Voodoo is not a lost art in the city of New Orleans. Where else can you find items like House Blessing Spray and Away All Evil Spirits furniture cleaner at the local corner grocery? Voodoo, with its litany of spells, gris gris, candles and charms, is a mixture of traditional African spiritual beliefs fused with aspects of Catholicism and French Creole culture. Brought to New Orleans by the enslaved Africans from West Africa in the 1700s, the practice of voodoo was at its zenith in the 1830s, during the reign of celebrated priestess Marie Laveau, whose life is the stuff of legend and whose remains live on in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. A handful of voodoo shops and temples dot the French Quarter and the Treme.
Cheryl Gerber
