How are you feeling today? Nervous? Fearful? Afraid? Apprehensive? Paranoid? Full of trepidation? Skittish? Like you wanna crawl back in bed, pull the covers over your head, and stay there until tomorrow? You might be suffering from triskaidekaphobia.
Lest you fret unduly about the meaning of triskaidekaphobia, I shall tell you the definition. Aren’t I nice?
Triskaidekaphobia is a fear or phobia about the number 13.
Today is not only the 13th day in August. It is also Friday the 13th. (Cue scary music and ghoulish moans in the background.)
For those who might have forgotten how the days of the week got their names (because you — like me — learned that information back in the Mesozoic Era when you attended grade school in a cave and had a rock for a desk), I shall refresh your memory. The Greeks named the days after the sun (Sunday), the moon (Monday), and the five known planets which were named after the gods Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, and Cronus.
The Romans substituted the names of their gods as did the Germanic folks. And from those Germanic folks we get Freya’s Day (after the Norse goddess, Freya) which is known to us today as Friday.
It is interesting to note that Freya was a Norwegian goddess associated with love, beauty, gold, war, death, and prolific procreation between those who were married.
How, you might wonder, could one goddess represent such diversity? Easy. Beauty leads to love which leads to gold which leads to marriage which leads to prolific procreation which leads to war and death. Make sense to me.
But I digress. Back to triskaidekaphobia.
Friday the 13th has gotten a bad rap through the years. In numerology, the number twelve is considered complete. We have twelve Zodiac signs, twelve months in a year, twelve tribes of Israel, and Christ had twelve apostles. The number thirteen was considered irregular and transgressing the completeness of the number twelve
Friday has been considered an unlucky day since the writing of the Canterbury Tales when Chaucer alluded to Friday as a day that bad things seemed to happen. Christ was crucified on a Friday. The goddess Freya was banished to a mountain top and labeled a witch. In retaliation, she gathered eleven other witches plus the devil (which makes a gathering of 13) on her day (Friday) and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. Because of this tale, Friday was known as the ‘witches Sabbath’ for many centuries in Scandinavian countries.
As a closing note, King Philip ordered the mass arrest of the Knights Templar on Friday October, 13, 1307 — which happens to be my birthday! It’s a good thing that I don’t have triskaidekaphobia and I’m not superstitious!