I was determined to meet some real practitioners of Vodou and also to meet some homegrown Pagans. My hometown of Los Angeles is a competitive place that can host heated rivalries among magical groups, so I was unprepared for how often we were made to feel welcomed. On a particularly blistering day, we stumbled into Voodoo Authentica, and my husband promptly fell asleep on the couch in front of the altar for Yemaya. I was a little taken aback, but Brandi, the owner, told me “Oh, yes, I’ve slept on that couch many times. It’s very comfortable.”
Voodoo Authentica was not the only place that made us feel at home. On our next trip to NOLA, we were invited not only to an authentic voodoo ceremony but also to the Winter Solstice ritual of the NOLA Merry Meet group of Pagan organizations, which includes a woman named Ty and her group Lamplight Circle. (I got in contact with this organization through a Yahoo group.) It took place by a wonderful street fair on Esplanade. I’d never before eaten Coq au Vin from an open-air booth! We needed to get to the French Quarter afterward and were given a ride there without even having to ask.
Mambo Sallie Ann Glassman of the Island of Salvation Botanica and La Source Ancienne Ounfo had invited me to their ritual, but there are so few flights into New Orleans that I could not get there early enough to attend. Her rituals are open to the public—as long as you participate. As for donations, Sallie Ann says, “money, energy, expertise, and ideas” are all appreciated. She is currently applying for (and getting!) grants to built a much-needed community center/food co-op. After visiting several neighborhoods in New Orleans, my husband and I found a Walgreens on almost every corner. One can buy decent fried chicken and cognac at the local gas stations, but as for full-service grocery stores, well, we couldn’t find any.
My second visit to New Orleans, around Yule, had taken on a somber tone due to the death of Theo, a close Iseum friend. I remembered how Theo had literally given someone the shirt off his back on an ecotourism visit to the Yucatan. A worker at his hotel had complimented him on a rather colorful shirt he wore one day, and before he departed for home, he washed it and gave it to the man.
Saving money on our second visit, we stayed at the Canal St. Guest House. It was lovely, but a house behind it lacked a roof and large vines covered it like a Mayan ruin. I saw this frequently, even four and a half years after Katrina: whole neighborhoods of empty foundations and ruins of buildings overgrown with foliage. The airport shuttle would not drive us to our guest house, as it was beyond Claiborne Street. Gang graffiti included voodoo veves. The only post office was miles away. Many of the boutiques of the Garden District, including Leilah Wendell’s famous Westgate Necromantic shop, were gone.
Canal Street streetcars had only just started operating again during our Yule trip. There was no streetcar named Desire, but we did take one called Cemeteries, which took us to the City of the Dead at the other end of Canal. I called my co-priestess Lori Nyx from a coffeehouse that had a botanica/marijuana dispensary on one side and the Oddfellows Rest cemetery on the other. “You won’t believe where I’m sitting right now,” I told her. “I’m having coffee next to the Santa Muerte statues and sitting close enough to touch someone’s headstone.” You can’t make this stuff up!
Alone, I sat on a bus through Treme to visit Sallie Ann in the Bywater (this was not the Ninth Ward but was Ninth-Ward adjacent); the bus passed through some incredibly poor neighborhoods, and I was depressed. We’d been told not to go to the Lower Ninth Ward alone, to only go on a guided tour, as though it was a war zone. I was too sad to visit the devastated neighborhood on this trip, even to see the nice, shiny celebrity-built houses.
It was threatening rain when I left Sallie Ann’s and the temperature was dropping fast, so I called a taxi. I made friends with the driver—one of my Cajun people—and he helped me out several times during my stay, including carrying heavy luggage down flights of stairs and picking me up at the place no airport shuttle would dare to go.
My husband left—ironically for Theo’s beloved Yucatan—the day before I did. So on my last day, I saved my money for the reduced-price cab fare my driver promised me and walked all the way to Rampart Street to visit the Voodoo Spiritual Temple again. On our previous trip, my husband, an award-winning photographer, had taken pictures of Priestess Miriam’s altars in the temple for free and sent them to her to use in any way she wished. Priestess Miriam’s assistant remembered me, and I told her that I wanted to give an offering for my late friend, Theo, on Ellegua’s altar, since he had been particularly fond of Ellegua. She agreed, and I followed her through the store and into the private temple out back. She then surprised me by saying that it was quiet, so she was going to let me stay as long as I wanted. She left me alone, and I spent time at every altar, leaving
