Ah, is there no end to human arrogance and general stupidity. I often wonder how we made it this far without killing ourselves off.
Voo Doo. It’s a religion, not a practice. Although many people without the African/Creole/Cajun heritage like to muck about with it; it is not the right of European white folk to appropriate the belief. Voo Doo is a combination of Catholicism and African Paganism. Different tribes from Africa brought with them, when sold into slavery, their belief systems and like the pride and dignity of the slaves, this was something that slave owners attempted to drive out of their “possessions”, using whatever means necessary. Obviously, without complete success because pride and dignity remained and carried forth long after the slave owners had turned to dust as well as did the faith of these victims of inhumanity.
Marie Leveau is, probably, the most widely known Voo Doo practitioner. Her tomb is one of THE most popular tourist destinations in New Orleans. People often leave bits of their own gris-gris in tribute to the woman. Her tomb has been desecrated by numb-nuts over the years, marking X’s on her tomb while committing to some sort of dopey “wish spell”. This practice is relatively modern and not a remnant of the old Vou Dou gris-gris belief. The tokens people leave to Marie Leveau are the focal point of this particular tale of inane behaviour. Not all of the people who visit the tomb are white wannabes; some are actual followers of the true Voo Doo and have the heritage to back them up.
Just a note: some people believe Marie Leveau is in that tomb along with her daughter and family but if you know Vou Dou at all, then you know that the bones of the dead are, arguably, the singular most powerful tool in an Obeah’s mystical tool box. The odds that all of Marie or her daughter rest in that tomb is questionable. I would imagine a curse would have been placed on the tomb to avoid such activity but stupid will be stupid and the lure of power overrides common sense or the affording of human dignity.
This practice of removing bones from the tomb plays a part in this sad tale. No, the tomb was not pilfered per se but something was removed that probably shouldn’t have been.
Voo Doo enjoyed a resurgence of interest beginning in the 1930’s after a brief hiatus from the public eye.
A young man of my acquaintance went down to New Orleans to; ostensibly, meet the REAL followers of the faith. Without the proper connections and being Caucasian, he met only fraudsters and con-men/women. They fed him tales of Voo Doo power and myths from the bayou, tales of the old quarter. He paid for a tour to the cemetery where Marie Leveau is, supposedly, resting for eternity. There were all sorts of tributes left at the tomb, but what caught his eye was a small wooden box. After the tour, when he returned to his hotel, he couldn’t get the box out of his mind and rather than see it for what it was – covetousness; he interpreted it as a message from the world of Voo Doo spirits. He went back to the cemetery the next day, and found the box was still there. Again, this should have been a warning to him but being white, being North American and to my mind, incredibly arrogant, he made off with the box. Even if you don’t believe in Voo Doo, stealing anything from the reputed Voo Doo Queen of New Orleans would seem like the ultimate in unwise life choices, even if said Queen had long since passed.
He secreted the box away, in his luggage. It was small and made of a dark wood, with encryptions; it was also sealed with a waxy substance; I would assume the seal to be made up from wax, fat and the blood of a sacrificial animal of some sort.
Yet another clue to the young man, regarding the inadvisable nature of his actions, past and future.
And in this dark comedy of obvious errors? He broke the seal. There were small bones, some dark object, about the size of a prune and completely desiccated which he could not identify (I would put my money on the heart of the aforementioned sacrifice), there was, also, what looked like rough dirt (Any bets on this being graveyard dust?); there were beads with something hand written on them and a rolled up piece of paper that had fallen victim to humidity or the liquid seeping from the “dried up something”. It fell apart when he tried to unroll it.
He decided, upon returning home, to contact Marie Leveau as she held her court in the Underworld and see if she wouldn’t bestow some Voo Doo knowledge on him. Sure. What could possibly go wrong?
In a local esoteric store in Ottawa, Ontario, he bought some candles as well as other ritual accessories and laid his plans. He gave me a call and outlined what he was going to do and I couldn’t impress the inadvisability of his actions well enough. I explained that messing around with another culture’s beliefs was not a particularly wise choice, especially Voo Doo but he seemed hell bent on going ahead. He did. He went ahead and he went ahead, alone. No one to help him out, no one to pull him back if things got weird. And weird is a total understatement of the events.
He doesn’t remember much. Abject terror has a way of anaesthetizing the mind and creating a sort of protective amnesia. What I think doesn’t matter; what he thinks happened does. He believes that he was ridden by the Loa and not just any Loa; he firmly believes that he was the vessel fo Baron Samedi, his wife Maman Brigette and Baron’s minions. No recollection of Marie Leveau at all, needless to say.
He began his little foray into the forbidden world of Voo Doo at midnight, like a good little representative of stereotypes. Lit his candles, did the whole protection thing with a salt ring and purified water, added some incense of protection from his own belief, turned on a CD that was reputed to be Haitian Voo Doo drumming, placed the box he had stolen between a couple of the candles and went off to the races, invoking Mme. Leveau to visit with him.
He remembers that the area surrounding his circle went inky black and the music seemed to be getting louder, loud enough that he feared his neighbours would complain. He recollected reaching out to turn down the volume and found himself unable to lift his arms. The smell of cigar smoke permeated the air and he recalls thinking that someone had dropped by for a visit; afraid to have anyone see what he was doing, he turned to blow out the candles and clean up some of the evidence. And again, he found himself unable to move. The circle he had created filled with smoke that reeked of tobacco, he started to cough, it was that strong. As he coughed and sputtered, he became aware that he was no longer alone. He couldn’t see anyone but the feeling of being observed was very strong. The smoke began to swirl and seemed to be taking on the form of a body. It was at this time, that he feels he lost consciousness. When he awoke, he was naked, there was, what appeared to be dried blood and a white powder all over his body. And he was hurting. It took some time for him to be able to move his limbs and clear his mind. He knew the room was lit by the early dawn light and felt very disoriented, confused and frightened.
A few weeks after the incident, we were visiting some relatives in his area and gave him a buzz. We arranged to meet for drinks at his place. I did notice when I called him that his conversation was peppered with unnecessary swearing and this was very uncharacteristic of him. Oh sure, he swore but not every second word, unlike our phone conversation which, had it been on television? Would have been one long “beep”. I didn’t think much of it at the time; it did take on a whole new significance later on in the evening.
We arrived at his apartment; it was an older house that had been converted into smaller lodgings. Going up the stairs to his apartment, I noticed the smell of cigars. Not something I particularly enjoy. There was music or rather the sound of drumming emanating from behind his door and I knocked loudly so that we would be heard. The drumming stopped and the door opened. There was our friend, completely decked out in black, save a purple silk vest. Prior to that visit, I had only ever seen him in rugby shirts and blue jeans. His hair had grown and he was very pale. It was mid-July and while the rest of us were sporting some summer colour, he was the colour of mid-winter. Pasty. He looked very tired and his big grin didn’t meet his eyes which were sunken and bloodshot. He also had a big old cigar hanging out of his mouth, creating an unhealthy haze around his head. I had never known him to smoke, not cigarettes, not even the occasional doob, let alone a big honking cigar. We were invited in and offered a drink; rum and coke. He had a sideboard and it was littered with rum bottles, full, half-full and large collection of empty ones.
We don’t drink rum as a general rule and settled on a coffee, instead. While he was in the kitchen, preparing the coffee, we had the chance to look about his living room. It was a mess. There were unlit candles everywhere, some on plates, some on those aluminum tart things, some just melted over furniture. The air was stale, with that horrible cigar smell and just general uncleanliness. There was a stack of mail on the floor, most of them looked like bills. It was disturbing. Okay, he was a youngish man and not a neat freak but even for him, this was a disaster area. He came back with the coffee and apologized, he had no milk or cream so we drank it black. He apologized for the mess and claimed he hadn’t been feeling well. We chatted and I brought up his visit to New Orleans, his regrettable actions at the cemetery and his ritual plan. He became very agitated. Sprang off his chair and started pacing back and forth; most of what he said made little sense to me. He opened up his sideboard and withdrew something. He offered it out to me – it was that damned box (unintended pun). I am nobody’s fool and I refused to touch it. It was bad. It was a very bad thing. You could feel it and to this day, I don’t understand how he couldn’t have felt it; I had always known him to be very sensitive to energies. He had often picked up on things that I had missed. How he didn’t feel the…”evil” (?) coming from that thing is beyond me. Maybe he was right and this was some sort of message but one he should have ignored. I just don’t know. I do know that whatever transpired the night of the ritual, changed him. Gone was the pleasant, open guy of our acquaintance. Gone was the inquisitive mind and cheerful demeanor.
He became a bit cheesed that I wouldn’t take the box and actually swore at me. I figured our visit had reached its end and gave the signal that husbands everywhere understand – “It is TIME TO GO!!” Our friend wasn’t about to let us get off that easily. He started to give us a lecture on Voo Doo, on the concept of the Loa, the Guédé clan and the history of the slaves, what they had taken from them and what they had brought with them that could never be taken – their beliefs. I asked him about his ritual and what had occurred to have made him such a believer in a faith that was so foreign to his birth, to his own beliefs.
He related the aforementioned ritual to me and started to cry but only for a minute or so; he seemed to actually “snap out of it” and began to make light of the whole thing. I was feeling extremely uncomfortable, like I had been dropped into an alternate reality or something. I just wanted to get out of there. The unease was being replaced by actual fear. I don’t know if I was afraid of our friend, if I was afraid of what I feared had happened to him or if the entire apartment wanted me out of there. I was in no mood to debate the question with myself, and picked up my purse, nodded to the husband and turned to our friend. He was looking at me with such malice that I was taken aback. We said our good-byes, issued our phony promises to meet again, soon (Not a hockey puck’s chance of that happening!) and we beat it out the door.
I heard from him shortly after our visit. He had lost his job and was unable to hold his apartment any longer. He said that it wasn’t all bad, that he was looking at a job near the city of Toronto and that he’d let me know. He did call me once more, he had landed a job, it was the one he had mentioned and it came with a small house. He was the head caretaker of a cemetery. I haven’t heard from him since. I have heard from friends, through the gossip grapevine that he was virtually friendless and had become a recluse in that little home, on the edge of the cemetery.
