That unpronounceable word apparently means fear of Friday the 13th.
I don't have it. Do you?
Historically, Friday was considered an unlucky day (Jesus died on a Friday, the stock market crashed on Black Friday, and in medieval Scandanavia, Friday was the witch's Sabbath ). 13 is considered an unlucky number. In Numerology, 12 is the number of completeness (12 signs of the Zodiak, 12 hours on a clock, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 Apostles, 12 Gods of Olympus, an even dozen). 13, therefore, was considered irregular and consequently unlucky. (At the Last Supper, there were 13 guests and one died.)
In addition to all this trivia overload, around about the 1300's, the corrupt King of France,(Phillip IV) ordered the mass arrest of all Templar Knights. The Knights Templar, for those of you who didn't know-that would be me until bare moments ago- the Knights Templar were a medieval military order. Originally they were a group of knights who offered themselves to the Patriarch of Jerusalem to protect Christian pilgrims heading to the Holy Land during the Crusades. 200 years of protecting the Christian faith did not protect them from greedy King Phillip, who had his eye on their collective wealth and who was jealous of their power. His charges on Friday the 13th of October were followed by torture, which was followed by confession. (Torture is such an effection method of extracting information...[insert sarcasm]) Many were murdered. The Pope (Clement V) dissolved the order in 1312. "History" believes the Knights to be innocent of all charges and places the blame on the greed and jealousy of King Phillip the Fair.
(My Life in Stitches thanks templarhistory.com, wikipedia and Dan Brown (DaVinci Code) for all this useful trivia.)
However, after all this, guess what I learned?
I cannot type "Knights" without inserting a "t" after the "kni"... Knitghts.
I seem to have developed a tendency to type the word "knit".
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6 comments:
ha @ the knits comment. You rock.
And I DID learn something. Thanks for my enlightenment of the day.. Now I can watch youtube and be satiated in nothingness.
Isn't it awesome that there are THREE Friday the 13ths this year?
Also, as far as I know, the 13th man to enter/eat/sit(? something like this) at the last supper also was the one that betrayed Jesus.
gee I always called the fear triskaidekaphobia--a word I learned from reading the cartoon strip Peanuts--it usually had the psychiatrist in around the occurance of a Friday the 13th--it was also mentioned in one of the Peanut's TV shows. And what about friggatnskaidekaphobia??
Further clarification:
The actual origin of the superstition, though, appears also 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 (Charles Panati, Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, 1987, p. 13.)
So sometimes fear of Friday is called friggatnskaidekaphobia.
triskaidekaphobia is actually fear of the number 13 (tri 3 plus deka 10)
Paraskevadecatriaphobia is fear of the actual day Friday the 13th.
I love the "knit" part. Interesting facts, too!
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