As
Paranormal Searchers is based in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Besides our ongoing investigations of the
Stuart House Haunting and various other occult issues, Voodoo is also of great interest to us.
New Orleans has been declared America’s most haunted
city (Klein 1999, 104), and tour guides-following the imaginative lead
of Anne Rice-have attempted to overlay it with legends of vampires
and other spine-tingling notions. But perhaps the city’s oldest and
most profound occult traditions are those involving the mysterious
practices of voodoo. During a southern speaking tour I was able to set
aside a few days to explore the New Orleans museums, shops, temples, and
tombs that relate to this distinctive admixture of religion and magic,
commerce and controversy.
Voodoo
Voodoo-or voudou-is the Haitian folk religion. It consists of various
African magical beliefs and rites that have become mixed with Catholic
elements. It began with the arrival of slaves in the New World, most of
them from the western, “Slave Coast” area of Africa, notably from
Dahomey, now Benin, and Nigeria. In Benin’s Fon language,
vodun
means “spirit,” an invisible, mysterious force that can intervene in
human affairs (Hurbon 1995, 13; Métraux 1972, 25, 359; Bourguignon
1993).
According to one writer, “The Blacks suffered under merciless
circumstances-their property and their family and social structures all
torn to shreds; they had nothing left-except their Gods to whom they
clung tenaciously.” In Haiti and elsewhere, there was an attempt to
strip them even of that, their “heathen” beliefs being rigorously
suppressed. However, the slaves “worshiped many of their Gods
unbeknownst to the priests, under the guise of worshipping Catholic
saints” (Antippas 1988, 2).
Voodoo’s African elements include worship of
loa (supernatural entities) and the ancestral dead, together with the use of drums and dancing, during which
loa
may possess the faithful. Catholic elements include prayers such as the
Hail Mary and the Lord’s Prayer, as well as baptism, making the sign of
the cross, and the use of candles, bells, crosses, and the images of
saints. Many of the
loa are equated with specific saints; for
example Damballah, the Dahomean snake deity, is identified with St.
Patrick who, having legendarily expelled all snakes from Ireland, is
frequently depicted stamping on snakes or brandishing his staff at them
(Bourguignon 1993).
Voodoo spread from Haiti to New Orleans in the wake of the Haitian
slave revolt (1791-1804). The refugee plantation owners fled with their
slave retinues to Louisiana where slaves had previously toiled under
such repressive circumstances that their African religion “had all but
withered.” However, oppression lessened somewhat with American rule,
following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and-with the influx of
thousands of voodoo practitioners-soon “New Orleans began to hear the
beat of the drum” (Antippas 1988, 14).
