When thinking of superstitions about numbers and dates your first thoughts are likely of the infamous number thirteen or of twenty-three popularized by the movie industry and conspiracy theorists. However there is vast number of superstitions regarding numbers and dates you likely have never heard of. There may even be more to the ones you do know than you know.

Lucky number seven:

The number seven is often associated with luck in general. This is hypothesized to be because it is mentioned in the bible and is a holy number. Some odd superstitions that have off-shot of the number simply being lucky include that only those born on dates divisible by seven will be lucky and all others unlucky and that the seventh son of a seventh son can see the future and will be a good physician.

Odd numbers:

Odd numbers in general are said to be good luck as well most notably three, five, seven and nine. Seven we’ve covered but three is believed to be lucky as it represents the balance of all things. Nine is lucky due to being three times three. It is also commonly believed that bad and good things come in threes as nature and fate always works in threes. Our obsession with the number three has gone so far in fact that even dates which carry the same three numbers often have superstitions surrounding them. For example 12/12/2012 is said to be the date of the apocalypse, or 01/01/2001 which was supposed to have crashed all the computers in the world. We also see a trend of a number repeated three times outside of dates being considered especially lucky or unlucky such as 777 or 666.

The number five is as easy to understand as looking at your hand. That fifth finger has brought us a wealth of good luck. It’s also believed that the reason pentacles have five tips (a star) is that the Sumerian gods that fathered our race actually had six fingers, and so five was the number that represented humanity.

Thirteen however drew the bad luck card in the odd number world. This is often associated with a few causes. Either that there were thirteen apostles at the last supper, or that there were twelve gods in the Norwegian pantheon until Loki came along making thirteen and then betrayed them. It has also been suggested that it is due to thirteen being a prime number.

Another odd number with an unusual repetition is the number twenty-three. The number itself is not said to be bad luck but to be tied to everything in life. It’s said that you can find the number in everything. The reason the number is often associated as a bad thing is people that follow the superstition of twenty-three often become obsessed with seeking it out and believe it to be somehow affecting their lives.

Four, a rare lucky even number:

Four is one of the few numbers that in most cultures is considered lucky. Again because four is a number we often see in nature. Four seasons, four elements, etc the only exclusion to this the some Chinese, four sounds awfully close to the word for death, which makes it bad luck for some.

Number and dates in general:

Numerology is often considered a type of superstition. In numerology both the dates a person is born and their name can be used to derive numbers which can tell everything from their personality to their past and future.

Superstitions regarding numbers and dates are just one more example of how wrong an association can be, but that doesn’t stop folks from avoiding the thirteenth room in a hotel or trying to have babies on dates that are divisible by seven.

Citation:

Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World By Cora Linn Daniels, C. M. Stevans

The Encyclopedia of Superstitions By Richard Webster