How the Patriarchy ruined Friday 13th for Women - what else have they stolen?

A better parallel to “witch” is the word “whore”. Both are time-honoured tools for policing women, meant to shame them into socially prescribed behaviour. A whore transgresses norms of female sexuality; a witch transgresses norms of female power. Witches are often called unnatural because of their ability to threaten men. With her spells, a witch can transform you into a pig, or defeat you in battle. She can curse you, blight your crops, ignore you, refuse you, correct you. Punishing witches accomplishes two things: it ends the threat and makes others afraid to follow in the unruly woman’s footsteps.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/07/cursed-from-circe-to-clinton-why-women-are-cast-as-witches

I'm just copying this out of various papers. I really thought there would be well informed posterd on FWR who could tells us the history of Wicca and so on.

And of course the more modern examples of where women's discoveries have been appropriated by men.

Thirteen is certainly the most essentially female number -- the average number of menstrual cycles in a year. The approximate number, too, of annual cycles of the moon. When Chinese women make offerings of moon cakes, there are sure to be 13 on the platter. Thirteen is the number of blood, fertility, and lunar potency. 13 is the lucky number of the Great Goddess.

Representing as it does, the number of revolutions the moon makes around the earth in a year, 13 was the number of regeneration for pre-Columbian Mexicans. In ancient Israel, 13 was a sanctified number. Thirteen items were decreed necessary for the tabernacle. At 13 years of age, a boy was (and still is) initiated into the adult Jewish community. In Wicca, the pagan goddess tradition of Old Europe, communicants convene in covens of 13 participants. Thirteen was also auspicious for the Egyptians, who believed that life has 13 stages, the last of which is death -- the transition to eternal life.

Held holy in honor of Shekinah, the female aspect of God, Friday was observed as the day of Her special celebrations. Jews around the world still begin the observance of the Sabbath at sunset on Friday evenings when they invite in the Sabbath Bride. Friday is the Sabbath in the Islamic world. Friday is sacred to Oshun, the Yoruba orisha of opulent sensuality and overwhelming femininity, and also to Frig, the Norse Goddess of love and sex, of fertility and creativity. Her name became the Anglo-Saxon noun for love, and in the 16th century, frig came to mean "to copulate."

Friday was associated with the early Mother Creation Goddesses for whom that day was named. In Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Icelandic, and Teutonic cultures She was called variously, Freya, Freia, Freyja, Fir, Frea and Frig. Friday is Frig's Day, Frigedaeg, in Old English, Fredag in Danish, Freitag in Dutch. In Mediterranean lands, She reigned as Venus. In Latin, Friday is the Day of Venus, Dies Veneris; Vendredi in French, Venerdi in Italian and Viernes in Spanish.

Friday the 13th is ultimately the celebration of the lives and loves of Lady Luck. On this, Her doubly-dedicated day, let us consider what fortuitous coincidences constitute our fate. The lucky blend of just the right conditions, chemistries, elements, and energies that comprise our universe. The way it all works. The way we are. That we are at all.

As western Judeo-Christian culture was spread through colonisation these older cultures disappeared or went underground.

Interesting. All those are said to be part of the Patriarchal plot to over ride the existing matriarchal reasons why the number 13 and fridays were important to women.

eg women worked out that most (although not all) women have 13 periods in a year. And early calendars were based on 28 days.

This is a quite frivilous article about it https://www.instyle.com/lifestyle/astrology/friday-the-13th-female-power

But I remember in the past reading articles about how in matriarchal societies it was important.

Are there not matriarchal feminists on this board?

(For me this is another example of how search engines are no longer as useful as the used to be. The have sucumbed to a most popular model rather than retaining information from different times and sources. ie maybe for financial reasons, older records now cant be fund, whereas in the past you could ask to search for information from 1990 and get results, now it is rare. Far from expanding our world of knowledge it is reducingit. No dusty archives in the virtual world.)