civilizations and along with it the number 12 over 13, thereafter considered “Anathema.” LOKI THE EVIL ONE: 12 gods were invited to a banquet at Valhalla. Loki, god of mischief, had not been invited, but showed up anyway bringing the total number of guests to 13. A lot of god like unpleasantness occurred resulting in the death of Balder the Good who was favored by the gods thus resulting in badness again for the number 13. OTHER GREAT MOMENTS IN HISTORY: Apparently these other great moments happened on Fridays throughout history as well: Adam was tempted by Eve, The Great Flood, God tongue-tying the builders of the Tower of Babel, the destruction of the Temple of Solomon and the crucifixion of Christ. In pagan Rome, Friday was execution day, later on in Britain, it was Hangman’s Day. In contrast, in other pre-Christian cultures it was the Sabbath (a day of worship), so those who indulged in secular activities on that day could count on not receiving blessings from the gods. RELIGION: The early church went to great lengths to suppress pagan associations with Friday. If Friday was a holy day for heathens, it must not be so for Christians. It became known in the middle ages as ‘Witches’ Sabbath. I lifted this section on “THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR” directly from a great article and as I have an interest in Free Masonry and the Masons in general, I decided to include it here. THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR: One theory, most recently propounded 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." IN CONTRAST: The ancient Egyptians regarded life as a great spiritual ascension which they believed unfolded in stages: 12 in this life and a 13th beyond which was thought to be the eternal afterlife. 13 therefore symbolized death, but not in a negative context, but in one that represented a magnificent transformation to the next level or plane of existence. Sadly, though the Egyptian civilization perished, the association they attached to the number 13 regarding death was carried on and corrupted by later cultures that came to associate it with fear as opposed to reverence. IN CONCLUSION - PART 1: So, having learned all of this great information on the origins of why Friday is such a long revered and feared day, I thought I would add a couple of my own reasons why you could consider Friday as unlucky: 1) It is more and more a regular practice to fire people on Fridays. 2) Your surgeon is thinking about the upcoming weekend and may be more likely to amputate the wrong appendage. 3) People feel entitled to leave work early and therefore instead of LA traffic being bad only at rush hour; it is bad all day long. (In actuality, traffic is not as bad on Friday for some reason… I thought this sounded good though) 4) Mail orders taken on Friday (or Monday for that matter) always seem to get screwed up. 5) Payday, banks are crowded. 6) Sexual activity peaks on Friday evenings leading to a vast increase in morning after fears. 7) In conjunction with number 6, alcohol consumption increases leading to any number of unlucky encounters, sometimes while behind the wheel of a big piece of steel. 8) Serial killers in hockey masks have an unusual self-entitlement to the day and are therefore more likely to act out in a murderous manner. IN CONCLUSION - PART 2: I am most generally polarized as a positive person, so I can’t really take anything in this entry seriously. Friday is a wonderful day and now I will list the reasons, throughout my past, which to this day cement Friday as the best day of the week EVER. 1) The Incredible Hulk and The Dukes of Hazzard used to air at 7pm and 8pm respectively on Friday nights. Later, the Ben Cross vehicle, Dark Shadows. 2) Last day of school/work for the week. No homework until Sunday night. 3) The anticipation of the weekend was always best on Friday before the weekend arrived. 4) Pizza for lunch in high-school, chocolate milk for snack in kindergarten. 5) Pep-rallies - which I routinely skipped - meaning I could leave school early. 6) Casual dress day at work (which I never benefited from because most of the jobs I have had are casual dress every day). 7) Three or four day weekends begin on Friday. 8) People seem more laid back at the end of the week. Monday is really the day to fear. 9) Friday night USED to be pizza night at home. 10) New movie releases, although they sometimes come out on a Wednesday, I always see them on a Friday… And that’s about it for this long, long entry. I haven’t written in a while because I’ve been busy getting yet another script in order… More on that in another entry. Be well and enjoy your Friday the 13th. CDJ Johnson on January 13th, 2006 |
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