Path: typhoon.sonic.net!not-for-mail Message-ID: <39DB5370.51CA@luckymojo.com> From: catherine yronwode Organization: Lucky Mojo Curio Company X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01-C-MACOS8 (Macintosh; I; 68K) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.lucky.w,alt.magick.tyagi Subject: Friday the 13th References: <970649319.32498@egroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 79 Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 15:50:37 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.204.137.120 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sonic.net X-Trace: typhoon.sonic.net 970674637 209.204.137.120 (Wed, 04 Oct 2000 08:50:37 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 08:50:37 PDT Xref: typhoon.sonic.net alt.lucky.w:8338 alt.magick.tyagi:25558 Good morning, all -- Courtesy of my friends on the Freemasonry-list, i pass along the notice that not only does Friday the 13th fall on a full moon this month, but it is also reminds us of the original "Friday the 13th," 693 years ago. It was on October 13th, 1307, a Friday, that the order went out to arrest all members of the Knights Templar, more properly known as the Order of Poor Knights of Jesus Christ and the Temple of Solomon. That fateful day has been known as "Friday the 13th" ever since, and it has been widely considered an unlucky day no matter what month it falls in -- but even more so when it falls in October. Of course, there have been some calendar reforms since 1307 :-) and i thought that the horologically obsessed among us might enjoy the following commentary on Friday the 13th, from Roger Firestone of the Freemasonry-list: Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 07:22:52 -0400 (EDT) From: "Dr. Roger M. Firestone" Subject: Re: Calendar Reform In 1753, eleven days were added to the calendar by the English-speaking world to move from the Julian to Gregorian calendar. The rest of the Western world had adopted the Gregorian calendar about 70 years earlier, when the Pope Gregory (forget his number) promulgated it. The Anglican Communion did not, of course, accept the authority of the Papacy, even on this matter, but after most of a century it came to be recognized that persisting in the folly of a faulty calendar could not be justified on the grounds of religious differences. Thus, for example, George Washington was born on 11 February 1732, but after the addition of the eleven days, this became the 22 February that we now recognize as his birthday (even if it is observed on a prior Monday, and the primary observance is with sales in the retail stores). However, one cannot add _eleven_ days to the Templar Friday the 13th, because that was the correction for the 18th century. In the 14th century, the correction was _eight_ days, there having been an intervening three unneeded leap days in the four century interval. Ergo, the Templar Friday the 13th would [theoretically] become an observation on 21 October. In a few thousand years, it will be necessary to skip another leap year that should have been under the Gregorian rule. Omar Khayyam (yes, the one who wrote the Rubayat) calculated that it would be more accurate to skip one leap year every 128 (2**7) years; the Gregorian rule skips one every 133.33 years, effectively. So we aren't skipping enough leap years, and one more will have to be dropped someday. I think it works out to about every 3000 years. I don't expect to be around to be consulted on the matter... Horology (determination of time and the calendar) is a branch of astronomy -- one of the oldest, in fact -- and should be familiar to every Mason who has been Passed to the Degree of Fellowcraft. Of course, what Masons _should_ know and what they _do_ know have long been somewhat divergent. :-) Roger M. Firestone, 32 KCCH Musician/Lodge Education Officer Henry Lodge #57, AF&AM Fairfax, VA All of this reminds me of the wonderful "Pogo" newspaper comic strips of Walt Kelly, whose superstitious characters frequently warned each other that "Friday the 13th falls on a Wednesday this month!" or became agitated and fearful because "Friday the 13th falls on a Monday this month!" cat yronwode The Sacred Landscape ------- http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredland.html Lucky W Amulet Archive --------- http://www.luckymojo.com/luckyw.html No personal e-mail, please; just catch me in usenet; i read it daily.