13th June 2014 - Friday 13th and a Full Moon - Thank Frigga

Thought for the day: "Who dares Gins !"
(Apparently it is also world gin day...)

Let's be fair - you cannot live without Gin !!  At least there is Oxy- Gin , and Hydro - Gin (which may be Gin and water rather than tonic) - but I can do without Reli -gin thank you very much!!

But while we are celebrating, we must take a moment to think about those who are friggatriskaidekaphobic.
Lovely word and of course comes from the naming of the day through Viking terms named after Frigga - Wife of Odin... and triskaidekaphobia being the fear of the number 13.

But it is also a full moon and apparently that last happened in October 2000, remember the year when all the computers would stop and the world would end through the millennium bug?  So you may also suffer from selenophobia - the fear of the full moon...

Add to that the news from the New York Times that three huge solar flares - bigger than 1859  are about to fry the earth ( have I mentioned before how much I hate the newspaper business?) and we could be in for trouble...



In Numerology, every number has a particular meaning. The number 13 symbolizes “Death”. It’s a picture of a skeleton with a scythe, reaping down men.
Tradition also has it that God confounded languages at the tower of Babel on a Friday the 13th, and Solomon’s Temple was destroyed on a Friday the 13th.

In France, a dinner for 13 is thought to be unlucky, and superstitious hosts may hire a “quatorzieme,” a professional 14th guest. Hmm - may be an opening there for me ....

Another significant piece of the legend is a particularly bad Friday the 13th that occurred in the Middle Ages.
On Friday, 13 October 1307 King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the phrase : "Dieu n'est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume" ["God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom"]. There was a claim, that during admissions ceremonies, recruits were forced to spit on the cross, deny Christ, and engage in indecent kissing; brethren were also accused of worshiping idols, and the order was said to have encouraged homosexual practices. The Templars were charged with numerous other offences financial corruption and fraud, and secrecy.  Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture, and these confessions, even though obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. All interrogations were recorded on a thirty metre long parchment (now held at the Archives Nationales in Paris).

Both Friday and the number 13 were once closely associated with capital punishment.

Some believe that the Friday the 13th superstition has an origin in Norse mythology. In one story, the evil god Loki is said to have crashed a party with 12 guests and tricked the blind god Hod into killing his brother Balder, the god of light, joy and reconciliation.

Also, according to Norse mythology, it was the Vikings who decided a hangman’s noose should have 13 loops and in British tradition, Friday was the conventional day for public hangings, and there were supposedly 13 steps leading up to the noose.

Which brings us right around to a tale of the Valkyrie - a favourite song of mine - recorded here in the Creative Bubble in Swansea, an Arts experiment...

But one of the reasons I love this song so much is that there is a back story - as related by Mikal - the songwriter...

Notes from Mikal: 
Some of my best stuff is done after midnight beside a campfire...

I composed this song after hearing a true story from an Ansterroran who had come to Lilies the year we did the Viking wars and saw the most beautiful girl in the world working as a water-bearer. He watched her for a good twenty seconds, (He claimed a n hour) but before he could speak to her, she was gone.

He searched for the entire war without finding her.

The next year, he found her right off. He was going to take her to camp that night, to introduce to his household, but the girl had married in the year between the wars. This noble spent the hour with her not speaking his heart, to keep from interfering with the honor of their marriage.

She gave him a gift, that year. A lock of her hair, in a small leather bag. (Damn! Stories like that make me cry...)

-o0o-

Place of the day...