Triskaidekaphobia

[Felix the Cat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskaidekaphobia

Thirteen may be considered a "bad" number simply because it is one more than 12, which is a popularly used number in many cultures (possibly due to it being a highly composite number). When a group of 13 objects is divided into two, three, four or six equal groups, there is always one leftover object.

Some Christian traditions have it that at the Last Supper Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th to sit at the table, and that for this reason 13 is considered to carry a curse of sorts.

Fear of 13 has also been linked to that fact that a lunisolar calendar must have 13 months in some years, while the solar Gregorian calendar and lunar Islamic calendar always have 12 months in a year.

Triskaidekaphobia may have also affected the Vikings — it is believed that Loki in the Norse pantheon was the 13th god. This was later Christianized in some traditions into saying that Satan was the 13th angel.

The Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1686 BC) omits 13 in its numbered list. This seems to indicate a superstition existed long before the Christian era.

See also Friday the 13th for information concerning the traditions and superstitions surrounding this supposedly unlucky day.

Lucky or unlucky? Both? What is the history of this superstition?

[Dr. Gutberlet]

I consider "13" to be a lucky number. My hockey jerseys, when I played, were always 13.

[Burrhus]

I consider "13" to be a lucky number. My hockey jerseys, when I played, were always 13.

The same as the number of teeth that you still have? :)

[Felix the Cat]

I get the impression that 13 was considered lucky in western culture until quite recently

[tempus fugit]

I was born on the 13th....a new moon Friday no less!

[Dr. Gutberlet]

The same as the number of teeth that you still have? :)

LOL, have few capped is all.

http://www.rileystrickshop.com/images/1514.jpg

[Hrolf Kraki]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskaidekaphobia



Lucky or unlucky? Both? What is the history of this superstition?

Excellent question. Why was thirteen determined to be unlucky? Was it chosen at random or was some long ago king had by his 13th wife? :p

[Felix the Cat]

Some Christian traditions have it that at the Last Supper Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th to sit at the table, and that for this reason 13 is considered to carry a curse of sorts.
This makes no sense: 12 apostles + christ = 13

That ought to make it a lucky number for christians

[Felix the Cat]

http://tafkac.org/misc/friday_the_13th_origins.html

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS
Copyright: Charles Platt 1925
Republished by Gale Research Company, Book Tower, Detroit, 1973

"The rise of the compound Three-Ten for Thirteen is so very general all over the world, that it seems clear that to the primitive mind of early Man it had no real meaning--he stopped at Twelve. So persistent are these old instincts that, even today, we stop at "Twelve Times Twelve "in our school multiplication triplication tables, though there is absolutely no reason whatever why we should do so, except for our inherited instinct that it was, and therefore still must be, the utmost limit of mathematical thought.

Thirteen, therefore was not used as number, but as a vague word meaning anything beyond Twelve. To the untutored savage, as to the animal mind of today, anything unknown conveyed an immediate sense of danger. Thirteen was not really an unlucky number, but a fateful one--a number full of vague and unimaginable possibilities and therefore a number to be avoided by any peace-loving man.

This curious point is amply proved by the many superstitions that cluster round this number, for they are all based upon the number itself. In the majority of hotels, for instance, there is no room bearing this number, and the visitor who sleeps in the thirteenth room slumbers quite peacefully because it bears the number 14 on the door. The ill-luck, you see, is not attached to the room, but to the number, which carried to the savage mind such dreaded fear of the Unknown. Possibly that may have been a million years ago, but the fateful character still clings to the number.

Many people believe that the superstition about sitting thirteen at table dates from the Last Supper and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. That is not possible, for the idea goes back centuries earlier: but it does seem clear that this world fatality gave the idea new life and sent it bounding forward along the years to come. As a matter of fact, this was not an isolated case of at thirteen at table, for Christ and the chosen disciples worked together regularly every day, and must, surely, have risked the fateful thirteen many thousands of times.

In Scotland, Thirteen is known as the "Devil's Dozen"--a title characteristic of the worst associations of this much abused number. I have already made reference to the question of Thirteen sitting at table together. But the Romans considered that the fatality followed the number whenever and for whatever purpose thirteen people gathered together.

The Fish was an emblem of Freyja, and as such was associated with the worship of Love. It was offered by the Scandinavians to their goddess, on the sixth day of the week, i.e., Friday. I have already pointed out that many primitive customs were "adopted" by the early Christians, in order to make life easier for their converts--this was a case in point. Fish has been accepted by Catholics as the correct diet on their sixth day fast.

Unfortunately this worship of Love on the Friday of each week gradually developed--or degenerated--into a series of filthy and indecent rites and practices.

Here then we have the obvious clue to the Day's bad name--no decent man would be associated with such practices! Friday started its career as a good day, almost a sacred day--and in many countries it is still the day of all days for lovers. Then love degenerated into lust, and now the day is universally shunned!

This trick of attributing to poor old Friday all the disasters that have ever befallen Mankind is a very general one--in addition to Eve's "indiscretion," as I may call it, Friday is popularly, but not historically, supposed to have seen the murder of Abel, the stoning of Stephen, the Crucifixion, the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod, the flight of the children of Israel through the Red Sea, the Deluge (of course !), the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel and many others, right up to William Tell and the other Apple!

Give a poor dog a bad name, and you might as well hang it!"

http://meta.montclair.edu/spectator/text/march1711/no7.html

Joseph Addison, The Spectator, March 8, 1711

I remember I was once in a mixt Assembly, that was full of Noise and Mirth, when on a sudden an old Woman unluckily observed there were thirteen of us in Company. This Remark struck a pannick Terror into several who were present, insomuch that one or two of the Ladies were going to leave the Room; but a Friend of mine, taking notice that one of our female Companions was big with Child, affirm'd there were fourteen in the Room, and that, instead of portending one of the Company should die, it plainly foretold one of them should be born. Had not my Friend found this Expedient to break the Omen, I question not but half the Women in the Company would have fallen sick that very Night.

[Zrinski]

I also always considered 13 to be lucky number. In fact is is my favourite number. :)

[VAMPIR]

I consider "13" to be a lucky number. My hockey jerseys, when I played, were always 13.
The guy named Wilton Norman Chamberlain picked 13 in his highschool basketbal team... later in NBA. The ''Big dipper'' wasn't score at all due to this unlucky number...:rofl:

[Hrolf Kraki]

The guy named Wilton Norman Chamberlain picked 13 in his highschool basketbal team... later in NBA. The ''Big dipper'' wasn't score at all due to this unlucky number...:rofl:

He attended the same university as I will be attending in the fall.

[VAMPIR]

He attended the same university as I will be attending in the fall.
Kansas....

[Hrolf Kraki]

Kansas....

Yes indeedy. :D

[Fenrisulfr]

http://www.thevesselofgod.com/thirteen.html


13: A Secret Number of Sacred Power


We are told that 13 is an unlucky number. The date Friday the 13th is taboo because the Knights Templar were arrested and condemned by the seneschals of Philippe IV, King of France, in a "pre-dawn raid" on Friday, October 13th, 1307. The number 13 has been shunned for centuries. Some architects omit the 13th floor from office buildings to this very day. Is it possible that the folklore associated with the number 13 is absolutely apocryphal? Or that it has become a demonized numeral precisely because it was sacred in pre-Christian times? Think about it. It is an oddly recurring sum. 12 apostles and a messiah. 12 Knights of the Round Table and King Arthur. The number 13 recurs too consistently in such significant contexts to be purely arbitrary. And of course, it’s not.

13 was a number central to certain traditions of sacred geometry, because it reflected a pattern which could be seen to exist in man, nature, and the heavens. For instance, there are 13 major joints in your body. There are 13 lunar cycles in a solar year, and the moon travels 13 degrees across the sky every day. Six circles placed around a seventh central circle is a model of geometric efficiency and perfection in the second dimension that has been known to mathematicians for ages. But this same configuration in three dimensions consists of 12 spheres arranged around one central sphere, making 13 in all - the most compact three-dimensional arrangement recurrent in nature. A commentator writing about the Aztec calendar once said that, "Thirteen is a basic structural unit in nature. It means the attracting center around which elements focus and collect." Is this, then, the reason for Christ’s 12 disciples, King Arthur’s 12 knights, or the 12 major constellations in relation to our sun? The likelihood seems great indeed.

Assuming that the number 13 played a prominent role in the sacred traditions being preserved by the Knights Templar, and that the Vatican wished to keep this from coming to light, does it not follow that they purposely chose Friday the 13th as the date upon which to arrest the Templars? In many traditions, Friday is a holy day. If our assumptions are correct, Friday the 13th would be doubly sacred to the Templars. This may well have constituted the Church’s final "screw you" to the Order whose power they so feared and envied.

13 is of particular interest to us because of Tracy Twyman’s work on the "Golden Calendar", which is based on multiples of 13, such as 26 and 52. Interestingly, our modern calendar still bears vestiges of this, and retains the concept of 52 weeks in a calendar year. According to the website dayofdestiny.com, the Aztec century was based on a unit of 52 years, and native people in South America, who believed in an impending apocalypse that would occur on a certain date, would, "ritually demolish and destroy their civilization every 52 years", as a sort of "dress rehearsal." The glyph which represents both the start and end of the Aztec calendar is known as "13 Cane", and symbolizes the death of one cycles, followed by the birth of another - the Alpha and Omega. Strangely, this is very much what the 13th rune - called "Eiwaz" - means in the Northern European mythos. It represents the balance point between light and dark, the creative force and the destructive force, or the heavens and the Underworld. It too is the Alpha and Omega at the same time. It signifies death, but it also signifies eternal life. In the traditional tarot deck, the 13th card is the Death card. It also represents not merely death, but rebirth and renewal. These were obviously pivotal concepts to ancient cultures, the understanding of which has faded down the centuries. But isn’t it remarkable that this specific notion always seems to be associated with the number 13, even in cultures as seemingly dissimilar as those of Northern Europe and South America?

It is interesting to note that although the 13th rune was the central rune in the oldest runic alphabet, and the symbol around which all the others were ordered; by the time the second runic alphabet emerged, the "Eiwaz" rune was absent. What this seems to indicate is that even in very ancient times, this symbol so representative of the world-view central to Northern European thought had vanished due to the fact that the idea it represented had also been lost. This idea seems to constitute some ancient understanding of Hermetic thought. Of course, the idea didn’t simply disappear, it was kept alive by certain initiates who preserved and passed down the secrets of an esoteric tradition. Perhaps this is why the number 13 has always been associated with magic and the occult, and why it is a number perceived to possess some mysterious yet tangible power. It is an emblem of a secret knowledge, a knowledge which does indeed confer power upon those conversant with it. It is a knowledge that religious orthodoxies have long feared and tried to suppress. 13 may be perceived as unlucky to those who fear the secret gnosis it represents, but for adherents of that gnosis it is (as it always was), a sacred number.

[Felix the Cat]

Is there any significance to the fact that the American rebels declared independence from the British Empire exactly 1300 years after the fall of the Roman Empire?

[Ahknaton]

Is there any significance to the fact that the American rebels declared independence from the British Empire exactly 1300 years after the fall of the Roman Empire?
Didn't know that bit of trivia. 1776 is also 444 * 4.

[Geist]

A lot of hotels tend to leave out room 13 if you are bothered to check. I'd love to know why these things come about, but if you find the real answer its usually quite dry and you lose the aura.

[Zrinski]

To add a bit more to what is already written...the Sun also passes through 13 constellations each year. Rather interesting I think.

[Ahknaton]

There are 13 smaller circles in Metatron's cube (17 if you imagine it as 3-dimensional)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/61/Metatrons_cube.jpg/200px-Metatrons_cube.jpg