THE BIRTHDAY BOOK
This is a large book with a two-page write-up of each day of the year. I have reproduced October 13, verbatim from this book. It is scary.
Being of a very scientific mind requiring evidence-based proof, I don’t believe in any of the methods used in this book to characterize people born on any specific day (numerology, astrology, or tarot). But it is amazingly accurate! Virtually everything cited is me, and in spades.
This gives me the “double whammy” of having Asperger’s Syndrome and being born on October 13. No wonder, I am so socially screwed up?
OCTOBER 13 – THE DAY OF THE TOUGH COOKIE
STRENGTHS
INTENSE
SUCCESS-ORIENTATED
PROFESSIONAL
WEAKNESSES
OVERSTRESSED
DEMANDING
CRITICAL
Those born on October 13 don’t fool around when it comes to their professional life. They take their career very seriously and pride themselves in their ability to deliver results. Tough to the extreme, they are dangerous enemies and can overcome resistance through sheer guts and endurance. They believe that a human should go for it – no ifs and or buts.
Unfortunately, however, those born on this day can be rigid and unforgiving. They find it difficult to be happy for extended periods and are sharply critical of much that goes around them. They have a great need to relax, but at times find it near impossible to do so, and though highly talented, have difficulty simplifying life. Therefore, October 13 people not infrequently encounter problems in personal relationships, it is hard for them to please others when they themselves are so restless.
Paradoxically, October 13 people are known to be sweet and giving to those close to them. In all fairness, they are harder on themselves than others, but not everyone is capable of seeing that. It is not so much that they are perfectionists (indeed they are), but that the aforementioned critical attitudes can make them difficult to live and work with. Thankfully, what they produce is of such irrefutably high quality that it’s hard to fault them as far as results are concerned.
October 13 people can be very elusive when necessary. Those who wish to use an October 13 person to elicit information or appropriate knowledge may find that after having had their interview or conversation they have learned precious little if anything at all; what they grasped was but smoke and mirrors. But though elusiveness, distance, and circumspection certainly make October 13 people less gullible and vulnerable, those born on this day might consider opening up a bit more to those deserving of their trust.
October 13 people are often blessed with technical abilities. It would seem that individuals with such mastery of their medium would have little problem in career matters, but they can become baffled and bewildered when they are rejected or ignored. It is most difficult for October 13 people to shake off or even acknowledge defeat. It is, however, only perhaps through such confrontative and seemingly negative experiences that they can grow further, particularly when forced to confront themselves through an introspection denied them during their periods of great success.
It is critical that October 13 people first come to understand themselves and then proceed to forge common human bonds with those around them. Learning to loosen up, have fun and take things less seriously will help. Given their drive, dedication, and exceptional abilities those born on this day cannot but succeed if they can develop in this way.
NUMBERS AND PLANETS
Those born on the 13th of the month are ruled by the number 3 (1 + 3 = 4) and by the planet Uranus which is both erratic and explosive. Since October 13 people are usually involved in far-reaching social and career activities, they must learn to keep this Uranian part of themselves under control. The connection between Uranus and Venus (Libra’s ruler) may indicate an unsettled love life, or perhaps a propensity for strange and unconventional relationships. Although the number 13 is considered unlucky by many people, it is, rather, a powerful number that carries the responsibility of either using its power wisely or running the risk of self-destruction. The number 4 typically represents rebellion, idiosyncratic beliefs, and a desire to change the rules, all of which may well apply to October 13 people.
Libra.
TAROT
The most misunderstood card in the Tarot is the 13th card of the Major Arcana, Death, which very rarely is to be taken literally but signifies a letting go of the past in order to grow beyond intentions, metamorphically. Both this card and the number 4 suggest that October 13 people must guard against discouragement, disillusion, pessimism, and melancholy.
HEALTH
Since relaxation is the crying need of October 13 people, and their biggest health problems are generally stress-related, the fact that they so often turn to drugs to help them in this respect can pose to be a big problem. Rather than taking time off or getting to know themselves better, these hard-driving individuals often find it easier to smoke, drink and medicate their tensions away. Of course, this doesn’t work in the long run, and further complicates psychological disturbances, with the added concern of dependency or addiction. Counseling or therapy of some kind is strongly recommended for those October 13 people who feel troubled, many of whom do not specialize in self-knowledge. Meditation and yoga are also strongly recommended.
ADVICE
You must learn to relax. Take frequent vacations or at least rest periods where you do absolutely nothing. Don’t be too afraid of satisfaction. Accept mistakes and avoid blaming when you can. Vulnerability can lead to happiness.
MEDITATION
Reflective thought can have as much influence on what happens around you as action can
BORN ON THIS DAY
Margaret Thatcher (British Conservative prime minister, “The Iron Lady”, eleven-year reign, first Conservative Party woman leader)
Art Tatum (jazz pianist, unmatched technique)
Lenny Bruce (social satirist comedian, writer, controversial How to Talk Dirty and Influence People)
Paul Simon (singer, guitarist, songwriter)
Pharoah Sanders (jazz tenor, soprano saxophonist, composer)
Maya Deren (pioneer Avant-Garde filmmaker, Ritual in Transfigured Time)
Nancy Kerrigan (US Olympic silver medal-winning figure skater, attacked, recovered to win a medal)
Ray Brown (jazz bassist, teamed with Oscar Peterson)
Lee Konitz (jazz alto saxophonist, composer)
Count Hermann Maurice Saxe (French military leader, field marshal)
Terry Gibbs (jazz vibraphone player)
Rudolf Virchow (German pioneer cellular pathologist, politician)
Jerry Lee Rice (football wide receiver, Six All-Pro, all-time single-season TDs [22] leader)
Eddie Mathews (hit over 30 HRs for nine straight years)
Lillie Langtree (British stage actress)
Dusan Makaveyev (Yugoslavian film director, Montenegro)
Javier Sotomayor (Cuban world champion high jumper, Olympic gold medalist, first to clear 8 feet)
Cornel Wilde (film actor)
Desmond Wilson (TV actor, Sanford and Son)
ORIGIN OF FRIDAY the 13th AS BAD LUCK
Until the late 1800s, no one felt that Fridays that fell on the 13th day of the month were anything special at all. Exactly how the date became unlucky is murky. Certainly, the idea was firmly implanted on the cultural consciousness by 1980, when the slasher flick, “Friday the 13th” was released.
There is even a name to describe the irrational dread of the date: paraskevidekatriaphobia, a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a fear of the number 13. The Gregorian calendar means that the 13th of any month is slightly more likely to fall on a Friday than any other day of the week. Most years have two Fridays the 13th – and a maximum of three, although 2021 will be an anomaly with only one. Some hotels will have no room 13, while a lot of tall buildings don’t have a 13th floor. Some airlines also refuse to have a row 13 in their planes.
Friday, October 13, 1307. French King Philip IV arrested Grand Master Jacques de Molay and hundreds of Knights Templar (a powerful military order formed in the 12th century for the defense of the Holy Land) and charged them with idolatry and corruption, but really because the king wanted access to their financial resources. He was under pressure from Pope Clement V, over allegations made by an excommunicated former member that new recruits were being forced to spit on the cross, deny Christ, and engage in homosexual acts during initiation ceremonies. The claims, seemingly entirely without foundation, were a convenient pretext for Philip to persecute the wealthy order and waive debts he owed following the war with England.
Charged with moral and financial corruption and worshipping false idols, often following confessions obtained under torture, many of the knights were later burnt at the stake in Paris. The order’s Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, faced the flames in front of Notre Dame Cathedral and is said to have cried out a curse on those who executed its members: “God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity with occur to those who have condemned us to death.”. The events initiated by the holy warriors’ arrest, according to tradition ensured every subsequent Friday the 13th meant bad luck to one and all, De Molay’s hex ringing out through the ages.
Dan Brown’s “The Davinci Code” popularized this as the theory of the origin of the Friday, the 13th superstition.
A Norse myth told of a dinner party for 12 gods in Valhalla at which a 13th guest showed up uninvited – the trickster god Loki – deceived the blind god Hodr into shooting his brother Balder, the god of light, joy, and happiness, with a mistletoe-tipped arrow, killing him instantly.
Friday, October 13, 1972: A Chilean Air Force plane crashed in the Andes and most survivors resorted to cannibalism.
Here’s why Friday the 13th scares us
Find out how the date got its unlucky reputation and how even nonbelievers may be influenced by our collective triskaidekaphobia.
PUBLISHED JANUARY 12, 2023 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
There’s no logical reason to fear the occasional coincidence of any day and date governed by the 400-year cycle of the Gregorian calendar. But Friday the 13th can still have noticeable impacts. Sometimes we create them in our own minds—for good and ill.
Why even skeptics can be superstitious
Jane Risen, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has found that superstitions can influence even nonbelievers. In one 2016 study, Risen found that people who identify as superstitious and non-superstitious both believe a bad outcome is more likely when they’ve been jinxed. For example, they worry that stating they definitely won’t get into a car accident will make it more likely to happen.
“Generally speaking, I find that this occurs because the bad outcome springs to mind and is imagined more clearly following the jinx,” she explains. “People use the ease of imagining something as a cue to its likelihood.”
This kind of thinking may be more widespread on Friday the 13th: “Even if I don’t actively believe, just that fact that Friday the 13th exists as a known cultural element means that I entertain it as a possibility,” she says. When otherwise unremarkable events occur on that date, we tend to notice.
“That adds a bit more fuel to this intuition, makes it feel a bit more true, even when you recognize that it’s not true.”
Fortunately, Risen’s research also suggests that performing rituals that ward off bad luck—like knocking on wood or throwing salt—can have surprising results. In a 2014 study, she found that some people use them even when they don’t actively believe, and when tested, both types of people reported benefits from such acts.
“We find that people who jinx themselves don’t think the bad outcome is especially likely if they knock down on wood,” Risen says. “So, the ritual does seem to help manage their concern.”
In that way, simply being aware of superstitions may help to instill a sense of order in a world of random and uncontrollable worries, according to Rebecca Borah, a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati.
“When you have rules and you know how to play by them, it always seems a lot easier,” she told National Geographic in 2014. On Friday the 13th, “we don’t do anything too scary today, or double-check that there’s enough gas in the car, or whatever it might be.”
“Some people may even stay at home—although statistically, most accidents happen in the home, so that may not be the best strategy.”
The origins of our Friday the 13th fears
It’s difficult to pin down the origins and evolution of a superstition. But Stuart Vyse, an author and former professor of psychology at Connecticut College in New London, told National Geographic in 2014 that our fear of Friday the 13th may be rooted in religious beliefs surrounding the 13th guest at the Last Supper—Judas, the apostle said to have betrayed Jesus—and the crucifixion of Jesus on a Friday, which was known as hangman’s day.
(How did Jesus’ final days unfold? Scholars are still debating.)
The combination of those factors produced a “sort of double whammy of 13 falling on an already nervous day,” Vyse explained. Some biblical scholars also believe Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit on a Friday, and that Abel was slain by his brother Cain on Friday the 13th.
Curiously, Spain appears to have escaped this malevolent marriage of number and day. Friday the 13th is no cause for alarm there, and instead Tuesday the 13th is the year’s most dangerous date.
Other experts suspect even older roots for this form of triskaidekaphobia, the scientific name for the fear of Friday the 13th. Thomas Fernsler, an associate policy scientist in the Mathematics and Science Education Resource Center at the University of Delaware in Newark, said the number 13 suffers because of its position after 12.
Numerologists consider 12 a “complete” number. There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles of Jesus.
The number 13’s association with bad luck “has to do with just being a little beyond completeness. The number becomes restless or squirmy,” he noted.
Numerology may also explain why Italians have no qualms about Friday the 13th but fear the 17th instead. The Roman numeral XVII can be rearranged to spell “VIXI,” which translated from Latin means “my life is over.”
So is Friday the 13th really unlucky?
Arbitrary though they may be, superstitions like fears of ladders, black cats, or “unlucky” numbers are incredibly persistent.
“Once they are in the culture, we tend to honor them,” Thomas Gilovich, a professor of psychology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, explained in 2013. “You feel like if you are going to ignore it, you are tempting fate.”
(6 surprisingly lucky animals around the world.)
Some people, whether by determination or necessity, grit their teeth and nervously get through the day. Others really do act differently on Friday the 13th.
They may refuse to travel, buy a house, or act on a hot stock tip, and these inactions can noticeably slow economic activity, according to the late Donald Dossey, a folklore historian and founder of the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute who spoke with National Geographic in 2013.
But while some people do act differently on this day, plenty of research suggests that none of us really find trouble more frequently. In 2011, a German study found that there’s no reason to fear surgery on Friday the 13th; the frequency and likely outcomes of procedures are no different than on any other day. Meanwhile, U.S. emergency rooms see no uptick in patients, other researchers learned in 2012. Even the stock market, in which irrational fears can drive real world behavior, fares no worse on Friday the 13th.
Fortunately, Friday the 13th doesn’t occur all that often. Most years, like 2023, have two Friday the 13ths but some have only one. Particularly unlucky years, such as 2026, feature three of the ill-fated days.
Soon enough, this latest Friday the 13th will end, and even the most superstitious among us can rest easy—at least until the next one.