The Voodoo Sessions — A Respectful Visitor's Guide to New Orleans Vodou

Every tour in the French Quarter will tell you about Marie Laveau. Almost none of them will tell you which parts they can prove. You will hear about the snake, the spy network, and the three X's to draw on her tomb — and you will go home repeating folklore as fact, because from the sidewalk there is no way to tell the difference.

The pain it solves: New Orleans Vodou is the most mis-sold subject in the city's tourism — a living religion flattened into ghost stories, souvenir dolls, and a television witch. Visitors who actually want to understand it have had two choices: a theatrical tour that mixes record and legend in the same sentence, or an academic book that never tells them where to stand. This guide is the missing middle.

What's inside (22 pages, US Letter, printable):

• Congo Square's real history in full — the Code Noir Sunday opening, the 1817 ordinance that confined the gatherings to one ground, Latrobe's 1819 eyewitness count of 500–600 people, the 1993 National Register listing, the official naming in 2011, and how to visit the 2.35-acre site in Louis Armstrong Park today
• Marie Laveau in two labelled chapters that are never blurred: The Record (a dated timeline built from baptism, marriage, newspaper, and cemetery records — born September 10, 1801, died June 15, 1881, interred in the Glapion/Widow Paris tomb) and The Legend (the snake named Zombi, the hairdresser informant network, the "XXX" tomb ritual, the mother-daughter conflation, the television version — each labelled and sourced as folklore)
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 with the verified official facts: entry is official-tour-only under the Archdiocese of New Orleans, adult tickets from $29, tours about 55 minutes, groups capped at 20, check-in at Basin St. Station (501 Basin St.) — plus the conduct rules in full: no touching, sitting on, or leaning on tombs; no rubbing or marking; depositing items on tombs is prohibited
• A plain-language account of the faith itself — Vodun, Vodou, Louisiana Voodoo, and hoodoo distinguished; altars, lwa, gris-gris, and veve explained for visitors; St. John's Eve and the Bayou St. John head-washing tradition, with how a spectator should behave at a religious service
• Ten plain rules of respectful conduct for visiting a living religion, a 10-claim Record-or-Legend check table to use on any tour, a glossary of 12 terms, and a respectful half-day route that orders the four key stops correctly
• Four real, verified places to learn and shop — the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum (724 Dumaine St, est. 1972), Voodoo Authentica (612 Dumaine St, est. 1996), Island of Salvation Botanica (2372 St. Claude Ave #100), and the Voodoo Spiritual Temple (1428 N. Rampart St, founded 1990) — each with its address as the place itself publishes it

One claim, checked twice: the "XXX" ritual at Laveau's tomb — draw three X's, turn three times, knock, make your wish — is presented on countless tours as her own tradition. The guide shows, with sources, that it is a twentieth-century folk custom with no basis in her documented lifetime, that it may have attached to the wrong tomb in retelling, and that marking the tomb today is prohibited vandalism — the documented reason unescorted access to the cemetery ended in 2015. That separation of record from legend, applied on every page, is the workmanship this book is selling.

Honest scope: this is a visitor's cultural and historical guide, written respectfully about a living religion. It is not a ritual manual — it contains no invocations, no instructions for making a gris-gris, and no spiritual services — and it is not a ghost tour in print: there are no haunting claims, no paranormal content, and nothing spooky-camp anywhere in it. It is not a ticket or a booking: cemetery entry, readings, and consultations are arranged with the sites and practitioners themselves, and prices and hours (checked November 2026) should be rechecked before travel. Who should NOT buy it: if you want scares, spells to perform, a promise of supernatural experiences, or directions for leaving offerings at a tomb, this book will disappoint you on purpose. If you want the documented history, the legend honestly labelled, and the conduct that lets you visit a real faith as a welcome guest, it is exactly that.

Price: $12 for the 22-page printable PDF — less than half the adult price of the single official cemetery tour it prepares you for.

Digital download — delivered instantly after checkout.