According to the International Ecotourism Society, ecotourism is defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.” And according to New Orleans Online, voluntourism is defined as “folks of all sorts using their vacations and breaks to help those in need.”
I know what you’re thinking. “But I only get two weeks’ vacation a year! I’m tired! I can’t spend the whole time scrubbing mold out of houses in the Lower Ninth Ward or picking up clumps of oil on Gulf beaches. Isn’t that why we have celebrities to build new houses there? And besides, I don’t have the money to travel that far.”
I can and will address those concerns. But first, consider your magickal brothers and sisters. It’s their environment, too, and as members of what the Religious Tolerance website calls a “neopagan, Earth-centered religion,” I think we owe Earth some moppin’ up, to say the least. On my trips to New Orleans, I learned that in some ways, the magickal community there was as decimated as the general community, flung to the four elements, if you will. Groundbreaking and important people in occult New Orleans were forced to move away when their homes were destroyed and jobs lost. Some of those who helped define the unique magickal community of the area in books, tarot decks, and with public rituals are now far away. Here’s my New Orleans story, as of 2010.
Falling In Love with NOLA
In the summer of 2005, I had already made plans to visit New Orleans (NOLA) during the Christmas season. Then on August 29—five years ago to the day as I write this—Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, and the levees that were supposed to save New Orleans from flooding were quickly breached as the hurricane moved inland. Eventually 80 percent of the city would be under water and more than 1,800 people would die.
Ecotourism is defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.”
The rest of the story may be history, but the suffering continues. New wounds were opened on April 20, 2010, when British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing eleven workers and spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
But back in the summer of 2005, my travel plans were shattered and my heart broken. My dream of seeing the city where my father’s aunt Josephine had been a nun for sixty-three years, where important people in the magickal community lived, and where some of my ancestors had settled after being expelled from Canada was gone like the levees that were supposed to have kept the flood waters at bay. Here in California, we didn’t really know the truth about what was going on or what the long-term effects would be—to some extent, we still don’t.
At the time, there was nothing I could do but give money to the fund that Pacific Unitarian Church was collecting for distribution by the UU church in New Orleans (our Iseum holds its seasonal rituals at PUC). As it turned out, I would not travel to New Orleans for the first time until spring 2009. I would return for Yule in 2009 as well.
My first trip to New Orleans was exploratory. Tourism was way down and we were determined to spend our tourist dollars where they were most needed. That meant tours given not by huge companies but by locals; magickal supplies and souvenirs bought at real voodoo and occult shops; food and drinks purchased at historic but not upscale eateries and bars. We walked most of the time, or took the streetcar or bus. We asked a lot of questions. We got a lot of answers, and New Orleans took us in.
There were only five people on the Haunted History Cemetery walking tour that took us through the French Quarter and into St. Louis Cemetery #1, where many noted early residents of New Orleans are buried, including Marie Laveau and some of her family. The tour guide thoughtfully explained how to leave an offering for Mamzelle the proper way, without desecrating the grave as many had done before by marking X’s on it with chalk or brick dust. There were plenty of offerings there already: Mardi Gras beads, flowers, candy, gris gris. Most of the above-ground tombs were in disrepair, some rather startlingly so. The only other sign that anyone had recently visited any of the individuals was the crypt of someone I can only call Mr. Chicken Foot, because his tomb was decorated with some of the familiar chicken-foot based charms one sees in some voodoo shops. A powerful aura of “send back that evil to the one who sent it” came off of his tomb. We were told that the Catholic archdiocese was in charge of maintaining the cemetery, but it didn’t look like anyone had maintained it in a long time.
The French Quarter was virtually the only part of New Orleans spared the worst of the storm. Though it was not yet summer, the heat and humidity were punishing, and even at night the temperature dropped only a little. I was sad to learn that there was no tour available for St. Louis Cemetery #2; it is not a safe cemetery to explore on one’s own, so on our next trip we may try to hire a private guide (read: bodyguard). We eschewed the other Haunted History tours, such as the Voodoo tour, as we already knew where to find the real thing.
It is somewhat sad to say that the best-preserved part of old New Orleans actually is the French Quarter, because
