CQ Scafidi,author of "Time Couriers" Guest Post- "Voodoo"

VOODOO

CQ Scafidi

If you believe in the paranormal, then you just know.  Trying to explain it to people is impossible without sounding like someone who needs therapy but doesn’t keep their appointments.   Here, in a city like New Orleans, most people have a belief of some kind, be it paranormal, Roman Catholic, Voodoo, Freemasonry, Protestant, Unitarian, Jewish, Native American, etc. or usually a combination of everything, the same recipe used in a good Gumbo.   

            Oftentimes a belief in the paranormal isn’t required for someone to cross into the next dimension…the one that Rod Serling used to talk about in the beginning of the Twilight Zone.  New Orleans is a place where things happen to people and most everyone believes.  Known most recently for the Anne Rice Vampire Lestat series, that, for me was one of the very best examples of paranormal story- telling, the City of New Orleans has a long and storied history of other dark journeys into the arcane and terrifying world of Voodoo, Freemasonry, and parapsychology.  Take one trip to the grave of New Orleans’ most famous Voodoo Priestess, Marie Laveau, in the mystical St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, right outside of the city’s famous French Quarter and you’ll understand how people in this city really feel about such things. 

            The gravesite is reportedly the second most visited grave in the United States after that of John F. Kennedy.  It is located within an 18^th century graveyard in the typical above ground configuration so common in the cemeteries that surround the city in a band that used to form the edge of town, now nestled next to modern freeways or suburban Country Clubs.  This one is one of the very first, given its location just outside the original plan for the City across Rampart Street from the Vieux Carre’ or Old Square.

            At night these towering crypts form a City of the Dead and also create the feeling of being in a labyrinth...one wrong turn and you may never find your way out. 

            As you approach her grave the first thing you notice are the many series of three XXX’s in a row covering the marble…every inch of it.  Illegal now, this is the legacy of the believers over the centuries making their requests and following the prescribed ritual.  Votive offerings as well, especially on her most famous night, The Feast of St. John’s Eve.  Even today, on the Bayou St. John which courses its way from the lake to the city like a snake, meandering though the underbrush, you can find Voodoo practitioners conjuring up the Spirit on the traditional celebration of the Summer Solstice in June at the midnight or witching hour.  

            Live snakes are usually a component of the night’s events with loud drums and dancing as the priestess conjures up a spirit which takes residence in her body.  Many who dare will approach and ask questions but, like the Oracle at Delphi, the answers can be interpreted in many different ways.   Voodoo is a religion not a synonym for magic…it is a combination of Freemasonry, Roman Catholicism, and African Yoruba from West Africa, primarily Nigeria. Nigeria is the home to most of the African American Ancestry for the residents of New Orleans.  In Freemasonry you have a Grand Master, in Voodoo, a Grand Met.  Christian symbolism is all part of the Voodoo Altar and they observe Christian tradition along with the pagan and esoteric parts of their belief system. 

            The Voodoo practiced in New Orleans is of the kind practiced in Haiti. For, after the Haitians won independence from their French Overlords in the early 19^th century, 48,000 Haitian French were forced to emigrate to the next closest French community in the New World, La Nouvelle-Orleans, La Louisiane.  Indeed the very first restaurant of renown in a city known for its world-class cuisine, was a Caribbean French Establishment, of which the city still has many. Even the Old Line Favorites, like Antoine’s, Commander’s Palace, and The Court of the Two Sisters, all owe their legacy to the same people who brought Voodoo to the city.  Those same people are the specters that people see at night near the Old Dueling Oak lost in the mist of City Park and the location of many untimely deaths.   It was here where men could legally settle their differences with a ball of lead between the eyes.  New Orleans is a city where life moves at its own pace…and so does Death.  

The Battle of New Orleans saw the death of over 2,000 Redcoat British Soldiers and only 10 Americans.  A visit to the Battlefield of 1814 will give you chills as you can still hear the rancor of the bloodbath that many call the Second American Revolution from Great Britain.   The Statue of General Andrew Jackson is located in the center of the old Place d’Arms (Jackson Square) for a reason.  He rides his mount with his hat in the air, directly in front of Place Jean Paul Deux, where John Paul II said mass at the Saint Louis Cathedral, right around the corner from the home of Marie Laveau, Roman Catholic, Freemason and Voodoo High Priestess of La Louisiane.

Learn more by reading my novel, Time Couriers…by CQ Scafidi