Voodoo in New Orleans Book

I stopped halfway through because the Voodoo rituals described in this book by the witnesses and participants Tallant interviewed were distressing to me. Some reviewers claim this book is just white men's ideas about voodoo as practised in Louisiana at the time, but it's not so simple as that. Robert Tallant was a respected researcher and interviewer. He interviewed a wide variety of local folks (both black and white) who knew about and participated in these rituals. I won't get into arguments with people about how much of this book is true or not, because we cannot be sure about that. Perhaps all those he interviewed were lying? If so, I would not be one to accuse them of that. They sound sincere enough.

What I do know is that animal sacrifice was then, and is now, still a part of religious ritual in many cultures and certainly is a valid aspect of Voodoo, whether or not modern practitioners choose to make use of it. (You can easily find information about this written by people defending the practice.) While most civilised religions stopped ritual sacrifice centuries ago and began using oblations instead, others have retained the blood rites of their ancestors. So, I knew the use of animals, both as objects of sacrifice and worship, would come up, but there was more description about this aspect of things than I expected.

Marie Laveaux I and II seem like captivating women, and I liked learning about them. Marie I was especially well thought of, having worked as a healer in her own community during the Yellow Fever outbreak. Here's my favourite painting of her (below). You will see lots of Catholic iconography that she is using during her ritual. This was not unusual, since the strange gumbo that is New Orleans Voodoo combines elements of Roman Catholic iconography and ritual, with traditional African magical and religious rites involving sorcery and spirit possession.

"Spirit possession" in this context has nothing to do with the Holy Trinity or Pentecost (Whitsunday): Voodoo is neither an Abrahamic nor a monotheistic religion and, in practice, it has little to do with Christianity. The gods, saints, and spirits invoked and worshiped in Voodoo were (and are) many and varied. Despite Voodooists claiming to be Catholic, one does not have to look far into Voodoo (then or now) to see that the religions are fundamentally incompatible, and that Voodoo would be a sacrilege to any true Catholic (or any other Christian, for that matter). Voodoo is an animistic worldview, with its roots deeply buried in the pagan folk religion from which it springs, so its weird syncretism with Catholicism seems an unholy alliance, at best. Voodoo wears Catholicism like a veil, a lightly-worn disguise that is easily discarded.

It's easy to feel sympathy for the plight of those who, through no choice of their own, were taken captive and sold into slavery by their own people, and brought in chains to foreign lands, as the property of other men. Those who survived the rough and merciless sea voyages had their homes, their families, their identities, and their cultures stripped away from them. It is under such circumstances that these slaves came to take on the surface rituals of Catholicism, which were forced upon them, whilst maintaining their own faith and culture beneath the disguise. I cannot say I blame them! Here's one example of how this happened in Brazil:

"In Brazil, syncretism is an old phenomenon, for from the beginning of colonization we find it in the quilombo dos Palmares (hiding place of fugitive slaves) . . . We find it in Cuba, in Haiti, in the same form as in Brazil."

"Arriving in Brazil, the blacks were catechized in a vague way, were, at least, baptized. However, they understood nothing of that religion which was forcibly taught to them."

"Catholicism changed into . . . a way of disguising traditional beliefs: in reality, the Catholic saint was not worshiped, but rather the corresponding orixá [African deity] behind it. Catholicism became merely a front to hide a secret ritual. . . . In the syncretism, Christianity furnishes only the Portuguese words; all else is fetishism." *



If you don't mind reading repeatedly about animals (especially black cats, black cocks, snakes, etc.) being mutilated, skinned alive, or bound and boiled alive to satisfy the appetites of dark and hungry gods, then you might enjoy this book. I started reading it for a particular reason involving one of my own ancestors who, despite descending from a long line of French Catholics, was known to practise small, private Voodoo rituals on a daily basis. Like many of my ancestors, she'd spent most of her life in Louisiana. In her old age, she clung tightly to her bag of gris-gris, constantly muttering over it whilst fingering its contents. No one else was allowed to touch it, though the children of course tried. My family members who witnessed this activity never knew whether she was invoking protection for herself or a casting a curse on someone else, so they did not try to interfere. She also consulted with a local priestess, often bringing a live chicken along. The chickens were never heard from again.

* From historian Roger Bastide's Contribuição ao Estudo do Sincretismo Católico-Fetichista.