Nearly all people have an extraordinary dread of the number 13, which if they only knew the real truth, is not all the unlucky number they imagine it to be.
The origin of this dread is due primarily to the fact that it was much used in connection with occultism, and was in far off times regarded as a powerful although a fatalistic number.
The opposition of the early church to occultism was one of the principal reason why this number became taboo. It was given out that as 13 sat down to the last supper it would be unlucky if 13 were to eat together and that one of the 13 would die within the year, and so on forth.
No one could see the logic of this, for if Christ had not been crucified the scriptures would not have been fulfilled in which case Christianity would never have existed. There was another reason however why 13 was dreaded, and this was because the occult symbolism that stood for this number was represented by a mystic picture of a skeleton with scythe in its bony hands reaping down men.
It was a curious picture that few could understand, and those who did kept their knowledge to themselves in an age when even to speak of such thingswas to forfeit one life by torture or at the stake.
This picture allotted to the number 13 although drawn or painted in many different ways always contained the same idea; a skeleton reaping in a field hands and feet springing up among new group grass, the crowned head of a man fallen at the point of the scythe while a female head with flowing hair parted in the centre appeared in the background.
To find the true interpretation of this weird picture one must go back to the meaning attached to the in its compound number.
The single 4, as you have read earlier in these pages is a strange number in itself. Person dominated by it are usually misunderstood and lonely in their lives; people who brings about opposition with secret enemies constantly at work against them they reverse they are attracted to social question and reforms of all kind; they rebel against authority and set up new dynasties or republics.
The 13 has all these qualities in its higher scale, but even more accentuated. It cuts down all before it, reversing the order of things shown by the hands and feet springing up in the grass and the crowned head falling before the scythe. The female head in the background denotes social reform, the new order of things, and the uplifting of woman, and so forth.
It was perhaps this picture of a skeleton with a scythe in its bony fingers, calling up the idea of death in the mind of those who could not understand the inner meaning of the symbolism, that caused the number 13 to be so dreaded.
If people will, however only think they will see that the 13 belongs to the series of 4, in the range of 4, 13, 22, 31, etc. and consequently a person born say on the 4th, 13th, 22nd, or 31st of a month will find all these number recurring in their careers and this being so the 13 will crop up just as often as the other number which make a 4.
In many hotels, even the modern ones there is no room 13th; and a similar peculiarity characterises the seats of opera-houses in Italy.
But the dread of 13 has only a limited geographical range.
In the east and in the west the number is honoured. In the Indian pantheon there are 13 buddhas. The mystical discs which surround Indian and Chinese pagodas are 13 in number. Enshrined in the temple of atsusa, in Japan is a sacred sword with 13 object of mystery forming its hilt. Turning westward 13 was the sacred number of the Mexicans. They had 13 snake gods.
The original states that formed the American union were 13; its motto Epluribus unum has 13 letter the American eagle has 13 feather in each wing and when George Washington raised the republican standard he was saluted with 13 guns. |
