Or fear of Friday the Thirteenth.

But why should this be so? There is a thirteenth in every month of the year, why is it that if the thirteenth falls on a Friday it should be considered unlucky?




Costa Concordia grounded on Friday 13th January 2012, Any other Friday the 13th disasters?

It's not just 13th - Friday has long been considered an unlucky day to put to sea.

It has been my understanding that the unluckiness of 13 is related to the Last Supper, where there were 13 men present.  [Suddenly realise The Luminaries which I am reading slowly at the moment has 12 men sitting round in discussion with a 13th outsider there, but this is based more on astrological ideas than Biblical ones, I think.]

But I don't know if the Last Supper took place on a Friday or not - does the biblical account say?  I don't think of myself as superstition (though I think everyone is to a degree) but I still don't specially like to take long drive on Friday 13th - and I do prefer to remember to say Rabbits first thing I say at the start of a month.  That must surely mean everyone I love will be alive and well at the end of it!

It's a mystery how ships and boats ever get to sea, considering how many superstitions sailors seem to have.

Ah! Hereabouts we were told as children to say, "Three White Rabbits," at the beginning of the month... which I thought daft, and often said so to many friends horror. But then I tried to break every superstition that came my way - though rarely mentioned it to anyone - but the day I took lilac into the house I thought my dad was having a fit because he was so horror struck. In the east I knitted a jumper in a week because I was told that anything started on a Thursday would never be finished.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia doesn't exist in Greece because Friday the 13th isn't considered unlucky. Here it is Tritidekatriaphobia,Tuesday 13th. Don't ask me why though.

fascinating, ID. I did not know of this. What else is bad luck there? I began my resilience at the age of 5 . Our school was near a hospital and should an ambulance go by everyone clutched a lapel until it was out of sight. I could see no logic in it and never did that - thus, so they told me, causing the death of anyone inside the ambulance. I thought this unlikely and was unfased despite the anger of older children. That turned me into a silent observer for many years. But when my tongue loosened many years on it came as quite a shock.

Friday the thirteenth, 1307 was certainly unlucky for the Knights Templar but I suppose that could be coincidence.
I could, I suppose,  if I had time or inclination, do a survey of all unfortunate events which occurred on this date and get a book published to sit alongside those of von Daniken's.  It would probably be easier than finding a job.
glen

Priscilla wrote:

fascinating, ID. I did not know of this. What else is bad luck there? I began my resilience at the age of 5 . Our school was near a hospital and should an ambulance go by everyone clutched a lapel until it was out of sight. I could see no logic in it and never did that - thus, so they told me, causing the death of anyone inside the ambulance. I thought this unlikely and was unfased despite the anger of older children. That turned me into a silent observer for many years. But when my tongue loosened many years on it came as quite a shock.

Well you shouldn't compliment a child on looks say, or if you do you have to spit. Not really spit thankfully, just making the sound is enough to undo the jinx you've inadvertently put on the unfortunate. And to be extra sure mothers pin a mati (a small glass eye) on all babies and small children to protect them from such curses. 

On the other hand black cats are considered lucky to have in the home and a preying mantis anywhere around the house is also good luck.

A Mati

Many modern superstitions are very difficult to trace back to any specific root, and in the particular case of Friday 13th being "unlucky" even much beyond the Victorian era. Attempted explanations of an older provenance for these superstitions inevitably therefore smacks of a high degree of "backward engineering" in an attempt to make some more ancient circumstances appear to be at least potential causes for the later popularly understood causal fallacy as all superstitions that deal with "luck" essentially are. The number of people at the Last Supper in the Christian tradition coupled with Friday being the day of Jesus's crucifixion in the same narrative is the one most often cited, though the fallaciousness highlighted by these events being on two separate days in that narrative would tend to betray this as such engineering, and rather clumsy engineering logically at that (Thursday the 13th being a more logical selection as an "unlucky day" based on what that supper preceded the next day). The often cited combination of these narrative high points in which the guest number assumes the role of day in the month never goes beyond simple assertion, no attempt to explain the logic of this combination ever being made as basically there is no logic or precedent that can be found to employ to this end.

The Knights Templar explanation is also problematic given the choice of calendar dates available to pin-point that event, the calendar in which it could be dated Friday 13th having only been retrospectively assigned some centuries later, thereby precluding the possibility of a long tradition of the superstition dating back to a time commensurate with the event, despite what Dan Brown might have had you believe in his best-selling plagiarism a few years ago.

As ID points out the "Friday" part seems arbitrary anyway - a documentably longer tradition of unlucky day/date combinations within Greek culture combines 13 with Tuesday, a superstition which may well have received a significant boost when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans on Tuesday April 13th in the Orthodox calendar. Another tradition in Italy retains Friday but uses the 17th of the month. This in fact may be the most ancient superstition of all, the 17th in the Numa calendar in use before Julian reform being the 15th day before the Kalends. As such it was a negative expression of the Ides of each month, a generally propitious day, and therefore augured ill. The later Catholic imposition of contemplative fasting on Fridays made that day also one with which a general negativity could be associated and the combination of both can at least be understood to have given rise to the superstition of it being especially unlucky.

Without having anything concrete on which to base my own assertion I still reckon the place to look for the actual origin of the superstition in its modern format is the USA. In the 19th century that country produced many examples of hybrid cultural references that have since taken root in the public consciousness (their contributory elements long ignored or forgotten) and which in the 20th century were disseminated globally through popular media such as films and books. Personally, I can even recall a schoolmate in Dublin patiently explaining to me how unlucky the coming Friday was going to be, his theory based on this superstition which he had just learnt about from an episode of Tarzan on TV. So at least in our tiny little corner of the world - and a corner in which superstitions abounded - this particular one's route into our consciousness can be dated, sourced and mapped.

Depending on where you live a black cat can be either lucky or unlucky

 Cats in general have a superstitions attached to them:

http://www.kinrossfolds.com/cattery/superstition.html

Well, as that august establishment, Dr Brighton's (aka The Star and Garter) has it 'You will never persuade a mouse that a black cat is lucky'.

Another one, and this time it has COMIC RELIEF