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Tag: Superstition

  • Friday The 13th Children Defecate On Tombstones.

    The West mocks at Indians for Superstitions.

    But spiling of salt, Walking under a ladder are

    Friday, the 13 th superstition.
    Friday The 13th

    considered bad Omens in the West.

    The point is there are certain legends that are associated with Races , based on their background.

    I am intrigued by the Superstition of the number 13.

    I have sen hotels without the 13th Floor, the floor next to 12 being 14>as if Destiny can not count!

    While we consider Fridays to be auspicious, the westerners consider is as Bad, quoting Christ’s Crucifixion!

    When you get a combination of Friday with 13, the result is hilarious fear!

    I saw a film Friday the 13th.

    Well, a local Vittalacharya film is much better!

    I searched the internet on this subject and came up with this.

    ”

    • Friday the 13th traces back to a Dutch holiday where mischievous children would sneak into graveyards at night and defecate on tombstones.
    • In France, Friday the 13th often fell on the day after the Feast of Saint Imbibecus.  Thus the day was often associated with terrible hangovers and poor choices made the night before.
    • The Aztecs brutally killed 39,000 in one day on Friday the 13th of August, 1539.  This was done at the request of the recently arrived Hernan Cortez, who claimed to be a god seeking tribute.  The next day he overthrew their empire.
    • One source says the number 13 has been unlucky since the Last Supper of Christ, where thirteen people were in attendance.
    • Hammurabi’s Code, the first set of state initiated laws, omits the number 13, leading some to believe the superstition dates back to Babylon in 1700 BC.  However archaeologists agree that there indeed was a thirteenth law that was scratched out.  Studies of ancient tablets indicate the law condoned cross dressing of government officials, but was probably removed at the advice of Hammurabi’s aides.
    • Genghis Khan is said to have tasted his first defeat on Friday the 13th.  This fight between Genghis and five other larger children fueled the inferiority complex which drove him to conquer a continent.
    • Most skyscrapers do not include a thirteenth floor.  Gregory Johnson bravely included a thirteenth floor in his designs for the Empire State Building in New York.  Three days after its completion, on a Friday, the weight of the building caused it to buckle and it crushed the thirteenth floor.  It has been structurally sound ever since.
    • In London’s summer of 1865, seven prostitutes, two flower sellers, three secretaries and a nun were assaulted on Friday July 13th by a crazy man wearing an athletic mask.  The assailant would jump out of the shadows and present them with literature supporting the Conservative Party.  As the women screamed and tried to run away, they were asked for donations repeatedly, up to 18 times in one case.
    • In 1881, a group of New Yorkers started The 13 Club, aimed at removing the superstitious stigma from the number.  At their first meeting on Friday the 13th, all thirteen members walked under a ladder into a room filled spilled salt and broken mirrors.  They all died in a freak accident involving a runaway truck and a rabid wolverine on its way to be put down.
    • On Friday June 13th of 1952, Massachusetts Governor Kyle McArthur banned all private automotive transportation on the unlucky day.  Nine overcrowded city buses crashed into each other in downtown Boston.
    • Billy Ray Cyrus, Bobby Brown, and Michael Bolton all released albums on Friday the 13th…
    • The Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics (CVS) on June 12, 2008, stated that “fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays, because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home. Statistically speaking, driving is slightly safer on Friday the 13th, at least in the Netherlands; in the last two years, Dutch insurers received reports of an average 7,800 traffic accidents each Friday; but the average figure when the 13th fell on a Friday was just 7,500.”[16][17]

      On Friday 13 January 2012, at 21:45 local time (UTC+1), Costa Concordia hit a rock off Isola del Giglio (42°21′55″N 10°55′17″E). 32 people lost their lives.

      Occurrence

      The following months have a Friday the 13th:

      Month Years Dominical
      letter
      January 1978, 1984, 1989, 1995, 2006, 2012, 2017, 2023 A, AG
      February 1976, 1981, 1987, 1998, 2004, 2009, 2015, 2026 D, DC
      March 1981, 1987, 1992, 1998, 2009, 2015, 2020, 2026 D, ED
      April 1979, 1984, 1990, 2001, 2007, 2012, 2018, 2029 G, AG
      May 1977, 1983, 1988, 1994, 2005, 2011, 2016, 2022 B, CB
      June 1975, 1980, 1986, 1997, 2003, 2008, 2014, 2025 E, FE
      July 1979, 1984, 1990, 2001, 2007, 2012, 2018, 2029 G, AG
      August 1976, 1982, 1993, 1999, 2004, 2010, 2021, 2027 C, DC
      September 1974, 1985, 1991, 1996, 2002, 2013, 2019, 2024 F, GF
      October 1978, 1989, 1995, 2000, 2006, 2017, 2023, 2028 A, BA
      November 1981, 1987, 1992, 1998, 2009, 2015, 2020, 2026 D, ED
      December 1974, 1985, 1991, 1996, 2002, 2013, 2019, 2024 F, GF

      This sequence given here for 2001–2028, follows a 28-year cycle from March 1, 1900 to February 28, 2100. The months with a Friday the 13th are determined by the Dominical letter (G, F, GF, etc.) of the year. Any month that starts on a Sunday contains a Friday the 13th, and there is at least one Friday the 13th in every calendar year. There can be as many as three Friday the 13ths in a single calendar year; either in February, March and November in a common year starting on Thursday (D) (such as 2009), or January, April and July in a leap year starting on Sunday (AG)(such as 2012).

    • One theory states that it is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: that 13 is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day.
      • In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of divine organizational arrangement or chronological completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve hours of the clock day, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus, the 12 successors of Muhammad in Shia Islam, twelve signs of the Zodiac, the 12 years of the Buddhist cycle, etc., whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing this completeness. There is also a superstition, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper or a Norse myth, that having thirteen people seated at a table results in the death of one of the diners.
      • Friday has been considered an unlucky day at least since the 14th century’s The Canterbury Tales,[5] and many other professions have regarded Friday as an unlucky day to undertake journeys or begin new projects.
      • Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus on the Friday before Easter.
      • One author, noting that references are all but nonexistent before 1907 but frequently seen thereafter, has argued that its popularity derives from the publication that year of Thomas W. Lawson‘s popular novel Friday, the Thirteenth,[6] in which an unscrupulous broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on a Friday the 13th.[1]
      • Records of the superstition are rarely found before the 20th century, when it became extremely common. The connection between the Friday the 13th superstition and the Knights Templar was popularized in Dan Brown‘s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code and in John J. Robinson‘s 1989 work Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry. On Friday, 13 October 1307, hundreds of the Knights Templar were arrested in France, an action apparently motivated financially and undertaken by the efficient royal bureaucracy to increase the prestige of the crown. Philip IV was the force behind this ruthless move, but it has also tarnished the historical reputation of Clement V. From the very day of Clement V’s coronation, the king falsely charged the Templars with heresy, immorality and abuses, and the scruples of the Pope were compromised by a growing sense that the burgeoning French State might not wait for the Church, but would proceed independently.[7](wiki)

    Inputs from wiki and  http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/6275/history-of-friday-the-13th/

    Related Articles

  • Why We believe in Superstitions

    People tend to believe in Superstitions.

    blackcat_620x350.jpg
    Omen of Ill luck.

     

    Those who believe show off as a Non believer to assert they are rational.

     

    But Human Psyche needs props.

     

    Superstitions reinforce that need.

     

    Why do we believe in Superstitions?

     

    Story:

    A menacing ladder, a black cat. Perhaps I’d better knock wood before proceeding. No need to apologize if the approach of Halloween makes you extra superstitious. Many successful people harbor superstitions aplenty – and serious scientists find superstition a rich field of study. Our Cover Story is reported by Susan Spencer of “48 Hours”:

     

    Casey Daigle pitched in the major leagues; his wife, Jenny Finch, won Olympic medals in softball. Their proud careers were built on talent, and (although they don’t like to admit it) a little superstition, some of it pretty strange . . .

    Before each game Casey would put his socks on a certain way. “There was months, there was weeks that I wouldn’t shave,” he said, “as bad as it itches, and I mean you’re in the summer playing in Arizona. It’s 115 degrees and you got a beard! But you gotta suck it up, that’s part of it.”

    “I would always put my bat bag in the same spot, my glove in the same spot, my helmet,” said Jennie. “When it came down to it, I had two favorite sports bras. I wanted that same sports bra for the game.”

    Casey said that if he were the home team, “I would go to the bathroom in the fifth inning. If we were the away team, then I would go to the bathroom in the sixth inning. Even if you didn’t have to go to the bathroom, you went to the bathroom.”….

    What is superstition? “A belief or an action that is inconsistent with science,” said Vyse. “And it needs to be aimed at bringing about good luck, or avoiding bad luck.”

    Vyse says only 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution. And in superstition? “Over half of Americans have some kind of superstition that they believe in,” he said.

    “So more Americans have some specific superstition than believe in evolution?” asked Spencer.

    “That’s right, that’s right. That would be true. And that’s not a good thing.”

    A new CBS News poll for “Sunday Morning” finds more than half of all Americans (51 percent) knock on wood to avoid bad luck; 16 percent won’t open umbrellas indoors; 13 percent carry a good luck charm; and one in ten (10 percent) avoids black cats….

    “Just think of Halloween as an advertisement for superstitions,” said Cornell University psychology professor Tom Gilovich.

    And like any good advertisement, superstitions have the power to overcome your rational brain, said Gilovich.

    “One of the interesting things about superstitions is their seemingly arbitrary nature,” he said. “Like, why 13? Why black cats? Why ladders? Don’t walk under that ladder! It has no rational bearing. But now you feel like you’re tempting fate and the outcome, a bad outcome, that could befall you is going to be worse because you deliberately did something that people tell you you shouldn’t do.”

     

    “And is the outcome likely to be worse?” asked Spencer.

     

    “No! Absolutely not,” laughed Gilovich.

     

    But here’s what’s really scary: Gilovich says our brains are wired to believe this nonsense – to find cause and effect where there is none.

    “The baseball player who has this elaborate superstition about putting socks on in a certain order, he noted he didn’t try to remember this; the mind just registered that when he put his socks on that particular day, something good happened. And therefore that becomes hard to ignore,” said Gilovich.

    Casey Daigle explained: “You go out and as a hitter you go one game, you go four for four with two doubles and a triple. Well, every baseball player I know almost is going to think in their head, What did I do during the day today that got me to go four for four? Well, if there’s a couple of things that stick out, I bet the bank account they’re going to do it tomorrow.”

    That’s an even safer bet when things are tense.

    And without nervousness, there might be no superstitions at all.

    Jennifer Whitson at the University of Texas in Austin says superstitions grow out of our need to take charge of situations, and to reduce anxiety: “If you’re just a more anxious person, you are sort of set up to be a little bit more superstitious. You just have a lot more ambient anxiety.

    “We become very anxious when we lack control. And one of the ways if we can’t regain it objectively is to try and regain it perceptually. Maybe I can’t actually keep something bad from happening to me. But if I knock on wood, then I’ve done something. Right? I’ve taken action. And that can help someone feel less anxious as a result.”

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57541783/superstitions-why-you-believe/?pageNum=2&tag=contentMain;contentBody

     

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