I’ve just realised that today is Friday 13th, a day which is considered to be unlucky by those who are superstitious.
I’m not at all superstitious but I do find superstitions interesting so I researched Tudor superstitions a few years ago. Click here to read my article Tudor Superstitions.
Author Robert Parry also wrote a wonderful article on the subject for the Elizabeth Files – click here to read that one.
Photo: “Freitag der 13. im Kalender” by W.J.Pilsak.Licensed under GFDL via Wikimedia Commons.
Great article on the various fears and rumours at this time, weird births, and so on. I am not superstitious, but a strange number of old sayings, customs, and superstition around; don’t walk under a ladder, black cat, shoes on the table, opening up an umbrella indoors, a shoe in the loft to keep out the witch spirits, turn over your money on a full moon, if you put on a jumper inside out you cannot change before noon, and so on, a load of poppycock but the sayings still exist.
Some people believe Friday 13th exists only from the arrests of the Knights Templars in 1306, on a Friday 13th. Others say it goes back to 13 at the last supper, but the latter makes no sense as the Last Supper was on Thursday night, the evening before Passover. The later explanation is more convincing, although it is not known really how old the custom is, how long it has been believed, or its true origins. We have mixed customs with superstition and even in a more religious age, popular religious practice amongst country folk became mixed with orthodoxy. This was not witchcraft or cunning, but harmless folk believe. Belief in witches was not superstition, it was a world view. Unfortunately from time to time the boundaries became blurred, which is when trouble followed. Some of the talk of monsters being born also stems from this blurring between signs and the stars, folk magic, superstition, Wicca and religion.
Ha ha iv just remembered a friend of mine bought a house she got amazingly cheap as some one died in it, she picked up the keys on Friday 13 th !
Not superstitious, but I won’t walk under a ladder just in-case the person up it drops what ever they are holding on me….ouch!!
Perhaps thats where that particular superstition arose from, and the others too may have come from associating a ‘bad’ event with seeing or doing something before hand.
My Gran would shoo blackbirds away as she thought they brought bad luck, she saw one on the wall the day a close family member passed away, I think people are still very superstitious beings even in this day and age.