Thank God it’s Friday! – Jerry Healy (American disc jockey from Akron, Ohio)
Today is Friday the 13th, believed by the superstitious throughout much of the Christian world to be a day of bad luck and ill omen. The superstition is of relatively recent vintage; it seems to have first arisen in 19th century Italy and did not become common in the United States until after it was popularized by a novel published in 1907. It appears to be the compound of two earlier superstitions that Friday is an unlucky day and 13 an unlucky number; presumably someone decided that given these beliefs, it was only logical to assume that a day which represented both would be doubly unlucky. Now, most of you are probably asking, “What the hell does this have to do with whores, you silly bitch?” Patience, dear readers; all will be explained.
1st century copy of one of Praxiteles’ statues of Aphrodite, later desecrated by Christian vandals (note cruciform gouge); the model of the original is believed to have been Phryne.
Friday is the day which in most pre-Christian European cultures was sacred to the goddess of love and beauty; in Germanic myth she was named Freya, hence Friday = Freya’s Day. The Ancient Greeks called the day hemera Aphrodites (Aphrodite’s Day) and the Romans dies Veneris (Venus’ Day), the latter being the source of the French vendredi, the Italian venerdi and the Spanish viernes. In ancient European cultures the day was therefore sacred to devotees of the goddess, including whores, but when Christianity started to displace pagan religions ancient traditions had to be either absorbed or destroyed so the new religion could secure an absolute monopoly on belief. Popular festivals such as Saturnalia, Samhain and Eastre were given Christian meanings (becoming Christmas, Halloween and Easter) so they could be continued, but the old gods were declared to be demons and those who refused to give up their worship were therefore labeled witches, heathens, devil-worshippers, etc. Since the Christians already had their sacred day there was no need of another, but it would be absurd to declare all other days evil since there were only seven. Still, the human mind seeks balance; if one day is especially blessed it seemed reasonable to our ancestors that another should be especially baneful. And there was no better choice to the misogynistic Christian mind than Friday, the one day associated with a goddess (Monday was more associated with the moon as an astrological influence than with the moon-goddess); and not just any goddess, mind you, but the goddess of sex and patroness of whores and other carnal, unsavory, ungodly things! As if that weren’t enough Jesus was crucified on a Friday, which certainly sealed the deal; by the end of the Dark Ages Friday was firmly established in the popular mind as a day of ill omen, associated with witches and bad luck. It is mentioned as such in The Canterbury Tales, and the superstitions of many professions (especially those of sailors) held that it was particularly bad luck to start a project or journey on a Friday.
The idea that 13 is unlucky is of uncertain origin, but likely has to do with the numerological fixation of several ancient cultures (including the Babylonians and Chinese) on the number 12. This fascination was probably due to the fact that twelve is the lowest number with so many nontrivial (i.e. higher than 1) factors; it can be evenly divided by two, three, four and six, which makes it very versatile for subdivision. Many ancient number systems are duodecimal (base-12) and there are twelve months in a year, twelve hours in a day or night, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve items in a dozen, twelve Olympian gods, twelve Tribes of Israel, twelve inches in a foot, twelve pence to the (traditional) shilling, etc. Given this obsession with 12, it seems only reasonable that the rational Western mind (inheriting the ancient Greek love of order and balance) should consider the prime number 13, which is the orderly twelve with one disorderly extra unit, to be somehow disreputable or irrational. But so is 11; why did 13 come to be considered unlucky rather than 11? The answer, I suspect, lies in the moon.
The moon’s synodic period, that is the time it takes for it to change from one phase back to exactly the same phase again, is 29.53 days, but this cannot be determined without advanced techniques of calculation; most ancients would’ve estimated it at either 28 or 29 days (which, incidentally, is why the week is seven days long; it’s roughly the time it takes the moon to change one phase, a quarter of its cycle). 365 days in a year divided by 28 or 29 comes a lot closer to 13 than it does to 12; expressed another way, the majority of calendar years enjoy 13 full moons, not 12. This fact must have irritated the ancient mathematicians immensely, because they chose to round the month up to 30 days and then add a few extra days here and there rather than let the regular, masculine year be divided into 13 untidy, feminine months. I say “feminine” months because in many ancient cultures the moon was viewed as feminine; beside her glaringly obvious association with the menstrual cycle she is changeable, soft and mysterious, unlike the steady, harsh and dependably regular masculine sun. This celestial “bad girl” even refuses to stay in what men would consider her “proper place”, the night; she sometimes rises before dark, at other times refuses to rise until almost morning, and at the time of the new moon makes no appearance in the night sky whatsoever,
instead following the sun about in a most unseemly fashion. Is it any wonder, then, that the female-dominated witchcraft religion practiced its rites under the moon (away from prying Christian eyes) and used the mystic, feminine 13 (the number of the moon) as the traditional number of witches in a coven? Unruly, uppity, whorish 13 scandalized the male numerologists in a way timid, docile little 11 never could, and so was doomed to go from merely irrational to thoroughly shunned.
There is another, not-completely-separate tradition associating the number thirteen with misfortune; in Norse mythology, Balder was the favorite of the gods but his untimely death had been prophesied. His mother, Frigga, therefore extracted an oath against harming Balder from all things in the nine worlds, but skipped mistletoe because it was so small and soft. Loki, the god of mischief, envied Balder’s popularity and so vowed to cause his death; he used a trick to learn of the overlooked plant and made a magical spear from it, then disguised himself to crash a banquet at which there were already 12 guests. After dinner the gods made a game of hurling weapons at the now-invulnerable Balder, but his blind brother Hodr was unable to participate; Loki disguised his voice and gave Hodr the spear, offering to help him aim it so he could join the game. Hodr of course presumed the spear would bounce off like every other weapon, and so was tricked into murdering his own brother. From this myth grew the Norse belief that it was unlucky to have 13 guests at dinner; perhaps the specific number was even related to the unwelcome 13th lunar guest at the sun’s table. But whatever its origin, the superstition dovetailed perfectly with the Christian tradition of the unlucky 13th guest at the Last Supper (12 apostles plus Jesus), and when the “13 at dinner” tradition combined with the general discomfort about the number 13, a full-blown superstition was born.
And a powerful superstition it is; triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13) is such a common phenomenon that many buildings in Western nations even lack a 13th floor. The fear of Friday the 13th specifically is called either “friggatriskaidekaphobia” or “paraskevidekatriaphobia”, and is widespread enough to have a interesting effect on the accident rate; ironically, insurance statistics show that fewer accidents of all kinds (including traffic accidents) happen on Friday the 13th than on other days, probably because those who fear the day either stay home or are more cautious when they go out.
Given the origin of beliefs about Friday the 13th, however, even the superstitious whore has nothing to worry about, as I explained to Paula when she once expressed concern about working on the day. Since Friday is the day sacred to our patron goddess, and 13 the most feminine of numbers, Friday the 13th should be good luck for whores even if it really were bad luck for Christian men. Now, I’m not really superstitious; I don’t believe that a day can bring either good luck or bad. But considering that the reasons for fear of this day are so closely related to the reasons our profession is maligned and suppressed, perhaps whores and those who support our rights should make every Friday the Thirteenth a day to speak out in favor of full decriminalization and an end to the institutionalized persecution of prostitutes. I therefore ask my readers to start a new tradition today; speak out for us to at least one person who will listen, or if you’re not comfortable doing that openly at least make an anonymous post on some other website in defense of us, or containing a link to this column. Let’s start getting the word out that whores are no different from other women, and that “a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body” is more than just a euphemism for abortion.
One other reason 13 is associated with bad luck stems form the Bible. Six is a number often associated with Evil and the Devil (ie, 666) while seven is associated with God (the seven-day week of Creation, for example). Thus, putting Good and Evil together corrupts Good and causes Evil to be more powerful. It’s all amusing trivia, but like you, I consider a number or day nothing more or less than just that. Sadly too many people buy into such silly taboos for their own good.
I dunno, Jay; that has kind of a folk-etymology sort of ring to it, as though some writer was trying to figure it out purely via Christian means without considering that 13 already had an unsavory reputation in pre-Christian times.
Another reason 13 may be considered unlucky while 11 is not is because 11 leads up to the wonderful number, 12. Because 12 NEEDS 11, but 12 does not need 13. 11 is a part of wunnerful 12, but thirteen is beyond 12. 13 has gone too far!
My mother always considered Friday the 13th a lucky day, especially in December, because it’s the day she was born.
This particular Friday, August 13th was pretty good for me, though I’d stop short of calling it “lucky.” Saturday the 14th…
never mind
Yeah, that’s why I referred to her as “whorish”. 😉
Both 13 and the Moon, it seems. Poor Moon: she hasn’t been touched by a man since 1972. And never by a woman.
I don’t think anybody here would ever think of you, or much less call you, a “silly bitch”, Maggie! 🙂
“Asehpe
I don’t think anybody here would ever think of you, or much less call you, a “silly bitch”, Maggie! “
Pfft… Only with one`s tongue so far in one`s cheek as to be in danger of losing the organ!
Easily one of the most intelligent women I`ve ever had the considerable pleasure in reading!
I`m certain Ì`m not the first man to loose a nights sleep over her (cough, working my way backwards through this blog… oh look, it`s sunrise… shit.) And I seriously doubt I shall be the last! ^_^;
{curtsies} Merci beaucoup, Monsieur.
“oh look, it`s sunrise… shit”
Definitely *not* the last 😉
The sun just rose, and that was damn well worth it; everything from “Social Autoimmune Disorder”, to “Divided We Fall”, and post-Katrina anecdotes to the various dangers of “sex-rays”, it was all absolutely brilliant. Consider this a standing ovation.
Nice work.
I’m not sure I follow you here, Maggie. If the problem was the association “month/moon = feminine (via women’s period)”, why would it matter if there were 12 untidy, feminine months in the year instead of 13 untidy, feminine months? If it’s just because 13 is more than 12, why not add more days to the month so as to get only 11, 10, 9… untidy, feminine months?
Hmmm… I’m not a specialist in the symbolism of numbers, but I’m guessing that the ‘bad side’ of 13 comes from elsewhere. Perhaps the fact that the division 365 / perceived synodic period = 12 full months + some remainder makes the remainder — the would-be ’13th month’ — seem imperfect, wrong, less than the ‘normal’ months and therefore unlucky? (That’s what the Wikipedia article on the number 13 suggests, at least.)
Because 30 is a neat, orderly, evenly-divisible number, while 29 is not.
Yes, and then they get 12 untidy, feminine months. How does this connect 13 to feminity and to being bad? (If the remainder .126666…x365 = 6 days were then considered a ‘failed’ 13th month, then I’d understand why 13 was bad; but this would have nothing to do with femininity.)
13 x 28 = 364. You could do 13 months of 28 days and one of 29, but that breaks the mystic “perfect” 12. You seem to be asking me to defend the ancients’ beliefs, which obviously I can’t. 13 was regarded as a feminine, lunar number, and for modern people to say it “shouldn’t” be does nothing to change that. 🙁
I understand the point about the ‘pefect’ 12 and 13 being ‘imperfect’, but I don’t understand (from the viewpoint of ancients) why 13 would be any more ‘feminine’ than any of the preceding months. If “month” = “feminine” (“month” = “woman’s period” = “bad”), then any month of the year would be ‘feminine’; why would the 13th be any ‘more’ feminine than the others already were?
But maybe you mean that if they had chosen 28-day months (so as to have 12 28-day months plus a 13th 29-day month), then the result would have respected too closely the female period? Better increase it to 30 and reduce the number of months to 12, so as to avoid paying too much respect to women’s menstrual cycle?
13 is feminine because there are 13 lunar months in most years and the moon is feminine. Thus, 13=the number of the moon, thus feminine. Get it?
Maggie, your arithmetic is off. 29.53 x 12 = 354.36 days, so for most of the world up to the time of Julius Caesar, the 13th lunar month only came every three or four years. (The exception was Babylon; they apparently became so citified and so trusting of their astronomer-priests that they stopped looking at the sky to check the phase of the moon. (Or maybe it was invisible through the smoke from hundreds of thousands of cow-chip fires.) These astronomers were also great mathematicians who could calculate the true lunar and solar cycles out for thousands of years – working in base 60 – but once they realized that the people trusted them completely, they simplified the arithmetic by switching to 28-day months, and never mind that the new moon festival wasn’t aligned to the moon anymore.)
The Romans kept on actually looking at the moon. The Republic’s ad-hoc calendar started out with 10 numbered lunar 29-30 day months starting in March (The first six eventually were renamed after gods or men, but September just means “7th”, and so on through December = “10th”.) Then there were a couple of extra months, originally tacked on at the end, but then the new years was shifted so January and February were at the beginning. (The month called “10th” thus became the 12th…) And finally, they knew that now and then they should insert an extra month, but never developed he precision in measuring and calculating the cycles to be sure just when they ought to. So that decision was left up to mid-ranking elected officials, who thereby also determined whether their term in office was 12 or 13 months.
You probably can foresee a problem there, but actually they kept omitting to add the 13th month. In the Roman system, officials only stayed in each job one year, then they had a chance to move up a step in the next election. If they had had a good year, an extra month was a delay in their next promotion, or if they’d screwed up badly, the sooner they could hand over to a successor and go hide on a farm, the better. By Julius Caesar’s time, everyone thought a 13-month year was really rare (rather than 1 in 3 or 4), and the official calendar was several months off from the actual seasons.
So when Caesar came to have more power than any previous dictator, he fixed it. He added several extra months in one year to get back on track. Then, to keep it on track he changed to a solar calendar, of 365-1/4 days a year. But he had to subdivide this year somehow, and so he adapted the tradition of 12 “months”, which would allow the year to be divided up evenly in many ways. These months no longer depended on the moon or any other natural cycle. He divided up the year as evenly as possible, with five 31-day months and seven 30-day months, plus a leap day added to February every 4 years. (The year isn’t exactly 365-1/4 days, so this eventually drifted off track, also – but the error is only about 3 days in 400, and it was 16 centuries before Gregory XIII decided it was time for another fix.) That was a pretty nice calendar, and the 30-31 day months weren’t directly related to any natural cycle, but merely how the numbers worked out if you wanted 12 months.
However, a politician just has to mess with perfection. His ego continued to swell, and he decided to rename Quintus,the lowest remaining numbered month, after himself. But wait, it was a short month! So he reduced February to 29 days (except in leap years) and brought July to 31 days. And then his successor, who adopted the name Augustus, did the same thing with Sextus.
Oh dear, Mark, I didn’t mean most years had 13 full months; I meant 13 full moons, as in the actual lunar event regardless of when it occurs in the calendar month (of course, my math still might be a bit off…) But thanks for the in-depth explanation of the calendric shifts! I talked a little more about the Julian & Gregorian calendars in my columns on Christmas and King Day 🙂
I knew you’d get around to answering that thought, but I laughed when you put “silly bitch” in my mind. Thank you.
I wonder if GCal will let me setup recurring events for Friday the 13th.
If not, I’ll be sure to remind everyone. 😉
I’m told the Hebrew Calendar alternates between twelve- and thirteen-month years. I’m not certain how often the thirteenth month appears, though. The Islamic Calendar keeps to twelve lunar months continuously, though, so Muslim years are always too short and after several years this becomes really obvious when you look at time periods measured in Islamic years. I guess the original Arabs didn’t worry so much about keeping their calendar accurate since most of Arabia doesn’t have much in the way of noticeable seasons. (And then once the calendar was firmly tied to religion, nobody dared change it.)
Is the Moon so universally seen as female, though? In Deutsch, der Monde is masculine and die Sonne is feminine. If I remember correctly, Asimov once heard a lecture by some French guy who insisted that German culture was inherently dangerous because of this.
Grammatical gender is not the same as biological gender, especially not in German; Mark Twain once pointed out that in German a virgin (das Madchen) has no sex while a turnip (die Rube) does. Mythologically, the Germans saw the sun and moon as lights rather than personified entities, just as the Hebrews did. And though there are some exceptions (such as the Japanese sun-goddess Amaterasu) in other parts of the world, in Indo-European thought (the source of Western culture) the sun-god is nigh-universally male and the moon-goddess female.
Done it!
http://goodenoughmummy.typepad.com/good_enough_mum/2012/01/their-bodies-their-choice.html
Doesn’t quite match your eloquence, but I hope it’s of some help.
Not eloquent, my foot! It’s an excellent essay, and I’m going to “tweet” it and give it a permanent link on my “Offsite” page. Furthermore, you get extra points for being the first one out the gate today, even before I reminded readers of what day it is! 🙂
Just read it.
{bows solemnly}
You have done… well.
In the TV series Hellsing, Vatican Section 13: Iscariot is a rival paternalistic vampire hunting organization and enemy of Integra Hellsing’s Royal Protestant Knights vampire hunting organization (which is decidedly maternalistic).
They tend to get into violent turf wars over the proper way to hunt vampires.
That’s just some random jabbering on my part though..