Have your cake and the candles too!
by Heather Doherty
My son Conor (aka Conor-the-kins to his mama) celebrated his birthday with a Smurf Cake. Mmmmmmmmm – made from real Smurfs. (Okay, no Smurfs were harmed in the making of the cake or writing of this blog.) We skipped the 17 candles, but as you can see from the picture below went heavy icing. 
Ever wonder where birthday cakes come from? Well in Dohertyville, that would be The Superstore on Main Street. But what about the origin of this sweet tradition?
We can thank Artemis, Goddess of the moon for our annual birthday sugar fest. The ancient Greeks would celebrate this Goddess’s birthday with moon-shaped (full and round) honey cakes topped with candles. The candles honored and represented the glowing moon. Cool or what! (And think about it – now that we, in our tradition, add a candle for every year – the more candles the merrier, the more the glow, the more honour – kind of outstanding.)
There are various superstitions about blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. Many believe (and this is the superstition/bit of magic that I grew up with) that if a person blows out all the candles on her/his birthday cake in one breath, they’ll get their wish. Ah, but silence is golden – your wish will not come true if you tell. It is said by some, that the smoke from blown out candles carries their wishes to the Heavens. I like this concept, fire and smoke really have strength of their own in superstition, and adding it to one’s birthday celebration could only make the wish workings more powerful.
Long before we were plunking candles on our cakes in North America, they were a popular birthday tradition in Germany. The Germans would put a large candle in the center of a cake as the light of life.
This superstition, I heard years ago, but was never one I held on to: you should always have an odd number of candles even if you have to add an extra one, otherwise it is bad luck.
Some traditions hold that you can tell how many years before you’re married by blowing with your birthday cake, either by how many candles are left glowing after the first huff and puff, or by how many puffs it takes you to put out the inferno.
It’s said that the best day to start a business venture is on your birthday. This makes perfect sense, after all, one’s birthday is their lucky day!
So happy birthday to Conor-the-kins! And yes, the cake was awesome. Beautiful! Wish worthy even without the 17 candles.
What about you? Have any of the birthday wishes you’ve ever made come true? I hope so! And I hope you’ll post them here.
While we’re touching on awesome cakes, these crack me up! Take a look at these wrecks!
We have a winner for our Labradorite!
We are very pleased to announce we have a winner for our launch contest. We apologize for the delay in publishing the winner’s name – it took a while to raise her by email.
The lucky winner is … Patricia New!
Congratulations, Patricia! Your baseball-sized Labradorite is on its way to you. I hope you’ll let us know if you feel any vibes from the stone. You’ll remember that Labradorite is purported to improve your intuitiveness.
Spiders, spiders … yeah! Everywhere.
By Heather Doherty
Why yes, I did survive Valentine’s Day. Not a card in sight – given nor received. Just the way I like it. No gifts either. Wait … no gifts? That’s not quite true. I did give a gift to myself. (See, I may be unromantic … but I’m good to myself!)
I’ve ordered a witch’s ladder, or if you prefer, pagan prayer beads. I bought these from wonderful Etsy seller, SilverBirchHill. Check her out. She has some amazing stuff on her site.
Here’s a bit of the info on my beautiful beads.
Witch’s Ladders or Druid’s Ladders are Pagan Prayer beads, traditionally made with 40 beads. Like the prayer beads of other faiths they are used for meditation, counting prayers/spells and to help focus the mind. The 40 beads have been split into sections of 3, 7, 9 and 21 beads as these are traditionally magical numbers honored through the beads.
Hematite is particularly effective at grounding and protecting. It harmonizes mind, body and spirit. Used during out-of-body journeying, it protects the soul and grounds it back into the body. This stone has a strong Yang element and balances the meridians, redressing Yin imbalances. It dissolves negativity and prevents negative energies from entering the aura, restoring peace and harmony to the body.
Lovely, huh? I cannot wait to hold this. Hematite is a favorite stone of mine. I have a walnut-sized round of hematite that I often tuck in my pocket when I need that extra boost.
But the hemitite is not the only reason I couldn’t resist this ladder. I love of spiders too. They’re one of my favorite personal symbols (I have very few).
No, not the tarantula-crawling-down-my-shoulder thing or the venomous things that TRACK YOU DOWN! But I won’t purposely kill a spider – ever. Let them go, let them go, I say! Spiders are diligence and persistence. And who doesn’t love the webs! What an intricate symbol – and intricate world! – of life, death, struggles and conquests. As a writer, tenacity has to be in the blood. What animal is more tenacious than a web-spinning spider?
Superstition on spiders? Oh you bet ….
- Seems I am not alone on the never kill a spider thing. Rain will surely follow. I remember back in the first grade discussing this bit of wisdom in the sandbox. Someone had (so they said) killed a spider a day or two earlier, and we were wondering, well, where the heck was the rain? Yeah, he lied. That was my guess.
- If a spider drops on the table during a meal, you have an unknown enemy.
- Should a spider build its web across your front door you’ll soon have company. (Maybe more spiders?)
- But if a spider drops onto the threshold, someone in the household will die.
- You’ll meet a new friend if you run into a web. Ah, nothing like a face full of spider webs when you’re walking through a dark passage, huh? Okay, even with my appreciation of spiders and their work, I do NOT like a face full of webs. Oh, yeah, you can brush the webs away. But where are the spiders that were on it? They’ve got to be crawling somewhere. Everywhere …like your neck right now.
- Find a spider in the morning? I came across one superstition that said it’s bad luck. This does not fit me, work for me or with me. In my world, spiders are good luck, period. Other superstitions seem to agree with me:
- If a spider crawls out of your pocket, you’ll find fortune;
- See one crawling on the wall, your deepest wish will come true.
- See a big spider? Great! The bigger the better for luck.
- It’s also good luck to find a spider on a wedding dress.
A lot of lore is nature-observation based, rather than superstitions: I love this kind of folk wisdom. (But then again, maybe superstition is in fact, nature-observation based knowledge, just observed on a different level. That is, after all, how symbols work …)
- When many spiders are spinning their webs, we’re in for a dry spell.
- If the spiders are hiding, bad weather is on the way.
- When there are dew-covered webs on the lawn in the morning, it’s going to be a beautiful day.
- If there are lots of webs in the spring, it’ll be a good autumn.
Oh, and – best superstition ever – if you happen to have a spider symbol on your witch’s ladder, good fortune will follow you all the days of your life. (Okay, I made that one up, but I’m going with it!)
How about you? Have you heard any superstitions or folklore about spiders you’d like to share?
Let me call you sweetheart … or not
By Heather Doherty
Hey, did I mention I’m a writer? The Doherty in the Wilson Doherty team? Hmm, thinking I may have. But what you may not know about me (unless you happen to be married to me – shout out to Harold Doherty!) is that I haven’t a romantic bone in my body. No. Nada. Not a brittle, bitter one. Any sweet/romantic scenes in any Wilson Doherty books are 100% Norah’s brilliant work. Norah happens to be an award winning romance writer, so yeah, better in her hands than mine any day.
Don’t believe me? I was just scanning through an early draft of a project and came across this note I wrote: NORAH, CAN THEY KISS/TALK, SWEET BLAH BLAH.
Not even kidding.
And yet, here it is so close to Valentine’s Day, and I’m so excited. Not for the usual reasons, but because I get to share a few fabulous love superstitions.
Sooooooo … wanting to know who’ll you’ll marry? Here are some wonderful Valentine’s Day superstitions to help you with kiss/talk sweet blah blah, er, that question.
Unmarried women should look to the skies on Valentine’s Day to see which bird flies overhead. A robin – you’ll marry a sailor. Sparrow – you’ll find happiness in marriage, but not abundance. Goldfinch – A rich union is in the future. Those who see an owl fly overhead, won’t marry.
But maybe you don’t want to stand out there in the (brrr) cold and wait for the first friendly bird to fly overhead. Maybe you realize the potential downside to that. Try this instead: On Valentine’s Eve, write potential suitors’ names on small pieces of paper. Roll each up in clay and put them into a small bowl of water. The first to rise to the surface will be your valentine.
A very old superstition holds that if you are single, the first person one sees on Valentine’s Day outside the home will be your future sweetheart. Considering how big the world is, and how far and wide we travel now, thinking I’d not put a lot of stock in this one.
Got apple? One way of narrowing down the field of future spouses is this: peel an apple in a single strip. Make sure the peel doesn’t break or you’ll have start again. Toss it over your shoulder onto the floor. The peel will land taking the shape of the first letter in your future spouse’s name.
Want to dream of your future spouse? Yikes, here’s a salty way to do it. Before going to bed, cut a hard-boiled egg in half. Remove the yolk entirely, and replace it with salt. Put the egg back together, eat it. The one who brings you water as you dream, will be yours.
And one more … best yet:
Find yourself a mule with really long ears. (Yeah, this may take a while) and ask it if you’ll soon find true love. If the mule shakes its head: no. If one ear moves: maybe. And if the mule is completely still: yes.
Okay, good luck with these! And I hope you have a wonderful, chocolate, apple, mule, bird, egg-filled Valentine’s day … heavy on the chocolate.
I’d be really interested to hear if anyone tries these, with success, or not. And of any other Valentine’s day love superstitions you may know. Write me here!
Superstition Sunday, Superbowl Edition
Yeah, it’s Superbowl Sunday! Baltimore Ravens vs. San Francisco 49ers. I’m going to make a big, bold prediction about the game, one you can bank on: Beyonce will rock that stadium at the halftime show.
That’s it. My one and only prediction. Why? Well, because the Patriots are out. This year, I won’t be donning my New England Patriots jacket in hopes of my amazing fan vibes going forth to aid Brady and the gang. This year, I won’t even be watching. Confession (a boring one; don’t get your hopes up): I’m not really much of a sports fan. But I am a fan of all things supernatural, and all things superstitious.
In honor of Superbowl Sunday – this biggest day in sports – here are three famous and awesome sports superstitions.
Playoff Beards
So …. whatcha think of the playoff beard? You know, NHL hockey players stop shaving when their team makes the playoffs, and won’t shave again until they are either eliminated or have won the Stanley Cup. Yeah, I kind of think It is cool too. No, it’s not the actual beards that are cool. It’s the individual’s acknowledgement of powers and forces that we don’t understand, but equally will not deny. It is the collective nod to the fates, to the unexplainable, working around us.
It’s the fear of the almighty jinx!
The Curse of the Bambino
Nope, not a baseball fan either (um, this is definitely the Doherty half of the team coming at you now). But even I have heard of Babe Ruth. The story is this: Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees in the 1919-20 off season (and I’m guessing this was a move significantly unpopular with Boston fans.) Before this, the Sox had been incredibly successful. Five world series titles. After selling the Bambino? Not so much. It was 84 years before the Boston Red Sox won another World Series, whereas the Yankees went on to great success in the decades that followed.
A curse? Yes. A real honest-to-goodness curse. And it did what any good curse would/should (will!) do the mindset of the individual and collective until the ‘fate’ set out could only come true.
Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx
I love this 2002 cover. But wonder how much the dudes at Sports Illustrated do?
Superstition has it that individual players or teams who appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated will then be jinxed. (Ah, there’s the awesome word again.) Okay, Michael Jordon graced the SI cover many times, and well, he did all right for himself. But then again, he IS Michael Jordon.
This superstition I can really see happening, then catching on like fire. An athlete sliding down hill after a cover. See that happen time and time again … it would be very hard for a player to then go forward with a cover. To risk that slide – that bad luck. How slippery the slope!
Would I do it? Would I take a cover spot? Well, chances are Sports Illustrated won’t be seeking me out for their cover – my 20 minutes on the elliptical at the gym probably is not what they’re looking for. But honestly, were I a pro athlete, doing great, about to go forward into a championship match, and was offered the SI cover … would I do it?
Pffft … not a hope in hell would I. Why? Because when it comes to our passions, we don’t want to change our luck. We do NOT want to jinx ourselves. In a nutshell: we don’t tempt fate. We give these nods to the unexplainable.
So though I won’t be in my Ravens or 49ers gear, I’m guessing lucky sweaters will be worn by more than a few around North America. And wow, they’re so right to put those on. Got the beard thing going for you team? For the love of all things football – don’t touch it till after the game!
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