Friday the 13th-It’s A Feminist Holiday!

It’s big, it’s bad, it’s scary…it’s Friday the 13th!

This year, there are three times when this dreaded calendar combination occurs, and this year, (of all years, right?) they fall 13 weeks apart. Or so I read in this cool article here. And while this piece gives lots and lots of possible history and folklore to (maybe) explain why this date got such a bad rep, the thing they keep coming back to is the same conclusion I’ve long since reached. It’s about women. Stay with me now, it’ll make sense, I promise.

In Witch lore, the perfect size for a coven is 13. The reason for this is simple. Witchcraft is a female thing (though many men participate, it’s really about girl power.)

Thirteen silver moons, in a year are. Thirteen is the coven’s array. Thirteen times as esbat make merry, For each golden year and a day.

So reads one of the verses of the long poem known as The Wiccan Rede, which first saw print in 1974 in an issue of Earth Religion News, and later in The Green Egg, both pagan magazines. In the Green Egg it was contributed by Lady Gwen Thompson who attributed it to her grandmother, Adrianna Porter. Well worth reading the entire piece if you look it up. Anyway, that aside, note the first line in this segment of the piece. 13 silver moons in a year are. By lunar calendars, there are 13 full moons in each year. Those cycles ar