Sant'Antonio

Sant’Antonio — Saint Anthony — is the saint of lost things, and that’s why in Naples thirteen doesn’t bring bad luck at all: it brings things back. While half the world avoids it, here it was given the saint you pray to when something goes missing — your keys, a document, a ring. It’s some of the best proof that the Smorfia isn’t an imported superstition: it’s homemade, and it follows the saints of the neighborhood. When thirteen comes up in a dream, it almost always speaks of something that returns. A person who gets back in touch, a memory that resurfaces, an object that turns up where you’d already looked three times. It speaks of guidance, too: Saint Anthony doesn’t find things for you, he brings to mind where to look. It’s the difference between help that lifts you up and help that puts you back on your feet. The images that lead here are a small catalog of this idea. Saint Anthony himself, of course. The act of checking, which is already halfway to finding. The candlestick, which throws light into the corners nobody looked in. The lake, which, when it’s still, lets you see the bottom. And the remedy, which is also something you look for and, sometimes, find. If thirteen has shown up in your dream, the most honest reading is this: there’s something you’re looking for, and your dream knows where you’ve already looked. It doesn’t promise you’ll find it — no number promises anything here — but it shows that this is the theme, and that it’s worth going back over the places you’ve already been.