Paraskavedekatriaphobia????

Today is Friday the 13th, yet again. It’s the second one this year and with another to come, there is plenty of room to maneuver for doomsday prophesiers and sundry other God Men and their theories.

The fear for the day is real enough to warrant a phobia named after it, paraskavedekatriaphobia.There is atleast one movie made in Hollywood on the topic each year with the famous FRIDAY THE 13th topping the list. Not to be left behind we have 13B from Bollywood this year. Don’t know about the movie itself but the number 13 cant have been too bad for it as a few MSians found it funny enough to write home about.

There are facts and there is fiction about this day and some of them are here….

The actual origin of the superstition appears to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil - a gathering of thirteen - and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as "Witches' Sabbath. (wow that seems to have come from our neck of woods rather than in distant Scandinavia)

Some historians peg the superstition to the thirteen people who attended the Last Supper (neither Jesus nor Judas came out of that one OK)…Dan Brown made a ton of money there, guess 13 isn’t his unlucky number.

The Knights Templar were a monastic military order founded in Jerusalem in 1118 C.E., whose mission was to protect Christian pilgrims during the Crusades. Over the next two centuries, the Knights Templar became extraordinarily powerful and wealthy. Threatened by that power and eager to acquire their wealth, King Philip secretly ordered the mass arrest of all the Knights Templar in France on Friday, October 13, 1307 - Friday the 13th. And there began history’s biggest hunt for mythical GOLD and POWER, guess some of us just don’t learn.

According to folklorists, there is no written evidence for a "Friday the 13th" superstition before the 19th century. The earliest known documented reference in English occurs in an 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini. He regarded Friday as an unlucky day, and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday, the 13th of November, he died.

In 1907, eccentric Boston stockbroker Thomas Lawson published a book called Friday the Thirteenth, which told of an evil businessman's attempt to crash the stock market on the unluckiest day of the month. Thanks to an extensive ad campaign, the book sold well: nearly 28,000 copies within the first week.

There is also a 1993 study published in the British Medical Journal provocatively titled, "Is Friday the 13th Bad for Your Health?" They made the following conclusion… "Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended.

"Do we in India really care for the whole effect or is it just another import? So what are our own local or regional superstitions? My mother would have a fit if we wanted to get our hair cut on Tuesdays!