The Voodoo Queen
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| Marie Laveau House Of Voodoo, New Orleans |
"Her legacy survives today only in tourist-driven sales of Voodoo dolls"
This quote has stuck with me ever since I read it. How does such a rich culture get reduced down to silly souvenirs? The woman this quote talks about is Marie Laveau, once known as the "Voodoo Queen of New Orleans" because of her healing and fortune telling powers (A History of Witchcraft, Magic, and the Occult page 206). Now, she is known for the Marie Laveau House of Voodoo, a tourist trap in New Orleans that sells Voodoo dolls and other souvenirs. To give credit to the House of Voodoo, they do honor her memory by providing historical lessons on the importance of Voodoo in New Orleans. So where did Voodoo begin, and how did it get to the tourist filled streets of New Orleans?
The religion of Voudon originated in Haiti and eventually came to the United States through the transatlantic slave trade (Lewis, Shantrelle P. "Marie Laveau". Encyclopedia Britannica, 20 Dec. 2023). The religion focused on the "mystical world" and a "longing for the divine". These ideas eventually sparked the Haitian Revolution in 1791 (page 206). After the uprising, many formerly enslaved people moved to New Orleans, taking their religious practice with them. During this physical shift, the religion began to shift as well. It was becoming more "overtly magical" (207).
This change from the spiritual to the magical made the religion more accessible to outsiders. People had heard of magic before, they understood it as the work of the devil, or perhaps just illusion. One thing was for sure, magic brought audiences. Overtime, "magic had become a spectacle" and its "prime practitioners were celebrated" (page 259). As the true practice of the religion began to fade, a spectacle took its place.
Thanks for this post. New Orleans tourism is a great subject, since most tourist walk into one of 100s of souvenir shops, and in just about every shot there are voodoo dolls and magic charms. I don't think I've been to the Marie Laveau House of Voodoo, but I am sure it attracts thousands each year. I regret that my colleague Marco could not come in to talk about Voodoo as a Caribbean belief system, as it is a religion still practiced today. Most people don't know anything about it other than walking dead stereotypes. I like how you concluded your post with magic becoming a spectacle and its practitioners celebrated. As humans, we always seem to prefer spectacle over substance.
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