New Orleans Voodoo (A Virtual Tour)

what's up y'all it's andrew with free tours by foot new orleans today's subject is one of our visitors favorite the subject of voodoo this is something that a lot of our visitors have heard of but most folks don't know a whole lot about and more often than not you've heard more about in movies and tv than in real life no shame in that by all means in the comments below tell us what you've heard before where that's coming from but today we are going to focus on the experts we're going to get it from the genuine article and i'm very lucky to have the genuine article himself uh besides number one person in new orleans in general is roby gilmore thanks for coming and doing this hey y'all and uh so you've been free tours by foot guide on this subject for some years and been a spokesperson for it on all kinds of other fronts you've met thousands of people who are interested in it and they show up with expectations what do people think voodoo is my favorite my number one favorite is taking somebody's hair and making a daughter looks exactly like them we're going to use you as an example i got your hair i'll make a doll blonde hair blue eyes put the hair on the doll then i'm going to take me a needle and we're going to say you made me mad the other day i don't know what you did you looked at me the wrong way but i ended up with your hair anyway don't ask questions just go with it and then we're going to take this needle i'ma stab you in your arm down the leg now in the head and there's your voodoo doll and uh and since that was fake pain on my part promise no tour guides were abused in the making of this video uh how hot how cold are we in terms of we are so cold to what an actual voodoo doll actually is it blows my mind that people still believe that we like hollywood really did us a number we do not stab pins and dolls to hurt people we don't take your hair and make a doll and then worship the devil with it and ask the devil to give us black magic to get our revenge on you it is not done it won't be done and it never will exist for us so what is voodoo actually voodoo is an authentic religion that landed here in new orleans from west africa back during the african slave trade and the word itself actually means spirit or ancestor it has nothing to do with black magic it has nothing to do with devil worshiping none of those things and vodou it's just the proper term just means pure light that's all it's versatile versus voodoo voodoo comes from a translation era through time from viet which means old god english you know how that goes and then video to voodoo and now we have voodoo but that's not what that west african slaves were saying when they first came here they were saying vodou and again that just means pure light you know uh purity worshiping god honoring the ancestors of ceremony there's a whole bunch of meanings behind that name vodou but for the most part it just means pure light so that's a huge difference between pure light and pure darkness which is what people tend to think it is oh yes and we should definitely dig into where those differences come from but first you've brought us to start in a place that's very sacred to this religion okay so for you watching right now we are in the neighborhood is called the treme the place is called armstrong park and the spot we're in is called congo square can you tell us what happens in congo square what has happened in congo square to make it as important as it is there's a lot of significant history here so back in the 17 in the 1800s during the slave trade on sundays the west african slaves had off they were not free they just had off so when they had off and some of them after mass they would run from the the cathedral over here hop the wall and they would quote unquote practice their religion from west africa which is what we know today as voodoo or vodou now i'm going to be using voodoo and vodou interchangeably here they both mean the same thing and we use voodoo more commonly just because that's the word that people know best so they will come here and keep their traditions alive they will try to catch up with their family and their friends they haven't seen being sold to different households at the time sunday was the day to keep all these traditions alive and even form new traditions the native americans were out here as well that's another reason why this area right here is so significant so they kept the religion alive here in congo square now the reason why they were allowed to do it is because the slaves actually outnumbered the slave owners three to one a lot of people don't know that so there's not gonna be a white slave owner who's gonna come hop the wall and come over here and say hey what y'all doing he might be still disappear over there that by you somewhere so with all these people gathered here they kept their cultures in the traditions a lot yeah and so for people visiting here today there actually are some sacred sites related to voodoo that you can still visit and see so we're going to pay a visit to some of that all right so one of the sacred spots of congo square tell us about this tree so this tree that you see here is very significant it's known as the egoon tree also known as the ancestor tree my family along with many other numerous families who are descendants of the west african people have been praying at this tree since the 17th and the 1800s so we say now if that's true or not i don't know but that's what they tell us as children not a lot of written records not a lot of written records this religion is most definitely verbal stories passed down stories passed down even to this day stories passed down nothing's written most information you'll definitely find written is information that's actually just history just history of where the religion comes from how it came from west africa landed in the caribbean and then here in new orleans and so on and so forth but as far as the traditions the stories the culture and stuff that is still done the old-fashioned way through plain old-fashioned storytelling and that's one of my favorite things just plain old-fashioned storytelling so this tree is significant because we still leave offerings here so there's a lot of significant things to see as far as offerings go for one thing one of my family members probably came out here and left that orange to a river spirit and that river spirit is very prominent here in new orleans simply because her name is o'shoon we have a parade here every mardi gras named after her and she's the spirit of love she's also the spirit of drumming and dancing this city is the original spot where jazz started like this jazz started right here so of course she's the spirit of that that's why she's so significant hence the orange people leave oranges they leave a pineapples leaver pumpkins and speaking of pumpkins someone left the pumpkin out here and the seeds sprouted right there oh i didn't realize that's what that is that's a tradition that we still do to this day we still leave them and when the seeds sprout you let them go and what you're supposed to do is when the seeds grow and they reproduce they start sprouting and making things anything that grows from the offerings that are left you feed the homeless people with them you're supposed to take the food cook it down have a ceremony a celebration of the spirit and basically all these ladies come together they cook the men get go hunting we go fishing you make all this food and you start passing it out to the poor people who are around you and feeding your village originally but also feeding the people around you the seashells have been left there simply because of how close we are to the gulf and then left to an ocean spirit by the name of yemeya yemiya is also my mother hence all the blue and she's an ocean spirit she represents fertility she represents love tripoli represents peace she represents forgiveness uh basically the southern mother you know stern on her children but you know she she cares loves feeds a fat baby is a happy baby that's where we got that from from her so somebody came out here and left her that offering you will see pennies and dimes and stuff scattered all around the egoon tree there's pennies there pennies there penny's there sometimes they're tucked inside of the wood itself and it's because we leave pennies and coins to our direct ancestors that's a tradition we still do to this day so we take a handful of coins and throw them out there and leave them as an offering and ask for whatever we need at the time and gone by business after of course we're leaving offering or you know sometimes you'll see some of my family come out here they'll say a prayer they kneel down and start praying um leave the pennies and then they they leave um now what i'm going to do today is a traditional plantation voodoo blessing so is a blessing meant for a particular purpose we do blessings for many many many reasons we do them for healing we do them for prosperity we do them for love we do them for money we do them for illness we do whatever it is we can do a blessing for the purpose of being a high priest or a priestess in these traditions is that you are the village healer or the village elder normally it's the oldest female you go to for advice the oldest man you go for for advice or you know they have the knowledge of the herbs and what to use to cure certain illnesses and whatnot you know nowadays in modern times you don't have to be that old uh case in point case in point i am a high priest in two forms of these traditions born and raised and people come to me i get people who are significantly older than me coming to me for advice so this is something that we just do whenever we're needed people come to us they need something we do it no matter how old you are they have faith in the spirit and they have faith in the blessing itself which i'm about to do right now what kind of blessing are you going to be showing us so we're going to do a prosperity blessing today in this bottle that i'm holding is uh something we call florida water which is a mix of alcohol and herbs and other few key ingredients that we you shall not know of because they remain secret we have a vow secrecy um but we use this to bless a lot of things i actually heard a tourist called this the voodoo holy water it's not true don't say that it's in the ballpark it's in the ballpark of that realm of it being holy but it ain't this is not holy water um this is more like holy alcohol but if anything so um this is used for blessings and also removing any negativity or any any bad luck that people may have may think that they have on that person or whatever this is used to take care of that we use it to serve the spirit here at the tree but also during ceremony and also we use it day to day life i mean it's a good disinfectant practical and sacred yes practical and sacred great well yeah whenever you want go ahead and walk us through it so so uh oh all right that's the blessing thank you very much so we're right outside of congo square now with a monument showing some ceremonies that would have taken place here and i know looking at this i can get the basic picture but if i didn't know what i was looking at what about this would i miss oh there's a lot to miss in this mural first off this mural is actually not old this is actually fairly new and it was done because a lot of the african american people here wanted to teach their children their own history of new orleans and how important and significant it is as far as our culture our religion music and the things that we do to this date is still alive a few things to point out is the chains at the bottom first i'll start there the chains at the bottom represent slavery but notice the chains are not shackled to the slaves feet and that's because on sunday they were quote unquote off so they were allowed to hop the wall to come over here and keep their culture alive as long as they were back before the sun set they didn't have to send the dogs out to the slaves because they'll think that the slaves escaped so the chains are very important just to represent that these people are still enslaved notice the gym base the drums there's a drum there there's a drum there normally dance ceremony will have like maybe two three drummers um uh drumming during ceremony and as you can see this is a depiction of a ceremony actually happening also notice the woman directly in the center while he's kind of set to decide women are dominant in our culture and in our traditions to this day that's still a thing that's still a thing in west africa in haiti and also here in louisiana as far as our religion goes notice she's dancing the flowing of the skirt to represent her future freedom most importantly notice the gentleman right there in the background right there with the three marks on on both sides of his face that represents his initiation right that he is an actual priest um normally you'll find people with those marks on their face like that are actually from the congo of west africa that's a tradition that they still do to this day one of our sister religions what is uh where most of the voodoo traditions come from we still serve them in our traditions to this day also notice the native american woman in the background they heavily influenced our culture and our religion as a matter of fact we still serve some of their ancestors in our traditions to this day a lot of the native americans actually helped some of the west african slaves escape they made it down to lake born um and actually settled and some of them came became swamp slaves or or maroon they were marooned out there so there's a lot of history just sitting here that is most times overlooked i love this mural my family has definitely turned this mural into an altar sometimes you'll come out here you'll see peonies left you'll see flowers left you'll see food left here because to us this represents a direct link to our ancestors and in the religion of voodoo we believe that you cannot actually reach god or the spirits without going through your ancestors first so this is sitting right here near the entrance of congo square and for many many many many many important reasons so you've just shown us a bit of a vision of what a ceremony would look like but in a still image so you've drawn for us here a vive that takes us a little bit into the other aspects of ceremonies with can you tell us about this oh my goodness this is one of my favorite parts of doing this like the ceremony explanation part has to be hands down top number one thing for me so everyone always thinks then the voodoo ritual what's the stereotype we take the human or the baby you bring the baby out and then we wear an all black we got these trouble marks all over our face and we take this innocent child we take a knife and we do all these horrible bloodthirsty things to this child put it down on the ground on top of some big old giant pentagram and then the pentagram started glowing red and here come the devil off the ground he had to take the baby and eat the baby and grant us black magic now i only see four sides so we're slightly inaccurate here we're very inaccurate right here first off there is no pentagram um that is definitely not us and that is another common misconception that is still being sold to the media to this day about us using that that is european that is not us secondly we do use religious symbols but we use them to honor and serve the sphere with pure light and to show our lineage and where our ancestors come from i have for you on the ground right now something called the veve is a religious symbol that every spirit has every spirit that we have in our pantheon has a symbol that we draw on the ground to use as a beacon to say hey spirit we're calling you right here to this location right now and for those of you who are watching this that was actually my family that's my actual family that just wrote past to say hey he knows everybody y'all if you ever get to do this live with him it will happen non-stop in the course of it my family's everywhere just so y'all know and he just rolled fast and say hello normally he'll come right past when he sees me he'll check on me sorry back to the ceremony so i have on the ground for you ave to a very famous spirit that some of you may have seen on tv and his name is papa legba the version that you've seen on tv has him as a baby eating cocaine snorton jamaican man who a character marie laveau who we shall briefly talk about soon um had to sacrifice babies too in order to maintain eternal life we're talking american horror story kevin oh i'm allowed to say that [Laughter] if not i'm sure this bit will be cut but if so on we go we can name names you're about to refer to things okay so i am referring to the famous television so american horror story coven by the way we have nothing to do with that that is not us we are not affiliated with that show i actually love the show myself i think that one of the actresses who uh miss angela bassett did a bang-up job playing marilla vote but as far as the story goes it's very very very inaccurate it's there for entertainment um a little bit more detail about this actual symbol that you see to represent leg by himself who is a gatekeeper he uh we cannot access any of the spirits without him opening the gates first and that's why we're focusing on him and most traditions have a gatekeeper in christianity we have saint peter and in voodoo we have legba there's a lot of gatekeepers everywhere and we're no exception and we start off by drawing his velvet on the ground during ceremony now firstly this is done in chalk during an actual voodoo ceremony we will not use chalk we use cornmeal or coffee depending on what spirit we use i use chalk because it's convenient and we're not an actual ceremony but it shows you quickly like what a vivi actually is being displayed on the ground and the rain will come and washes away so it's not going to cause any damage we always start off with a cross which you'll see right there that spirit stands right there in the center of the crossroads so the cross represents him the line through the cross that you see right there represents the cane that he carries he is a crippled old man he's a crippled old haitian man with a warm heart and a warm spirit he carries a cane he loves drinking sweet sweetened coffee he loves kids he loves sweet candies you know what i'm kind of grandma used to give you whenever you go to church and then she's trying to get you to be quiet in church and then she pop a peppermint in your mouth you'll be quiet for the next 30 minutes it's going to take about 30 minutes for the peppermint to go away who doesn't know that story yeah there's some more southern black elements for you guys um also you'll notice the green now the green is very significant that's our ties to haiti and west africa right there so each family is going to have a different version of the green symbols that you see um so actual voodoo priest or priestess can walk up to this right now and see that the person that drew this is actually half haitian half louisiana creole his mother's side of the families from haiti his father's side of the family is from louisiana ties to west africa there and they can see all that inside the vive the vet itself is a story in its own by itself and that's why it's so significant during ceremonies so this is kind of your personal signature while also referring to the spirit this is my personal signa signature also while referred to the fear uh excuse me this is my personal signature while referring to the spirit incomplete because i'm not allowed to show you a full levee unless we're during ceremony but this is the beginning of my family lineage as far as the vivid goes and a lot of voter was on and those are people who are in the religion if they see this this tour and see this they'll say oh he hold him back i am holding back because as as as you don't know we're not allowed to show the full velvet but yes this is my own family personal signature and personal stamp um as far as serving the spirit goes so during a ceremony can you tell us about what would be happening around this yes during the ceremony what's actually happening around this symbol is a lot of drumming a lot of dancing um we're in new orleans we drum we dance we eat that's what a voodoo ceremony actually is it's a celebration of the spirit so we're actually dancing around these symbols and we're also quote unquote serving the spirit what that means is that we're doing ceremonial things like pouring liquor pouring water uh leaving offerings around the verde sometimes you'll see people come and they'll leave coffee on the vive for that spirit in louisiana voodoo you see them leave his favorite candies around the vivi for papa legba and most of the children love this section of the ceremony this is their opportunity to try to impress this spirit they love them some papa legba and papa lega loves them that leads us to something that people are scared of another stereotype that that happens during voodoo ceremonies but also happens around all the time the people you know hollywood has taken it out of proportion and told you that it's something else and that is known as ritual possession now richard possession on tv tells you that you see the person's eye glow eyes glow red and all of a sudden they start shaking like this and foam start coming out the mouth and they're turning shut the next thing you know you know there's like stuff flying all in the air and everything and like you hear random latin words being thrown here and there because it sounds creepy and that's not true ritual possession is basically the spirit coming into a person's body and the spirit using that person's body as a vessel and then when the spirit is done doing what they're doing they leave the person's body and the person is unharmed you can find really spiritual possession anywhere and one of my favorite places to find spiritual possession it's during concerts people don't realize that they're actually being possessed in a concert how do you know roby well it's kind of a form of hypnotism during the concert i always say this on my tours you got that one friend you go with everybody pumped up and excited now this one friend then cut her leg she bleeding she didn't realize she got to cut off her leg but she's so busy out there having fun and she oh my god it's my favorite singer oh no you know don't even realize she's bleeding the entire time three hours later after the doggone concert is over with girl that was fun what happened and by then the worst and by then the worst is over and you know but realizing they don't realize that while they're cheering and while they're doing that they're so excited and their heart their heartbeat is elevated they're not thinking about anything else except what they're focusing on that's a form of possession that's basically what you see here during voodoo rituals it's a spirit coming to a person's body the children love this because they get to spend time with one of their favorite spirits papa legba because they know they're gonna get spoiled now why do i love it because papa legba keeps the kids out of our hair they over there they over that dealer with him so we can do whatever else we need to do so the ceremony don't last too long because you know on sundays they only had to sundown so he's taking care of making sure the kids are out the way and then we can continue doing whatever we need to do to support the family and asking other spirits to come down so we can ask them for help i see the family dynamic everywhere you've got a babysitter you've got a you've got a mother you've got a matriarch kind of oh yes everybody playing she's the queen so during ceremonies um normally during ceremonies while the rest of the family is dancing and if she chooses to she may get up and dance with us but for the most part she's sitting down to the side and everybody's around her and she's being catered to we got to bring her food she won't want her glass of wine all her champagne depending on who we serve you know or she may have somebody this is famous or a friend of mine walked in on my mother doing this one time uh she may have somebody to rub her feet you know because her feet hurt you know there's a reason why they call voodoo queens because they're dominant in our families and we treat them as such because they are the head of the family not the man it's the woman because she has feminine energy and feminine energy is a rebirth energy it's a nurturing energy we believe that feminine energy in women are tied to water which is used for healing and knowledge and also earth and you know we all come from the earth so that represents strength and force men we're tied to fire and air air for destruction fire for anger so we need a woman in charge the queen to sit there and make sure that everything's going okay and when legba comes down in possession she's happy because he's going to take care of them kids and she can focus on what she's doing over here with the rest of the family the man's doing the babysitting the woman's in charge think about that do [Music] so [Music] [Music] so i want to ask you on a more personal front and a great time y'all if anyone wants to ask questions from roby please feel free to dive down to the comments and do it you've mentioned uh your role in the religion and also you've mentioned your family a good bit can you tell us about the the beginning of this for you how it became a part of your life oh wow i was born and raised into these traditions um man and you know what's funny is like a lot of people especially african-american people uh even with their own within their own families don't realize like voodoo is still prevalent for me we had to take so many vows of secrecy because of the other side of the family being black baptist since i was around seven or eight years old my first initiation right come to think of it um i've been doing this and you know old habits die hard my grandmother you know she she even tried to get stopped doing voodoo at one point just because i mean she born and raised in it too and she still like them white candles and leave the bowl award on top of the refrigerator and all that kind of stuff so like it's something you born and raised into um so uh more more family and friends guys um so yeah um that's how i got into it just born and raised in it always didn't know anything outside of it and that way it sounds like uh if someone watching this was from the south or it spent a lot of time in the south and they think well this is very interesting but new orleans is different this doesn't happen where i come from uh that they're wrong they are wrong and i can prove it we have us i don't even want to say a sister sec but a cousin section or a um how do you say ken to us but the gullah geechee people the lagi people of north and south carolina through the florida coast they're one of us they have the same traditions and uh they even have an english-based creole language that they still speak which is they say it's starting to die out but them too um i met one girl from mississippi who was descendant of the slaves out there one of the plantations and when she saw me she immediately kneeled down and i shaved me which means she saluted me and recognized me as a priest i had no idea who this girl was never been her before in my entire life but she saw my my i had on my priest necklaces that day and i had my head covered and i had everything that i needed that day just to to do tours and show people i was a high priest and she just recognized me and she was just like oh he's a high priest i gotta salute him he's from the same sect as me and i had to ask her i was just like do i know you and she says no i'm just acknowledging as a priest i see your beads you know i'm i'm in plantation voodoo and i went wow where are you from and we had a whole conversation and she's from mississippi never met this girl before my entire life and secrecy this required secrecy would be a big reason why people wouldn't know exactly what it looks like where they're from vows of secrecy are so big in these traditions because you got to remember back in the 17th 1800s slaves were heavily punished or killed if they were found out to not be catholic they had to be converted to catholicism because that's what the law said and the law also says that these slaves are not converted to roman catholicism one of the laws at one point said kill them one law said like heavily punish them to a point where it scares everybody around them to make sure they are catholic and that's what the whole quote-unquote synchronization thing comes into play pretend to be catholic so you can hide the fact that you're still praying to your african spirit hence the uses of the saints whenever we do ceremony and people think that we're actually catholic and you you had to persuade a lot of people you were baptist i had to all my entire life i had to tell them all about this i was prominent in the uh in the black baptist church sang did concerts traveled around the country all of that and and mind you it's okay to have more than one religion or more than one sect um the conflict came into play is whenever you would hear people in the black baptist church tell you that this is the only way this is the true way and you hear that as a kid you want to believe the people who are older than you because you trust them as an adult i look at them and just say okay and go about my business and because they ain't paying my bills but you know you know it's whatever works for you and for me this works for me i've found fulfillment enlightenment and i've met so many people from all across the world just from teaching my family history culture not even doing ceremony just from teaching my family history and culture about secrecy it sucked but i tell you what it was very fruitful in the long run well and given where we've come now speaking to that 18th 17th 18th 19th century history we're right across the street from the french quarter and across from us there is a business called the voodoo lounge and i just want to check with you is this a sacred site for the voodoo religion no um what about voodoo barbecue no how about voodoo mart convenience store no so there's there's like a voodoo industrial complex that has nothing to do with what you do exactly so why are so many people using what you do as a brand without themselves being part of it systemic racism so all this started back in the 17th and 1800s where they believed back then if you're not catholic you're a devil worshiper so through time after slavery was abolished and uh uh you know you have all these free people of color running around here that and they are being discriminated against inside the french quarter and they are still carrying their west african traditions of course the catholic's gonna be like you know what this looks good let's let's sell this as a product you know what let's just get rid of them by selling them to the public and that's how it happened there's a very famous man to this day that everybody knows who's done this wes craven he like that whole franchise of anything dealing with voodoo dolls and voodoo vampires and stuff is still something that people look forward to seeing on tv to this day all it is is just products being sold to the public and people love it because i mean it's exciting it's something new and it's different when reality is actually a defamation of one's religion in my opinion as a high priest in voodoo um you can find all kind of things labeled voodoo and have nothing to do with voodoo at all voodoo dolls is the major one voodoo barbecue chips voodoo red beans and rice voodoo mart voodoo lounge uh i seen a voodoo sub somewhere at one point like an actual subway like not subway but a voodoo sub sandwich and they named it voodoo sandwich and it was full of of like hot peppers and stuff like that and they poured a little rum on top of it anything that sounds new orleans anything that sounds new orleansy and like black-ish voodoo is gonna be tied to it and all of us born and raised in these traditions from the area are going what we don't do this and we don't name things like that sure so that's where that comes from it's all marketing because they know that people are going to come to the city because they don't know and they're going to buy it and guess what they prosper from it and besides the word voodoo itself the other brand the other big word that people watch for is the name marie laveau who you mentioned and we got her house right across the house right across the street and actually i'm not going to say she started the whole selling things to the public but because of her authenticity and the woman that she was it it kind of spun from her being something sold to the public because she took advantage of a situation which we're going to go talk about in a second of being a free woman of color but also possibly posse blah to actually help her help help herself and also help our people so let's go see it let's go see it so we're by the place where marie laveau and family lived not the house but the site and a minute ago you said she was pasee blanc possibly can you explain what that idea is paseo blanc is french and creole for pass for white so back in the 17 1800s there were a lot of people who were mixed lineage you had and this is just what's written down this is some some of these words are offensive but this is what's written in the history books you have your half white half black mulatto you have your one quarter black which is quadroon which was marie laveau and you had your octaroons one-eighth the crazy one and i may be pronouncing this wrong is the 116th i think it's hexadecaroon if i'm not mistaken these names get ridiculous but they could they thought back then the more white you were the more better in society you were marie laveau was one quarter black so she could have possibly have been casey blunt we don't have any pictures of her as a matter of fact on the think of it we don't know nothing about the lady all the stories that most people hear about manziel marie laveau if it's not written down they'll make it up in their families they'll make it up and say she did a b and c my family is guilty of the exact same thing so we have stories of marilla vote that are not written down and we don't know if they're true or not we do know that her house was right here we do know that that she possibly lived here even then we still don't know we don't even know when she was born they think they found her birth certificate maybe they did maybe they don't they're still debating what they found so it's not really much known about a black woman back in the 17 to 1800s because she was insignificant um we believe that she was part of the religion but some people would say she was a voodoo priestess some people say she wasn't some people say she was just a root worker which means that she deal with the herbs and the magic which is separate to uh from voodoo which is the religion and the who do which is the herbology and the and the magical stuff is completely different and some people say she just specialized in that either way people still respect her people still uh pray to her as if she's a spirit in my tradition she is not a spirit she's not elevated to that point where she comes down in possession and that kind of thing um and that's also in haiti and that's also in west africa uh but people still come here and they pray to her and they ask her for favors you even see on her house people leave her hair ties because she was said to be a very famous hairdresser another store said that she used the the information she got from a lot of the white ladies who she did the hair of and used that information against them to make it seem like she had magical powers in order to take advantage of them but none of this stuff is written so in all honesty about manziel marie laveau we revere her we know she was here she was a black woman and she had many lineages and she was a woman of color who was maybe or maybe not part of the religion we still respect her and people still come and leave offense and they pray to her but they've got to do that from outside because this is just a house this is just a house this is not her house her house was accidentally torn down so uh this house is just sitting here where her house used to be and we don't even know if it was a cottage we don't know if it was a house we don't know if it was a log cabin we don't know if it was a stick in the mud so if we wanted to live here if we were looking for someone visiting here was looking for an actual sacred voodoo establishment can you find that in the french quarter you can find not many um there's a lot of posers and i won't say their names out of respect because these people do run businesses despite their their misappropriation of my culture and my religion i will not say their names however i will say the names of some legit places that you can actually visit here in new orleans specifically some in the french quarter that you can stop by one of which is named conjure new orleans ran by my brother who is also a high priest in haitian voodoo but most importantly he has a lot of other religions african religions that he's also tied to um another one is carmel and sons my mother's botanica which is in the treme neighborhood near where we were botanical is just a way of saying haitian voodoo shop and that's it and conjure is on bourbon street is that right bourbon street now the reason why it's on bourbon street is because of the foot traffic he didn't used to be on bourbon street but you know foot traffic is heavier on bourbon street so he moved there to get more people to come in simply because there is an establishment that's there that's not authentic that's been selling you know our products and stuff to the public like we you know we're back in slavery and honestly he wanted to come back that and so he opened this shop not too far from there to be like look these people need some authenticity even if they're drunk or not they can still come up in here all right so we're gonna take a glance at the place and uh going to bourbon street y'all so we're by conjure new orleans this is a shop so for someone who's a part of the religion like you versus someone who's visiting here what would be the different uses for a place like this what would you come here for i would definitely come here specifically to buy herbs and to buy things that i would need to do religious work for healing or for prayer or whatever so this shop country new orleans will sell the candles they'll sell the herbs they'll sell the the things that you can't find anywhere except at a conjurer shop you know um and i have to say this this is a hoodoo shop that my brother started he specialized in southern magic that is different from a voodoo shop which was specialized in the religious aspects which is what my mother owns in the tremain so for a visitor to town who was curious to get more of a feel for this world what would they find here if they wanted to patronize a place like if they want to patronize a place like this this is the one place you go to get to get your souvenirs but authentic ones you know you won't get the mass-produced voodoo dolls here that you find with the little logo on it and you can tell it's made in the factory and they say you got to feed it water once a month and all that kind of craziness that we don't do here you actually find loose herbs you will find trinkets made for good luck and prosperity and money and love authentically made and blessed by priest and priestess not something that was just made in the factory and into sold as a product because they can and would it be the same story if they went to carmel and sons or britannica if they went to carmel and sons botanica they will find less of that and more statues of the saints and more statues of the spirit to use to pray on the altar and things to use to leave his offerings for the spirit instead of doing the actual work itself for yourself that's the difference between the two now my mother mother my mother does sell things that you can use to do the work and stuff like that she'll even do it for you in the shop but that's not the specialty there especially if there's the honor god and serve the spirit while this specialty here is for the magic and the conjuring the root work so that's what that's the difference between the two you can find lots of authentically made things here to take back with you that will cause you no harm there's no black magic there's no devil worshiping there's no voodoo barbecue chips and these places both also offer services we they offer readings which is divination i have to say what divination is which is basically uh helping you solve a problem by using tools that access the spirit so my cousin actually works here antoinette and she is actually in my opinion one of one of the most powerful female readers i've ever met but i might be a little biased you know that is my cousin but also this is my brother's shop so there might be some bias there too as well um but they can there are services for um baths readings um prayers all that can be done here at this place so anybody who's visiting town who wants to get to know this stuff better you have places you can visit you've got places you can just pass through places where you can actually try to get some life advice something like that most importantly you can come here to pray there's altars here so if you need to come leave an offering on the altar um and and pray to a specific spirit you can do that here and a lot of people do don't sometimes they'll come in and not buy a thing they come leave their offering and then light a candle because they need some help and then go invite a business and they welcome folks who are part of the religion are considering it or are not and everybody can come and check things out participate however they feel is appropriate for them and also if you decide to visit town you can explore this subject more deeply with roby works with free tools by foot and other companies sharing this enlightenment thank you for sharing it with us today and y'all watching please let us know further questions that you have down in the comments if you are visiting new orleans yourself hit up free tours by foot and you can take a tour with roby me or any of our illustrious colleagues and if you know somebody who's going to be coming here please please please share this video with them get them off on the right track on this thing that everybody is thinking about but most folks don't know very much about so if you want to throw ruby some help all of our tours are pay what you will this one included thank you so much for watching have a good time

Channel: Free Tours by Foot

Views: 162,331

Rating: 4.8905864 out of 5

Keywords: new orleans voodoo tour, new orleans voodoo, voodoo tour new orleans, voodoo tour, congo square new orleans, voodoo virtual tour, voodoo ceremony, what is voodoo, voodoo vs vodou, history of voodoo in new orleans, history of voodoo in louisiana, history of voodoo religion, virtual tour, virtual tours of famous places, congo square new orleans history, voodoo ceremony new orleans, Marie Laveau

Id: aksVg8mNtPg

Length: 42min 1sec (2521 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020