In the mid-19th century, doing voodoo seems to have been all the rage in New Orleans. Uppercrust Creoles pursued voodoo in much the same way that the trendy of today latch on to the latest New Age development. It was a hot topic of conversation in the posh parlors of well-heeled Creoles, but Orleanians paid much more than mere lip service to the practice of voodoo. Superstitious Creoles scrubbed their front stoops with brick dust to ward off curses and called regularly upon witch doctors and voodoo queens. 

The strange and exotic voodoo ceremonies drew throngs of thrill-seekers. Reporters frequently turned up to view the rites, and local newspapers of the period were filled with detailed, sometimes shocking accounts of voodoo conclaves and voodoo-related activities. But the ceremonies witnessed by the hordes and the reporters were often elaborate shows staged for outsiders. Voodoo was a mysterious, secretive cult whose more sinister aspects were carefully shielded from curious eyes.

Voodoo originated in the African kingdom of Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin). Vodu was the region of the Dahomeans. The word vodu and its various forms - voodoo, voudou, vaudau, even hoodoo - encompassed all aspects of the religion, including the gods, the cult, the cultists and the rituals. One of the primary gods was Zombi (also called Damballah), which was a snake - usually a giant python. 

The first organized voodoo ceremony in New Orleans is said to have taken place in an abandoned brickyard on Dumaine Street. It was probably presided over by Sanite Dede, the first of the great voodoo queens (Voodoo was a matriarchy). The witch doctors and kings paled in comparison to the strong queens - always free women of color, never slaves - who reigned over the rituals). Repeated police raids on the brickyard drove the cultists out to Bayou St. John and Lake Pontchartrain. In 1817, the Municipal Council, fearful of voodoo-inspired slave uprisings, outlawed slave gatherings except on Sundays and in officially designated and supervised areas. Congo Square was one such legal meeting place. (Later renamed Beauregard Square, the plaza in front of Municipal Auditorium in what is now Armstrong Park is the old Congo Square). For many years the slaves gathered each Sunday afternoon in Congo Square, chanting, beating their tam-tams and dancing the Calinda and Bamboula.

Congo Square drew large crowds of gawkers, but the activity there was mere window-dressing. A pretty picnic compared to the grotesque and orgiastic illegal rituals that took place around the bayou and the lake. Most people in town knew it, and when word spread about a voodoo to-do on St. John's Eve (June 23), the roads leading to the designated site were clogged with the 19th-century version of bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The two most famous names in local voodoo lore are Doctor John and Marie Laveau. A free man of color who claimed to be a Sengalese prince, Doctor John was an enormous man whose ebony face was marked with hideous tattoos. In the 1840s he bought a veritable harem of female slaves and a house on Bayou St. John. He exerted great power over the Creoles, who flocked to his house to purchase charms and have their fortunes told. He seemed to see into their homes and know their innermost secrets. In fact, he did - the servants in many prominent Creole homes spied for him and sold him information. When he died in 1884, famed writer Lafcadio Hearn wrote a flowery elegy that was published in Harper's Weekly.

The name Marie Laveau is, of course, legendary in New Orleans. There were at least two voodoo queens named Marie Laveau - mother and daughter - and possibly others. The first was a tall, handsome and mean-eyed woman who was said to have been the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy white planter and a mulatto. The reddish cast of her skin indicated some Indian blood. In 1819, at the time of her marriage in St. Louis Cathedral to Jacques Paris, a native of Santo Domingo, she was a devout Catholic. Paris mysteriously vanished shortly after the marriage, and she began calling herself the Widow Paris. A few years later, she became the mistress of a quadroon named Louis Christophe Duminy de Glapion, with whom she had 15 children. They lived in a cottage (long ago razed) on St. Ann Street between North Rampart and Burgundy Streets. 

By 1830 Marie was the queen and a force to be reckoned with. She is said to have eliminated other queens through the use of powerful gris-gris, literally "voodooing" them to death.

She reigned over the Congo Square doings, and danced with the snake at the Lake Pontchartrain rites, to which she extended invitations and charged admission. Everyone in the city was terrified of her, and she is said to have had police and politicians in her pocket.

The Laveau-Glapion tomb is in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, near the Basin Street entrance. The stark-white tomb is always adorned with burnt candles, flowers and voodoo offerings. It probably holds the remains of the Widow Paris and may also be the final resting place of the second Marie Laveau. Many believe that it is, but others maintain that Marie II, exiled by her family after the death of her mother, is buried elsewhere. Some say that her spirit is restless and cannot be contained.

Visitors to new Orleans can get a pretty good introduction to voodoo religion at the Historic Voodoo Museum or at Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo. Although they are geared toward tourism, it is a good place to start for the novice voodoo enthusiast.