Voodoo Hack

[Glendora Spink]

Synonymous with New Orleans, voodoo first came to Louisiana with enslaved West Africans, who merged their religious rituals and practices with those of the local Catholic population. New Orleans Voodoo is also known as Voodoo-Catholicism. It is a religion connected to nature, spirits, and ancestors. Voodoo was bolstered when followers fleeing Haiti after the 1791 slave revolt moved to New Orleans and grew as many free people of color made its practice an important part of their culture. Voodoo queens and kings were spiritual and political figures of power in 1800s New Orleans.

The core belief of New Orleans Voodoo is that one God does not interfere in daily lives, but that spirits do. Connection with these spirits can be obtained through various rituals such as dance, music, chanting, and snakes.

Located in Armstrong Park in the Treme neighborhood, Congo Square served as a gathering place for enslaved Africans. It was a place reserved for African traditions and expression of culture, including Voodoo. Hundreds of people would gather to form drum circles and spiritual ceremonies. The area remains open today and continues to host cultural meetings.

The most famous voodoo queen was Marie Laveau (1794-1881), a legendary practitioner buried in St. Louis Cemetery No.1. She was a devout Catholic and attended Mass at St. Louis Cathedral. She encouraged others to do so as well. She lived in the French Quarter on St. Ann Street, where many people stopped to ask for her help at all hours of the day and night. She was a free woman of color who adopted children, fed the hungry, and nursed the sick during the yellow fever epidemic. She was known to help enslaved servants and their escapees. It is said that politicians, lawyers, and businessmen consulted her before making any financial or business-related decisions.

Her home was adorned with candles, images of saints, altars, and items to protect the house from spirits. You can find nickels, paper flowers, and various offerings on her tomb today. Stay at the Inn on St. Ann in the Marie Laveau Annex, the Creole Cottage she actually owned.

Perhaps one of the most famous voodoo kings of New Orleans was Dr. John, also known as Bayou John. He was born in Senegal, where he was kidnapped as a slave and brought to Cuba. He eventually moved to New Orleans as a cotton-roller, where he became part of the local voodoo community. He bought property on Bayou Road and became known as an excellent healer in Voodoo and fortune teller. He was the teacher of Marie Laveau.

St. John's Eve is celebrated on June 23 around the world for the summer solstice. The holiday has a special celebration in New Orleans each year. The celebration began in the 1830s by Marie Laveau on Bayou St. John. A head-washing ritual was combined with a public party, a celebration that International House Hotel has since adopted. You can also return to Bayou St. John to participate in the ritual each year as well.

Today, Voodoo remains in practice to serve others and influence life events in connection with ancestors and spirits. Rituals are usually held privately, but there are various places that will give you a reading or assist in a ritual. The Voodoo Spiritual Temple is New Orleans' only formally established voodoo temple, located across the street from Congo Square.

The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum is a great stop in the French Quarter to learn about the Voodoo history of New Orleans. Learn about rituals, voodoo altars, and artifacts from Africa, Haiti, and old New Orleans.

Several Voodoo shops can still be found around the city such as Voodoo Authentica, Island of Salvation Bontanica, and of course, Marie Laveau House of Voodoo. Shop for products or get a personal reading.

Supply-side economics is a theory that maintains that increasing the supply of goods and services leads to economic growth. That is, businesses that aim to increase production need to spend money. They hire more people, expand factories, buy more raw materials, and find more outlets for their goods.

Government officials who subscribe to this theory advocate tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals. They argue that this is a way to put more money in the hands of producers who will increase their spending to the benefit of consumers and workers.

As president, Bush might have been a more moderate proponent of voodoo economics. In 1990, he raised the maximum individual income tax rate to 31%, from 28%, two years after promising to do no such thing. That contributed to his failure to be reelected to a second term.

Voodoo is a sensationalized pop-culture caricature of voudon, an Afro-Caribbean religion that originated in Haiti, though followers can be found in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, the United States and elsewhere. It has very little to do with so-called voodoo dolls or zombies.

Voudon refers to "a whole assortment of cultural elements: personal creeds and practices, including an elaborate system of folk medical practices; a system of ethics transmitted across generations [including] proverbs, stories, songs, and folklore... voudon is more than belief; it is a way of life," wrote Leslie Desmangles, a Haitian professor at Hartford's Trinity College in "The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal" (Prometheus Books, 1996).

Voudon teaches belief in a supreme being called Bondye, an unknowable and uninvolved creator god. Voudon believers worship many spirits (called loa), each one of whom is responsible for a specific domain or part of life. So, for example, if you are a farmer you might give praise and offerings to the spirit of agriculture; if you are suffering from unrequited love, you would praise or leave offerings for Erzulie Freda, the spirit of love, and so on. In addition to helping (or impeding) human affairs, loa can also manifest themselves by possessing the bodies of their worshipers.

Followers of voudon also believe in a universal energy and a soul that can leave the body during dreams and spirit possession. In Christian theology, spiritual possession is usually considered to be an act of evil, either Satan or some demonic entity trying to enter an unwilling human vessel. In voudon, however, possession by loa is desired. In a ceremony guided by a priest or priestess, this possession is considered a valuable, first-hand spiritual experience and connection with the spirit world.

Voudon originated with slaves who combined elements of their West African traditions and beliefs with the Roman Catholicism imposed upon them by their masters in a process called syncretism. A 1685 law forbade the practice of African religions and required all masters to Christianize their slaves within eight days of their arrival. Slavery was condoned by the Catholic Church as a tool for converting Africans to morally upright Christians. Slaves forced to adopt Catholic rituals thus gave them double meanings, and in the process many of their spirits became associated with Christian saints.

Furthermore, Desmangles notes, "Many of the African spirits were adapted to their new milieu in the New World. Ogun, for instance, the Nigerian spirit of ironsmiths, hunting and warfare took on a new persona... He became Ogou, the military leader who has led phalanxes into battle against oppression. In Haiti today, Ogou inspires many political revolutions that oust undesirable oppressive regimes."

Though Haitian slavery ended in the early 1800s, followers of voudon were often persecuted by authorities who demonized their religion. An 1889 book titled "Hayti, or the Black Republic" (Filiquarian, 2012) falsely attributed human sacrifices, cannibalism and other atrocities to voudon, further spreading fear of the religion. Many fundamentalist Christians still regard voudon and voodoo with suspicion, associating it with the occult, black magic and Satanism. Even today "voodoo" is often used as an adjective to describe something that is unknowable, mysterious or simply unworkable (for example, in 1980 George H.W. Bush famously disparaged Ronald Reagan's monetary policies as "voodoo economics").

The more sensational aspects of voudon, such as belief in zombies and animal sacrifice, have provided fodder for countless television shows and movies in the form of voodoo. Zombies are an especially good example of how a religious element can be taken out of context and become a global phenomenon.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "zombie" first appeared in English around 1810 when historian Robert Southey mentioned it in his book "History of Brazil." But this "zombi" was not the familiar brain-eating manlike monster but instead, like many voudon loa, a West African deity. The word later came to suggest the vital, human force leaving the shell of a body, and ultimately a creature human in form but lacking self-awareness, intelligence and a soul.

The original Haitian zombies were not villains but victims. Haitian zombies were said to be people brought back from the dead (and sometimes controlled) through magical means by priests called bokors. Sometimes, the zombification was done as punishment (striking fear in those who believed that they could be abused even after death), but often the zombies were said to have been used as slave labor on the island's farms and sugarcane plantations (though no evidence of the zombie-filled farms was ever found).

The voodoo popular in movies and fiction bears little resemblance to real voudon beliefs or practices. Voodoo has become a prominent feature of the New Orleans tourism industry, with countless shops, tours, exhibits and museums capitalizing on that city's historic (and, some experts say, tenuous) connection to voudon. Of course, stripping sacred objects and rituals out of their original context for commercial exploitation is nothing new: witness Chinese-made Native American dream catchers for sale at dollar stores.

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of six books, including "Tracking the Chupacabra" and "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries." His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.

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