13

Once we commit ourselves to a life of perpetual unrest, keep the flame of curiosity lit, keep wondering “why?” or “how did this happen?” or “what if?”, then things get interesting. There are side benefits like staving off dementia by constantly making new neural connections and having something more interesting to contribute at the dinner conversation than the latest ap you found. But the greatest pleasure is the pleasure itself of a lifelong habit of inquiry. Asking the question that leads to the next question. 

 

So in my little piece about Schoenberg, I stumbled into a fascinating fact that he was terrified of the number 13 his whole life. Which led me to: “Why do we think 13 is unlucky? And why especially Friday the 13^th?” What used to mean a trip to the library and descent to the reference stacks down in the basement—or if you were lucky, a quick trip to your own basement to unearth the family World Book Encyclopedias or Encyclopedia Brittanica— now is a key-stroke away from Google. Perhaps the very ease diminishes the satisfaction, but that’s our world and so be it.

 

If you care to scroll back to my post of July 21^st on the subject of the number 12 (and just noticed that 21 is 12 reversed!), you can see that 12 is indeed a sacred number. 13, then, throws its perfection out of whack and is consigned to its forever status as “unlucky.” But there’s a bit more.

 

As noted in that piece, there were 12 disciples of Jesus, but he made 13 and the day after they gathered for what became known as “The Last Supper,” he was crucified. Unlucky for him. And that day? Good Friday! Hence, Friday the 13^th as the most unlucky of all. The superstition began as a warning not to gather in groups of 13 at a dinner table (party hosts, take note), but grew larger than that. (In the story Sleeping Beauty, there are 13 Wise Woman but only 12 invited to the celebration of the King and Queen’s daughter. The disgruntled 13^th crashed the party and while all had conferred their particular blessing on the child, she made a spell that pronounced the babe would prick her finger on a spinning wheel at the age of 15 (13 would have made a better story!) and die. Since the 12^th Wise Woman had not yet conferred her blessing, she was able to soften it from “die” to “fall into a deep sleep.” At any rate, unlucky 13 strikes again. 

 

This Friday is not the 13^th so why is this a topic? Because in looking up a bit about Arnold Schoenberg, it turns out he had a mortal fear of the number 13. (Note that he was the creator of the 12-tone Composition). Even though he was born on September 13^th, an event we can assume he thought was lucky, he had a condition called “triskaidekaphobia” — literally, fear of the number 13.  His whole life, he feared that he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13. As Wiki describes: 

 

“This possibly began in 1908 with the composition of the thirteenth song of the song cycle after his wife had left him. He dreaded his sixty-fifth birthday (13 x 5) in 1939 so much that a friend asked the composer and astrologer Dane Rudhyar to prepare Schoenberg's horoscope. Rudhyar did this and told Schoenberg that the year was dangerous, but not fatal.

But in 1950, on his 76th birthday, an astrologer wrote Schoenberg a note warning him that the year was a critical one: 7 + 6 = 13. This stunned and depressed the composer, for up to that point he had only been wary of multiples of 13 and never considered adding the digits of his age. "

He died on Friday the 13^th(!) of July 1951, shortly before midnight. (Twilight Zone music here. Had he last just 15 more minutes until Saturday the 14^th, he might have lived at least until 89.). 

 

Incidentally, this was 15 days exactly before I was born. Any connection? Don’t think so, but I find it interesting. Isn’t curiosity wonderful?