26 Facts About Louisiana Voodoo

Louisiana Voodoo, known as New Orleans Voodoo, is an African diasporic religion which originated in Louisiana, now in the southern United States.

Louisiana Voodoo has been referred to as New Orleans Voodoo, and—in some older texts—Voodooism.

Several different spellings of Louisiana Voodoo have been used; alternatives have included Voudou and Vaudou.

Louisiana Voodoo is a secretive religion; in 1972, for instance, the historian Blake Touchstone noted that Louisiana Voodoo was then largely being practiced outside the public eye.

Louisiana Voodoo has not remained static, but has adapted and changed over time; in its original form, it probably survived into the early 20th century.

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Louisiana Voodoo has no formal theology, although it displays its own spiritual hierarchy.

Many practitioners of Louisiana Voodoo have not seen their religion as being in intrinsic conflict with the Roman Catholicism that was dominant along the Mississippi River.

Louisiana Voodoo displayed a range of lesser deities, the names of which were recorded in various 19th-century sources.

Louisiana Voodoo was depicted as a serpent and associated with discord and the defeat of enemies.

Interviews with elderly New Orleanians conducted in the 1930s and 1940s suggested that, as it existed in the closing three decades of the 19th century, Louisiana Voodoo primarily entailed supplications to the saints for assistance.

The rituals of Louisiana Voodoo are based on African traditions that have absorbed various Christian, and especially Roman Catholic, influences.

Practitioners sometimes performed rituals to deal with specific issues; in August 1995, Louisiana Voodoo practitioners held a ritual in the Bywater area of New Orleans to try to drive away crack cocaine abuse, burglaries, prostitution, and assaults, while in 2001 the Louisiana Voodoo priestess Ava Kay Jones performed a rite to drive harmful spirits away from the New Orleans Saints football team in the hope of improving their performance.

Some 21st-century practitioners of Louisiana Voodoo do sacrifice animals in their rites, subsequently cooking and eating the carcass.

Many historical Louisiana Voodoo rituals involved the presence of a snake; Marie Laveau was for instance described as communing with a snake during her ceremonies.

One example of a Louisiana Voodoo curse was to place an object inside the pillow of the victim.

In other instances, Louisiana Voodoo practitioners sought to hex others by placing black crosses, salt, or mixtures incorporating mustard, lizards, bones, oil, and grave dust on a victim's doorstep.

Under the French and Spanish colonial governments, Voodoo did not experience strong persecution; there are no records of the Roman Catholic Church waging "anti-superstition campaigns" against the religion in Louisiana.

Many of those fleeing the revolutionary war fled to Louisiana Voodoo, bringing with them Haitian Vodou; a religion deriving from the syncretism of Fon and Yoruba traditional religions with Roman Catholicism.

However, amid establishment fears that Louisiana Voodoo may be used to foment a slave rebellion, in 1817 the Municipal issued an ordinance preventing slaves from dancing on days other than on Sundays and in locations other than those specifically designated for that purpose.

Repression of Louisiana Voodoo intensified following the Civil War; the 1870s onward saw white writers display an increased concern that Louisiana Voodoo rituals were facilitating the interaction between black men and white women.

Louisiana Voodoo was used as evidence to bolster the white elite's claim that Africans were inferior to Europeans and thus bolster their belief in the necessity of legalized segregation.

Louisiana Voodoo alleged that he was a prince from Senegal who had been taken to Cuba and there freed before coming to Louisiana.

Louisiana Voodoo has gained negative connotations in wider American society, being linked to witchcraft and hexing; Protestant groups, including those present among the black New Orleanian population, have denounced Voodoo as devil worship.

Sensationalist portrayals of Louisiana Voodoo have been featured in a range of films and popular novels.

Characters practicing Louisiana Voodoo were incorporated into the 2013 U S television series American Horror Story: Coven, where they were described as a coven of witches active since the 17th century.

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Elements of Louisiana Voodoo were incorporated into the black Spiritual churches whose teachings drew upon Roman Catholicism, Spiritualism, and Pentecostalism.