August 13, 2004
Today is Friday the 13th, I and several of my women friends will be wearing red as we meet meet for dinner (even though going out to dinner on Friday the 13th is supposed to be bad luck).
But we do not have Paraskevidekatriaphobia (an irrational fear of Friday the 13th). What we have is Georgedubyabushyphobia (a rational fear that Dumbya will get re-elected).
We'll go out to dinner and wear red and talk politics and I'll do a little ritual involving giving each of us a red dragon.
And then I'll share the following information about Friday the 13th, snipped and re-arranged from here.
Some say Friday's bad reputation goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. It was on a Friday, supposedly, that Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit. Adam bit, as we all learned in Sunday School, and they were both ejected from Paradise. Tradition also holds that the Great Flood began on a Friday; God tongue-tied the builders of the Tower of Babel on a Friday; the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday; and, of course, Friday was the day of the week on which Christ was crucified. It is therefore a day of penance for Christians.
Other sources suggest the number 13 was purposely vilified by the founders of patriarchal religions in the early days of western civilization because it represented femininity. Thirteen had been revered in prehistoric goddess-worshiping cultures, allegedly, because it corresponded to the number of lunar (menstrual) cycles in a year (13 x 28 = 364 days). The "Earth Mother of Laussel," for example, a 27,000-year-old carving found near the Lascaux caves in France often cited as an icon of matriarchal spirituality, depicts a female figure holding a cresent-shaped horn bearing 13 notches. According to this explanation, as the solar calendar triumphed over the lunar with the rise of male-dominated civilization, so did the number 12 over the number 13, thereafter considered anathema.
In pre-Christian cultures it was the sabbath, a day of worship, so those who indulged in secular or self-interested activities on that day could not expect to receive blessings from the gods — which may explain the lingering taboo on embarking on journeys or starting important projects on Fridays.
To complicate matters, these pagan associations were not lost on the early Church, which went to great lengths to suppress them. If Friday was a holy day for heathens, it must not be so for Christians — thus it became known in the Middle Ages as the "Witches' Sabbath," and thereby hangs another tale.
The name "Friday" came from a Norse deity worshipped on the sixth day, known either as Frigg (goddess of marriage and fertility), or Freya (goddess of sex and fertility), or both, the two figures having become intertwined in the handing-down of myths over time (the etymology of "Friday" has been given both ways). Frigg/Freya corresponded to Venus, the goddess of love of the Romans, who named the sixth day of the week in her honor "dies Veneris."
Friday was actually considered quite lucky by pre-Christian Teutonic peoples, we are told — especially as a day to get married — because of its traditional association with love and fertility. All that changed when Christianity came along. The goddess of the sixth day — most likely Freya in this context, given that the cat was her sacred animal — was recast in post-pagan folklore as a witch, and her day became associated with evil doings.
Various legends developed in that vein, but one is of particular interest: As the story goes, the witches of the north used to observe their sabbath by gathering in a cemetery in the dark of the moon. On one such occasion the Friday goddess, Freya herself, came down from her sanctuary in the mountaintops and appeared before the group, who numbered only 12 at the time, and gave them one of her cats, after which the witches' coven — and, by tradition, every properly-formed coven since — comprised exactly 13.
The hell with the Red Hat Society. We'll be the Red Dragon Ladies -- you know, those women your mother warned you about.
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Old Comments (3)
Stu Savory on 21 Aug 2004
Elaine, you remind me here of Jenny Joseph's warning somehow ;-)
cf
http://home.egge.net/~savory/joseph.htm
Stu
Elaine of Kalilily on 21 Aug 2004
Yes, of course, Stu. The Red Hat Society was formed basesd on that "Warning" poem. It was a great idea until it became institutionalized and lost its edge. That's why I'm suggesting Red Dragon Ladies. At least for now. Until that loses its edge. But I still love that poem.
Michaele the Unpronounceable on 01 Jan 2006
Hey, I found this page while googling "red hat" + "pagan". I love the idea of the Red Dragon Ladies; I was thinking of starting a Red Pointy Hat Society. But no dress code, except maybe "mix it up!"
Speaking of pointy hats, there's a Daughter of Eris chapter and a Lesbian Amazon Red Hat chapter, both in Illinois. Those came up on my google search, too.