Friday, January 13, 2012

Friday the 13th (Have a Lucky Day)

There is a term to label the condition of folks afraid of the Fridays which fall on the assumingly unlucky 13th of any given month- it is called friggatriskaidekaphobia. Now say that three times fast and roll the dice baby!  Such superstition surrounding this macabre number date back hundreds of years, mainly due to the irregularity of this number which follows the coveted number 12.  Twelve is the number of wholeness or completeness: 12 having its own term in goods as a dozen, 12 months in the year, 12 Gods of Olympus, 12 Disciples of Christ and so on... By following this holy number, the awkward 13 gets a bad rap as the red-headed stepchild of the numeric system.  

Friday itself takes its own dark undertones from history even without the double-helping of fear brought on by aligning with the 13th day of the month.  Jesus was crucified on a Friday and the worst stock market crash in history was on a Friday- dubbed Black Friday. Friday was even demonized as a dark day as far back as in the 14th century with Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.  Of course, context is everything as you'll find Tuesday the 13th to be ominous day of bad luck in Spanish and Greek-speaking countries.
Here's a blast from the past with an illustration from my Topsy-Turvy series called Lucky Lucky!
Inks on Paper / 2006

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