TRI SKAI DEKA PHOBIA
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Fear of the number thirteen can be traced back to the ancient Hindus, who were already leery of gatherings of more than twelve and less than fourteen. This same idea attached itself to the unlucky Last Supper attended by Christ and the twelve Apostles. Norse myth seems to have entertained similar apprehensions about thirÂteen at table, and even in the twentieth century several American presidents, among them Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would never sit down with an even dozen others.
As we all know, the unfortunate thirteen faces continuing discrimination everywhere in modern life, for all practical purposes leading a closeted existence. But why should we have ever come to fear a mere quantity? In all likelihood, triskaidekaphobia got its start with our ancestors’ first attempts at counting. Humankind learned to count using ten fingers, to which each foot could be conveniently added, making twelve in all.
Beyond knowledge legitimated by the very design of our bodies, however, stretched a vast and arbitrary domain. For the orthodox, just thinkÂing of where it might lead if one kept counting must have been like thinking of jumping off a cliff‌
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Yet the history of this number has its brighter side too. The ancient Egyptians converted thirteenish fear of the unknown into the joy of following the twelve steps of earthly life with the next step—into the afterlife. And their auspicious notion would reemerge thousands of years later, when the founding of the United States of America from thirteen colonies was celebrated on the back of the one-dollar bill with that mysterious image of an incomplete Egyptian pyramid faced with thirteen courses of limestone. In much the same spirit, nest urges readers to enjoy our current issue with every expectation of more to come.
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nest — death — page 13