Visiting New Orleans is never difficult. There is a fantastic night life here all through the year, and even if you’re not in town for the big festivals (we know what those are), there is more than ample opportunity to paint the town red. If nighttime isn’t your time, there are plenty of things to do during the day. The food is exquisite, but only if you like butter, seafood, and extremely good taste, and there’s also Cafe du Monde to brighten up every afternoon with their deliciously famous offerings. A room at one of the luxury hotels, New Orleans opens up like a breeze on a hot day. There’s also the Voodoo-Hoodoo aspect of New Orleans, that will continue to bring in curious tourists as long as the city is here.
It’s a tenacious city, of course, and Voodou is a tenacious religion. It’s comprised of a few different African nations, and then combined with some local Haitian influences, and then added to that the French Catholic pantheon on saints. There are new additions and modifications all the time, because, like any other religion, it continues to evolve and change with the times. The system is also much more open to flux, as the contact with the spirit world is always ongoing, and even gods of iron sometimes change their mind. There are plenty of opportunities to see the folkloric part of this spiritual path here, but it’s a little more difficult to find the real thing. That’s a loaded term anyway, but most of what’s on display is bound to be for entertaining the tourists rather than speaking to the Loa.
The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum is a great case in point. It’s considered the only small museum devoted to Voodou, and there’s a lot of fun and entertainment here. Artifacts and fetishes, represented works, and some believed to be the real thing, they’re all on display here. Interestingly, there are more traditions that get thrown into the mix. All the cousins of this system are twined into it, which suggests either diversity or just plain sloppiness. But the altar to Exu refers to a Candomble version of the Yoruba spirit, and some of the ancestral works seem to be more in line with Lucumi from Cuba than Voodou from Haiti. It’s a time of great change, though, and lots of upheavals again, so who knows what might get thrown into the mix when the boat is starting to rock.