“In the more than 160 years since its construction, her tomb has become a shrine, a magnet more powerful than any in this city’s “legitimate” churches. Even visitation to the St. Roch chapel, with its astounding assortment of crutches, shoes and plaster casts of body parts, is eclipsed by the crowds of faithful or curious who come daily to Courtesy of Mary Angelyn Fisher. Offerings of candles, beads, coins, trinkets, tobacco, toys — almost anything you can imagine — are strewn in front of the tomb. Its sides are covered with crosses or X’s, usually in threes. Some are scrawled in red chalk.”

VooDoo in New Orleans, like Witchcraft in Salem, is a thriving tourist industry, so it is difficult to tell how many sincere adherents there are among the various hucksters and opportunistic hangers-on, but there must be a significant number if even a fraction of Laveau’s many offerings come from active practitioners. Then again, there seems to be a strong thread of belief (some would say superstition) in Laveau’s powers among the many “normal” visitors.

“I know one thing, however. I made sure that all of our offerings were left on Marie Laveau’s tomb and that we left with nothing that wasn’t ours. Years ago, I visited the tomb with a friend, a self-styled tourist guide. As we were leaving, I swiped one of the offerings from the grave — a blank piece of metal, the size of a coin. I figured it would make a good luck piece for Alabama’s football season. I don’t know if there was any direct cause and effect but I suffered for two years after I took that slug. I got cancer. I almost lost my job. And Alabama sports tanked. It has been only this year that I’ve dared to visit the tomb again. And this time, it was with a new — and profound — respect for Marie Laveau, voodoo queen of New Orleans.”

It would be interesting to know all the places of spiritual/religious pilgrimage in our country that step outside the Judeo-Christian norms. The ever-growing popularity of places like Laveau’s tomb seem to speak of a growing post-Christian (and post-secular) atmosphere where an organic process of reenchantment is taking hold. A process that seems to be allowing new and outsider faiths and customs to cement themselves within our cultural outlook.

Susan “Willow” Schroeder and Karen “Feather” Espeut.

“Schroeder continued working out her misery through a sprawling memorial, covering her entire yard and every inch of her home, inside and out. Since the 2001 murder, most of her neighbors have watched the kaleidoscopic transformation with empathy for her inestimable loss. In a city that proudly embraces eccentrics, they say, the house fits right in. But one neighbor, JoAnn Taylor, didn’t share their tolerance. She called the encroaching sidewalk paint “harassment,” a frightful abomination. Soon, she enlisted City Hall in her quest to get the sidewalk returned to its usual gray.”

JoAnn Taylor and her husband call the house “spooky” and that it looks like a “witch’s house” (oh, the irony), and while Schroeder has erected a large fence to block their view of the house, they are still on a warpath to have all paint removed from public property. As for the city, a spokesperson said that Schroeder will soon be fined $100 a day until it is removed, and that the city, ultimately, may paint it over for her (at her expense). Meanwhile, her other neighbors seem to appreciate the mother’s artistic therapy writ large.

Most neighbors, however, seem to relate to the garden and the other paintings. “I like it,” said Roland Brown, who has lived his entire 20 years two houses away and knew Ayo. He sees images of himself and other longtime residents in the mural in the park. “It’s the whole neighborhood on there,” he said … Down the block, Larry Anderson talked about his fondness for Schroeder’s garden, where he said he sometimes goes to seek peace … Rose Gentry, 79, who lives directly across the street, said she likes to sit on her porch and look at Schroeder’s house. It reminds her of country houses, like the ones she grew up near in St. Francisville. Almost every day, she said, people stop outside and take photographs. She said she’s baffled that anyone would object …

This struggle brings to light the tensions between communal art, individual creative expression, and the laws designed to keep order and peace. While JoAnn Taylor and the city are clearly in their legal rights, the rest of the neighborhood seems to appreciate the art and Schroeder’s contributions to their community. One would hope that some sort of compromise could be reached that won’t incur fines and hard feelings all-around, but it appears to be too late for that.

“Seems two old friends in L.A. are getting married, and I want to send them something as a gift – they’ve both been very generous to me with their friendship and their unselfish introduction of a Looziana boy into the West Coast media community over the years. So I want to send an only-from-New-Orleans-and-only-from-me gift to celebrate their union. After much rumination I decide I will go to my favorite voodoo shop (the XXX Botanica is literally the Wal-Mart of voodoo paraphernalia) and put together a packet of lucky charms. Surely a New Orleans sort of thing, that. The XXX is out in a bad part of the Faubourg St. John area, and a bit of a drive, but I figure that the effort will make it more of a heartfelt gift.”

I won’t reveal the story here, but it’s worth the read for a no-nonsense look into the culture of hoodoo and Voodoo in present-day New Orleans. For more of Gabour’s writings, check out the Open Democracy site.
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