Is Friday the Thirteenth unlucky?

Well, here we are again, that ol' Friday 13th has crept up on us! My God, I hear you groan, as your heart sinks into your stomach. Taking no chances today?

Most people think Friday the thirteenth is an unlucky day, but why??

To answer this, there are two or three questions we must first ask ourselves about the luck of Friday the thirteenth:

• Why Friday?
• and why the thirteenth?
• Most important of all, is it really unlucky?

In ancient times, before the development of Western Civilisation as we know it, people had a very different conception of the world from the accepted view held by most Westerners today. In the first place, their relationship with natural energies and powers was much closer and more intense than that of today's urban dweller. The mechanised, electrified environment of the 21st century city is a place where natural cycles can easily be overlooked, or to be more particular, deliberately overcome.

Life in those times tended to be a series of ritualised and sanctified interactions with nature. These sacred events have crystallised over the years into the festivals, saints' days and holiday cycles we still celebrate today (such as Christmas and Easter), although with little general understanding of their primary intention and meaning.

Angels of the Days

Every hour of every day had its genie, or guardian angel, and every day was ruled by one of the pantheon of divine beings who were worshipped under various names in the pagan world. The names of the days still celebrate their ancient guardians, which were identified with the planetary lords and ladies: Saturday, ruled by Saturn; Sunday, ruled by the Sun; Monday, ruled by the Moon, Tuesday ruled by Mars (Tiw, the ancient saxon god of war was equivalent to Mars in the Roman Pantheon, giving us mardi in French and cognate names in other latin-derived tongues); Wednesday (Woden's day, the saxon Mercury, giving mercredi in French); Thursday (Thor's day, the king of the gods, equivalent to Jupiter, jeudi in French) and Friday, Freya's day (the saxon Venus, in French vendredi).

Freya (Frigga) was the most holy primeval goddess of the north. Christian monks decided that her day, Friday, was unlucky, as indeed it was, for Jesus Christ, who was crucified and died on a Friday. The Christian religion has sought to overthrow the goddess in all her forms, but has simply succeeded in causing her to reinvent herself under other names.

The Lunar Year

These "primitive" folks had a rather more fluid conception of the year than we do and their calendar was based on the cycles of the moon. Now there are approximately 13 lunations in our solar year, so the year of the seasons had thirteen months. The moon is another expression of the goddess, as the monks well knew. Therefore its cycle of 13 had to be an unlucky number - and Jesus at his last supper sat down to eat with his twelve disciples, making thirteen at the table.

Friday used to be the seventh day of the week. It was the Jewish sabbath of their lunar calendar and is still the sabbath of the Moslems. Many cultures perceive it to be the best day for marriage, since it is ruled by Venus, the fertile goddess.

During the Middle Ages, however, when pagan worship of Freya still survived in the high places, stone circles and wooded groves, the churchmen declared her day to be the day of "devil worship".

So is Friday the thirteenth really unlucky, or is this belief just a hangover from the time when the patriarchial, male-centred religion of Christianity was trying to differentiate itself from and destroy its ancient, pagan, goddess-loving competitors?