Louisiana Voodoo

This article is about Voodoo in the United States. For other uses, see Voodoo.

"New Orleans Voodoo" redirects here. For the American arena football team, see New Orleans VooDoo.

Louisiana Voodoo, also known as New Orleans Voodoo is a religion of the African diaspora, a form of the Voodoo spirituality which historically developed within the French- and Creole-speaking African-American population of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is one of many incarnations of African-based religions rooted in the West African Yoruba tradition, including the Ifá, Vodou, Santería, Candomblé and Palo traditions, syncretized with the Catholic religion via the slave trade.

Louisiana Voodoo is often confused with - but is not completely separable from - Haitian Vodou and southeastern U.S. hoodoo. While it generally shares the same loa as Haitian Vodou, it lays a generally greater emphasis upon folk magic (as does hoodoo). This emphasis has become a spiritocultural marker for southern, Francophone Louisiana within the Western media, as it was through Louisiana Voodoo that such terms as gris-gris and voodoo dolls were introduced into the American lexicon.

History

The Vodou religion was brought to America via the slave trade. Slave owners forbade these devotees from practicing Vodou under penalty of death and forced them to convert to Catholicism. Thus came the advent of syncretization of the names and aspects of the Voodoo lwa to those of the Christian saints who most closely resembled their particular areas of expertise. In the USA the Vodoun religion is derived from largely the Ewe and other West and central African groups.

Voodoo and Christianity

In modern times, Voodoo has faced substantial derision from the Protestant Christian contingent of southern Louisiana's African-American population, as voodoo and folk magic have been portrayed as both evil and Satanic.

Survivals of Haitian and West African-influenced Vodou religion in the southern US are claimed by some to be found within the African-American Spiritual Churches of New Orleans, a city with a large Catholic population. Scholars debate the variations of Voodoo, how they have survived, how much they have changed, and to what extent Christianity in general or Catholicism in particular were used as covers to enable the survival of Voodoo. Many popular songs of the Delta Blues tradition (circa 1900 to 1941) referenced voodoo or its derivative Hoodoo explicitly. Robert Johnson sang of "hot foot powder sprinkled all round my door" and Muddy Water(s) referenced "the gypsy woman", "seventh son", and the "mojo hand".

The Catholic contribution to Haitian Vodou is quite noticeable. However, in the United States the story may be a little different, depending upon which scholarship you read. Some scholars believe confusion about Voodoo in the USA arises because there is a widespread system of African American folk belief and practice known as Hudu or more popularly as hoodoo. The similarity of the words hoodoo and Voodoo notwithstanding, hoodoo may have tenuous connections to Vodou, but may be an integral part of the Vodoun religion in West Africa and arguably throughout all of Africa. Some aspects of hoodoo may be derived primarily from Congo and Angolan practices of Central Africa, and may retain elements of the traditions and practices that arose among Bantu language speakers.

The Spiritual Churches of New Orleans are a Christian sect founded by Wisconsin-born Mother Leafy Anderson in the early 20th century. These churches incorporate Catholic iconography, ecstatic worship derived from African American Protestant Pentecostal sources, and a large dose of Spiritualism, but a closer examination shows that the hallmark of the New Orleans Spiritual Churches is the honoring of the Native American spirit named Black Hawk, who lived in Illinois and Wisconsin (Anderson's home state), not in Africa, or Haiti. Furthermore, the names of some individual churches in the denomination—such as Divine Israel—bring to mind typical Black Baptist church names more than Catholic ones.

The versions of Voodoo which survived in the Southeastern United States were connected with Christian mysticism in the minds of rural African Americans. Segregation minimized the number of bi-lingual African Americans (those who spoke basilect and fluent acrolect), and at the same time minimized the number of whites who could translate basilect well enough to discover Voodoo in the spoken, sung, or written words of middle class, working class or working-poor African Americans. In isolated African American communities, such as the Georgia Sea Islands or in the Mississippi Delta, Voodoo lore could be freely referenced and practices, at least the more subtle ones, were more public.

Today, due to the suppression of the Vodoun religion in America, most hoodooists are now members of Christian churches, such as the various Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal (AME), Pentecostal, and Holiness denominations, but when hoodoo is compared to some of the African religions in the diaspora, the closest parallel is Cuban and Dominican Palo, a survival of Congo religious beliefs melded with some Catholic forms of worship.

Katrina

With the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast, hundreds of thousands of individuals, including many Louisiana Voodoo practitioners, were driven to many different parts of the United States.

Difference between Voodoo and Hoodoo

The difference between Voodoo and Hoodoo is very similar to the difference between Wicca and Witchcraft. Voodoo is a religion that serves the Afro-Caribbean Loa or Lwa and the Catholic/Christian saints. Hoodoo, on the other hand, is the magical practice, with no religious connections or connotations.

See also

• Vodou, for the Haitian tradition
• Afro-American religion, for a general overview of the spirituality
• Marie Laveau

External links

• New Orleans Voodoo Crossroads
• House of Voodoo, New Orleans, Louisiana
• New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum