This is My Lucky Day. [revised]

The lunatic ... doesn't concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.

— Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum **


On Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV the Fair had all the Knights Templar headquartered in France simultaneously arrested, interrogated and in many cases executed.

Why did he do this?

The rumor is that they were fabulously rich due to their having become international bankers funding the Crusades, and Philip wanted their lucre.. They were also rumored to have become rank heretics through their contacts with the Mussulman and other exotic and even more esoteric creeds in the East. They furthermore were reputed and charged with practicing unnatural vices..

The further rumor is that the Templars introduced Masonry and other forms of practical gnosticism like Catharism to the West..


I for one do not care.*** I am going to write about Philip the Fair at least once more on this blog in relation to his conflict with Boniface VIII and the bull Unam Sanctam.


I only mention the Templars here for one reason: the fact that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day is often associated with their suppression on this date. I used to buy into it a little, myself..

Until I began thinking about it.. Sodomitical bankers practicing black arts..


Fire up the pyre, I say. Line the usurers, counterfeiters and moneychangers up. I'll stoke while they form their queue..


For Christ plus the twelve made for 13, didn't they?

Yeah. I think they did. Judas was subtracted, Christ ascended, then Paul and Matthias were later added. Still 13 in all.

Tolkien's caving aside (Bilbo was the lucky 14th? Why did the dwarves take 13 to be unlucky?) I now declare ..


13 to be my very most lucky number. And this day shall now until forevermore be a holiday to me.


That's right! Burn, baby burn! Screw the Templars!


Or, uh, not.


Seinfeld holds an auto, auto-da-fé.. Burns himself eating soup, solipsistically,




Or something..


[**I found that quote on Wikipedia's article on the Templars while verifying the content of this post. It made me laugh. This is the only time you will hear of the Templars on this here blog.. Still. They did come up..]

[*** Nous nous en foutons. Fecondez-vous. ]



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