Most informative is the tiny, two-room artifact-crammed Historic Voodoo Museum, founded in 1972 and detailing the complex religion of one supreme god (Bondye) and saint-like spirits (loa) who intercede in everyday problems. Beware because this “rougarou” alligator-human creature, according to lore, can snatch your soul at the Historic Voodoo Museum. (It’s said she liked to imbibe and smoke.) On Bourbon Street, at gimmicky Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, shoppers can pray at her devotional-draped altar and then nab a copy of her death certificate for $12.95. Over at Voodoo Authentica, patrons write down their wish, place it on an altar for Laveau and leave jewelry, trinkets, money, Seagram’s 7 and cigarettes. Powerful in death, Marie Laveau is feted with offerings at altars throughout New Orleans, including this one at the Voodoo Authentica shop. (Nearly every voodoo locale is walkable from my W Hotel, which, appropriately, has a voodoo-inspired giant mural of the tarot card Queen of Pentacles in my room.) Laveau worked as a hairdresser to wealthy clients, so admirers lay bobby pins and ponytail scrunchies along the outside window sills of her former home, now a re-built private residence on St. Laveau’s lingering presence - for tourists that is - can be found largely in the historic French Quarter. Tourists often line up to get inside the kitschy Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo shop on Bourbon Street. Nearby, a display case contains other amulets - bat skulls, raccoon penis bones and bobcat claws. “You need to feed her monthly,” he says, explaining that flowery Florida Water or any liquid will do.
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Her son Jagger, a purported psychic christened after Mick, is stationed under a painting of Laveau and instructing a couple how to care for their effigy selected from the “Voodoo Doll Bar.” Soon, I wander into a store named for its owner and YouTube hostess, voodoo priestess Bloody Mary. In Bloody Mary’s mystical store, dolls dangle below a mural of the woman who put New Orleans voodoo on the map. Cage also flew New Orleans priestess Miriam, of the Voodoo Spiritual Temple, to Hawaii to bless his 2002 wedding to Lisa Marie Presley - he filed for divorce three months later.
After the box office-cursed actor went into foreclosure on his haunted New Orleans mansion, he bought a plot near Laveau, presumably to bask in her vibes when he’s toes up.
The only access now is through an archdiocese-approved walking tour, which also highlights a kooky 9-foot-tall white stone pyramid, erected by much-alive Nicolas Cage.
Turns out way too many devotees were flocking to Laveau’s rectangular tomb, desecrating it with superstitious triple X’s to seek favors and in one case painting it bright pink. My first pilgrimage is to Laveau’s eternal resting spot - or rather the locked graffitied gates of St. To delve further, I’ll end up at a crumbling Catholic graveyard, a 50-year-old voodoo museum, Laveau’s former home, various voodoo shops (all with on-site tarot card readers) and on the other side of a crystal ball as a Haitian-initiated mambo dives into a hypnotic trance to reveal my startling past. (Angela Bassett portrays her more as a lunatic villain in TV’s “American Horror Story.”) The relic-packed Historic Voodoo Museum pays homage to 19th-century Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, whose influence continues today. Stories abound of her nursing yellow fever victims and tending to the poor.
Elite whites sought her remedies for love, business and other matters.
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Voodoo is actually a fascinating religion, brought by enslaved West Africans to New Orleans in the 1700s and still practiced today with singing, dancing and drumming rituals calling on benevolent spirits.Ĭentral to it all is revered legendary Queen of Voodoo Marie Laveau, a free person of color who was a dynamic political force in New Orleans and whose 1881 New York Times obit dubbed her “one of the most wonderful women who ever lived.” Mixing voodoo with Catholicism, the philanthropic Creole beauty reportedly wielded supernatural healing powers and performed elaborate ceremonies with her pet python. The beguiling Big Easy isn’t just about boisterous bead-flinging Mardi Gras (coming up Tuesday, March 1), doughy beignets, hot jazz and neon green “Hand Grenade” cocktails - it’s also the voodoo capital of America. “People come in saying they’re dissatisfied with their life and want to find something to fill the gap,” says voodoo priest Papa Zaar.