Friday, January 13, 2012


It may have been Friday the 13th of January 1989 - just after this photo was taken, the wagon tipped over!
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FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 - YIKES!

The fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia (Frigga being the name of the Norse goddess for whom "Friday" is named and triskaidekaphobia meaning fear of the number thirteen).

All of sudden, I realized today is Friday the 13th. Here's some interesting tidbits I discovered:

Some Christian traditions have it that at the Last Supper, Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th to sit at the table.

Triskaidekaphobia may have also affected the Vikings - is believed that Loki in the Norse pantheon was the 13th god - more specifically, Loki was believed to have engineered the murder of Balder, and was the 13th guest to arrive at the funeral. This is perhaps related to the superstition that if 13 people gather, one of them will die in the following year.

Another Norse tradition involves the myth of Norna-Gest: when the uninvited norns
showed up at his birthday celebration - thus increasing the number of guests from ten to thirteen.

Ancient Persians believed the twelve constellations in the Zodiac controlled the months of the year, and each ruled the earth for a thousand years at the end of which the sky and earth collapsed in chaos. Therefore, the number is identified with chaos and the reason Persians leave their houses to avoid bad luck on the thirteenth day of the Persian Calendar, a tradition called Sizdah Bedar.

After all these years, the above tidbits finally explain a lot to me. I've got this triskaidekaphobia from BOTH sides of my ancestral tree. WOW! cross my fingers, see ya later, djb

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