Why is Friday the 13th Considered Unlucky?

Friday the 13th, a date that has gone down in our history as the unluckiest day of the year, a day we focus on black cats, protecting ourselves from evil, and well, being cautious… just in case. The most interesting thing about Friday the 13th is that, while it’s so ingrained in our history to bring misfortune, no one really knows for sure how this superstition came about. While there are rumors and theories, there is no solid answer.

First, it’s important to point out that there are many notable tales throughout history that explain the unluckiness of the number 13. One, in particular, perhaps the oldest traced back origin of ‘unlucky 13’ is found in a Norse myth. 12 gods threw a dinner party in Valhalla, and Loki (the trickster god) was not invited. He crashed the party and arrived as the 13^th guest when chaos ensued. He arranged for Hodr to shoot his brother Balder with a mistletoe-tipped arrow. Balder died and the earth got dark and mourned on this bad, unlucky day.

Charles Panati claimed that after this Norse tale, the number 13 being unlucky spread from Scandinavia down throughout Europe around the start of the Christian era, which is why the number 13 appears to be unlucky in many Christian tales.

In Christianity, Jesus’s last supper had 13 individuals present in the Upper Room and supposedly occurred on the 13^th of Nisan Holy Thursday, the night before his death on Good Friday. 

It’s also possible that we just love the number 12 so much that unbalancing that nice, clean number by making it 13 just rubs us the wrong way. After all, we’ve always had, in our Western Culture, 12 days of Christmas, 12 months, 12 zodiac signs, and we recognize the 12 labors of Hercules, the 12 gods of Olympus, the 12 tribes of Israel, etc). We just really love the number 12.

But what about Friday? The two aspects of this infamous date, Friday and the number 13, were not historically documented together as being bad prior to the 19^th century. The first known recording was in a play in 1834 where a character suggests, “I was born on a Friday, December 13^th, 1813 from which come all of my misfortunes.” It was also documented is H.S. Edwards biography of Gioachino Rossini who died on Friday 13^th, as well, with the statement “Rossini was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday 13th of November he passed away.”

Supposedly in the bible, many speculate that just as Jesus was crucified on Friday, Eve supposedly gave the apple to Adam on a fateful Friday, as well, and it was also supposedly the day when Cain killed his brother Abel.

Despite the unclear origins, it is believed that the unlucky aspect of that date spread wildly in 1907 with the publication of TW Lawson’s popular novel “Friday, the Thirteenth” in which an unscrupulous broker takes advantage of people’s belief that this is an unlucky day by creating panic on Wall Street. 

In the history of Friday the 13^th, on Friday October 13, 1307, the officers of King Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar (and many were later executed). Many believe that this incident caused the unlucky superstitions of Friday the 13^th, but this cannot be verified.

On Friday the 13^th in 1940 the German Bombing of Buckingham Palace occurred. In 1970 a cyclone killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh, and in 2012 the crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship occurred.

In the late 19^th century, Captain William Fowler created the Thirteen Club to remove the stigma around Friday the 13^th. The Thirteen Club dined regularly on the 13^th day of the month in room 13 of the Knickerbocker Cottage where guests would sit down for a 13-course dinner and pass beneath a ladder to enter.

It’s also important to note that it’s not a worldly phenomenon as in Greece and Spanish-speaking countries, it’s Tuesday the 13^th that’s considered unlucky.

However, prior to all the history of unluckiness, would you believe that Friday the 13^th may have been considered good luck to ancient pagans? For instance, Friday was believed to be associated with the divine feminine. Friday, meaning day of Frigg in old English, may imply that it was the day of Frigg or Frigga who was associated with love, marriage, and motherhood. She was also said to help maintain social order and could weave fate. As such, Friday was said to be a lucky day for the Norse. And the number 13 in Pagan, Pre-Christian times was supposedly linked to the number of lunar and menstrual cycles, and since fertility was prized in those times, 13 was supposedly a lucky number. 

So, is it possible, that like with many old occult holidays and festivals (Samhain becoming Halloween and Saturnalia and Yule becoming Christmas), Christianity re-wrote the once-lucky idea of Friday the 13^th and turned it into an unlucky time to keep people away from celebrating paganism? It’s an interesting possibility.

Honestly, the more I dive into my occult studies, the more I find so many misconceptions and so many examples of the Christian Church changing the meanings of things to cover up old pagan beliefs and to bring people into Christianity. It’s pretty wild. So many of our current holidays came from roots of the old, pre-Christian world, but we’ll discuss that at another time. And it’s quite possible that Friday the 13^th came from these same roots. Regardless, we do know that at least since the early 19th century we’ve considered Friday the 13th to be unlucky in the Western World.