New Issue! Hoodoo and Conjure: New Orleans

Hoodoo & Conjure: New Orleans

The long awaited follow-up to Hoodoo and Conjure #2 is here! This special edition, Hoodoo and Conjure: New Orleans, reads like a fine wine that only gets better with age –  this issue will not disappoint you!

The timing for this issue could not have been better. With the nation tuning in every week to American Horror Story: Coven to catch a glimpse of Voodoo and witchcraft in New Orleans on TV, we have managed to release Hoodoo and Conjure: New Orleans at the same time. We even have stories in this issue that are touched on in AHS: Coven; albeit, briefly (Mary Oneida Toups, Tituba, Marie Laveaux and Madame LaLaurie) –  all of which were planned over a year in advance of knowing what the show was even going to be about. Serendipity? Syncronicity? Or could it be the Universe telling the world it’s time to take notice of the importance of New Orleans in the grand scheme of super natural things?

In all its gloriousness and fabulous writ, Hoodoo and Conjure: New Orleans brings to you a fantastic collection of articles from a variety of notable as well as up and coming authors. As the title suggests, the majority of the articles center on New Orleans Voodoo, hoodoo, and Old New Orleans Witchcraft; however, we also include some fantastic articles about Appalachian conjure, goetia, international conjure, formulas, recipes, graveyard work, New Orleans style Day of the Dead with Sally Ann Glassman and much more!

Here we go…are you ready?!!!!

Mary Oneida Toups

GET THE ORIGINAL STORY OF MARY ONEIDA TOUPS BY THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR, 6th generation New Orleans born Alyne Pustanio! Mary Oneida Toups is recognized to this day as the most powerful witch to have practiced in New Orleans in the 20th century. She was the founder of a powerful coven—The Religious Order of Witchcraft—the first to be recognized by the State of Louisiana as an official Church. According to Pustanio, “Toups’ Religious Order of Witchcraft formed the central axis of a powerful network of practitioners dedicated to the pure, unfettered study and practice of Old Style European witchcraft that still exists in New Orleans today. Many things about Mary Oneida (she preferred just Oneida) are shrouded in mystery, such as her origins. She is said to have been born in Mississippi, in the heart of Delta country, in April 1928 and, like many youths of her generation, when she reached her teens she began to feel restless and took to the road. Hitchhiking, exploring the back roads and byways of the rural South, her path eventually brought her to New Orleans, where she soon became part of a burgeoning bohemian movement already thriving there.

The New Orleans of the early 60s was filled with a current similar to that moving through cities such as San Francisco and New York, a youthful current of exploration and discovery, sometimes aided by drug use that culminated in the Summer of Love and Woodstock moments. In New Orleans, where everything has always been more laissez faire or laid back, the moment crystallized in an “Age of Aquarius” kind of esoteric awakening. Oneida arrived here just as this new awareness was about to bloom” (Pustanio, 2013).

Tituba, Copyright 2013 Jen Mayberry

READ ALL ABOUT TITUBA, THE BLACK WITCH OF SALEM by the founder of the Dragon Ritual Drummers and the Niagara Voodoo Shrine, Witchdoctor Utu! Utu tells us  ‘As hazy and mysterious a figure as Marie Laveau, many rumours, truths and fiction reflecting from the same mirror, legend and notoriety has been gaining decade after decade, long after her death. Not many people know, but all the hysteria and panic of witchcraft that led to the witch trials, all the hype and horror that has led to a juggernaut of tourism and magik, was because of a Caribbean Voodoo girl, and her name is Tituba ” (Utu, 2013). Utu gives us the back story of Tituba, and then shares with us how the conjurer can develop a relationship with her and work with her spirit.

In addition to these two exciting stories, Hoodoo and Conjure: New Orleans contains the following articles and authors:

• New Orleans-Style Day of the Dead with Sallie Ann Glassman by Alyne Pustanio
• In Memorium: Coco Robicheaux by Alyne Pustanio
• Digging in the Dirt by Dorothy Morrison
• Food as Medzin by Madrina Angelique
• The Graveyard Snake and the Ancestors by Dr. Snake
• Holy Death and the Seven Insights: A Gay Man’s Story of Self-Transformation and
• his Search for Love by Carolina Dean
• Adventures in Ghost Hunting by Carolina Dean
• It Might be a Sign of Things to Come by H. Byron Ballard
• Wicca and Voodoo: Bringing the Two Together by Nish Perez
• Wicca and Voodoo: Rhythms by Louis Martinie
• Crimson Light through Muddy Water: Southern Goth as an Occult Reality by Tim Broussard
• Mystery Of a Sacred Sastun and The Trinity of Stones: An Interview with Winsom Winsom by Rev.Roots

In Memorium: Coco Robicheaux. Photograph copyright 2013 Alyne Pustanio

New Orleans Rope Doll. Photograph copyright 2013 Denise Alvarado

We  also have a good portion of the magazine devoted to applied conjure, such as:

• Spell Work with the Dead by Madrina Angelique
• How to Bury an Enemy by Madrina Angelique
• Uncrossing Land by Aaron Leitch
• Dem Bones by Danette Wilson
• Conjure with the Goetia by Devi Spring
• The Wishing Tomb of Marie Laveaux by Denise Alvarado

We also have formulas and recipes, as well as an illustrated tutorial How to Make a New Orleans-style Rope Doll. And that’s not all!

Whether you are a loyal reader or finding us for the first time, I am sure this collector’s issue will find a home on your coffee table or nightstand for years to come. So, relax, grab some coffee or tea, have a few snacks handy and get yourself a copy of Hoodoo and Conjure: New Orleans and witness all its fabulous glory. Much love and care went into its creation, and I hope that you find it every bit as satisfying to read as it was for me to create it.

Read more  and purchase a copy at http://www.creolemoon.com/books.htm#TLMBqQs5psQa9O8W.99

Hoodoo and Conjure: New Orleans. Artwork copyright 2013 Denise Alvarado

The Underground Railroad and Freedom Riders on the Same Road to Liberation

Harriet Tubman aka Mama Moses

She was born a slave and severely abused by Massa, yet; she never gave up the fight. In fact, she not only refused to give up, she won the fight for freedom, and brought more than 70 slaves to freedom with her.

Tubman  suffered severe head trauma as an adolescent that left her with life long debilitating temporal lobe damage (Larson, 2004). It is said that she refused to help restrain another slave so that he could be beaten because he had left the fields without permission. The other slave ran away and as he did so, his Massa threw a heavy weight at him which missed him and hit Tubman instead, cracking open her skull.  She was left without medical treatment for two days and sent back to work in the fields. For the rest of her life, she suffered from disabling seizures, narcoleptic attacks, and headaches. She also experienced powerful dreams and visions, which she considered to be divine revelations from God.

Harriet Tubman, also known as Mama Moses, is known mostly for her humanitarian and anti slavery efforts.  She escaped slavery in 1849 and went straight to Philadelphia, where she rescued her family. Using the safe houses and antislavery activists that comprised the Underground Railroad, she brought family members and dozens of others, one group at a time in the dark of night, out of the state and into freedom. It is said that Mama Moses never lost a passenger (Lowry, 2008).

Notice published in the Cambridge Democrat (1849), offering a reward for the return of Harriet Tubman and her two brothers

Large rewards were offered for the return of many of the fugitive slaves, but no one then knew that Mama Moses was the one helping them. When the Southern-dominated Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, requiring law officials in free states to aid efforts to recapture slaves, she helped guide fugitives farther north into Canada, where slavery was prohibited.

Volume 2 of Hoodoo and Conjure Quarterly features an article about Harriet Tubman by new contributor Witchdoctor Utu. Utu is the founder of the Dragon Ritual Drummers, the Niagara Voodoo Shrine, and is a member and drummer for the New Orleans Voodoo Spiritual Temple. Utu has a unique perspective on the conjure tradition as it was brought  to and developed in Canada.

As one who lives and works at the “end of the Railroad”  so to speak here in St. Catharines Ontario Canada, I have a rather unique perspective on the traditions of Hoodoo, Voodoo and the conjuring ways of  the North American tradition. It is here that many of the freedom seeking slaves brought with them, across the U.S. border and into my region in Niagara, via the Underground Railroad,  an entirely distinctive brand of conjure.  Harriet Tubman, the legendary conductor of the clandestine movement that brought  several hundred people to freedom in St. Catharines alone, resided here for many years… While Quakers and Christians of a few sects were supporters and enablers of the cause, the religious and spiritual nature of those that made the journey over the years was as diverse and colorful as the quilts that came to symbolize the movement. Indeed, many of the freedom seekers were renowned root doctors and conjurers, and like Harriet Tubman herself, diviners. Spells of  invisibility, protection, and animal totemic magick  were common and paramount to each and every journey. At the height of the movement, there was a bounty on her head  for $40,000 dead or alive. Harriet began to be known as “The Moses of her people”  later becoming known as “Black Moses” and now more commonly as “Mama Moses”.

One of the unique traditions presented in the article is the reverence for Mama Moses and her followers. According to Utu, when you need to break free of a situation, when you want justice served, when you want to attain more knowledge of the mysteries of the swamps and marsh, or when you simply want to honor a legendary spirit who divined and conjured her way to freedom never to be caught, developing a relationship with Mama Moses is the ticket.

I am  deeply touched by the story of Mama Moses and grateful for this unique conjure tradition that is shared with us by Utu. Details about Mama Moses, building a shrine to her and suggestions for honoring her and her followers are provided in Volume 2 of Hoodoo & Conjure Quarterly, which will be out next month.

Ninety-eight years after the death of Mama Moses, the fight for freedom and equality was still going strong. A court ruling had passed desegregating interstate transportation and hundreds of people fighting for freedom rode through the south on buses to test the new law. Those who rode the buses were called Freedom Riders.

Fifty years ago, the Freedom Riders arrived on buses to New Orleans and were greeted at their destinations by angry, violent mobs. Yesterday, five of the original Freedom Riders stepped off the bus onto the paved streets of the Crescent City. This time, “they were greeted with music and thunderous applause” (Urbaszewski, 2011). My, the times they are a changin’.

Read more about the arrival of five of the original Freedom Riders in New Orleans on May 16th, 2011 at NOLA.com.

References

Larson, K. C. (2004). Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. New York: Ballantine Books

Lowry, Beverly (2008). Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life. Random House.

Utu. W. (in press). Harriet Tubman and the conjure tradition of the underground railroad. In D. Alvarado and S. Marino (Eds). Hoodoo and Conjure Quarterly, Vol 2. (pp. 36-42). Prescott Valley, AZ: Planet Voodoo.

Urbaszewski, K. (2011, May 16). After 50 years, 5 original Freedom Riders arrive in New Orleans. The Times-Picayune. Retrieved May 17, 2011 from:  http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2011/05/after_50_years_five_original_f.html