What Is Voodoo? Voodoo, Vodou & New Orleans Voodoo

This page is meant to be a doorway, not the last word. Voodoo, Vodou, and Vodun share histories and family resemblances, but they are not simply three interchangeable spellings for one identical practice.

A note from Spellmaker There is no single universal Voodoo. Houses, families, regions, and lineages may use different names, protocols, songs, offerings, explanations, and ritual structures. Material on Spellmaker reflects our own New Orleans family tradition and our experience with Haitian Vodou. We do not presume to speak for every house or every practitioner.

Who is welcome here? Everyone. Spellmaker teaches that Voodoo and Vodou are open to sincere people of every race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and background. This is what Mambo Samantha was taught during her own initiation in Haiti. You do not have to be of any particular race, nationality, ethnicity, family, or ancestry in order to learn, honor the spirits, or begin a sincere practice. Initiation can deepen training and may be required for particular ceremonial roles or house-specific rites, but it is not a gate you must pass through before you are “allowed” to learn or to approach the spirits with respect.

Words Matter: Voodoo, Vodou, Vodun

One of the easiest ways to become confused is to treat all of these words as though they mean exactly the same thing. They are related, but context matters.

Vodun / Vodún

Usually refers to West African traditions associated especially with Fon and Ewe-speaking peoples in areas including present-day Benin and Togo. These traditions are part of the deep ancestral roots from which later African-diasporic practices developed.

Vodou

Usually refers to the Haitian spiritual tradition that developed in colonial Saint-Domingue and Haiti from several West and Central African traditions, shaped further by Haitian history and Catholic influence. Haitians also commonly speak of serving the spirits.

Voodoo

The English spelling is strongly associated with Louisiana and New Orleans, although popular culture has used it very loosely. On Spellmaker, “New Orleans Voodoo” means the distinct Louisiana tradition, not simply Haitian Vodou with a different spelling.

Origins and Development

It is more accurate to speak of many African roots than one single point of origin. Enslaved Africans carried languages, songs, medicines, sacred knowledge, ritual forms, spirits, and ways of understanding the world from numerous West and Central African peoples and nations. In the Americas and Caribbean, those traditions survived under extraordinary pressure, adapted to new surroundings, met one another, and developed in different directions.

Haitian Vodou took shape in Saint-Domingue and Haiti through this process of survival and creolization. Fon, Ewe, Kongo, Yoruba and other African influences can be found within it, along with Catholic imagery and practices that became deeply woven into Haitian spiritual life.

There is no reason to sugarcoat how these traditions crossed the Atlantic. They came with people who were kidnapped, enslaved, displaced, and forced to build lives under brutal conditions. They preserved what they could, transformed what they had to, and passed knowledge forward. The fact that these traditions survived at all is part of their power.

Beliefs, Bondye, and the Lwa

In Haitian Vodou, Bondye is the supreme creator, while the lwa are the spirits with whom people most directly build relationships. The lwa are not interchangeable symbols. They have names, histories, preferences, personalities, songs, colors, offerings, rhythms, and ways of making themselves known.

You will often hear lwa grouped into nanchon, commonly translated as nations or families. Rada, Petwo, and Gede are among the best-known groupings, but the system is more complex than a three-column chart, and classifications can vary by house and region.

Some of the well-known lwa include:

Papa Legba: Guardian of gates, roads, and communication between the human and spirit worlds. There is not enough room here to put everything wonderful about Papa Legba. Please see our Papa Legba page.
Erzulie Freda: Associated with love, beauty, longing, refinement, and the ache of human desire. Read more on our page dedicated to her.
Baron Samedi and the Gede: Powerful spirits of death, the cemetery, sexuality, fertility, humor, memory, and the continuing relationship between the living and the dead.
Damballah and Ayida Ouedo: Serpentine spirits associated with creation, continuity, purity, wisdom, and the primordial beginning.
Ogoun Feraille: A force of iron, protection, work, courage, technology, struggle, and disciplined power. Read more on his special page.
Azaka: Closely associated with agriculture, labor, the land, and the practical work of sustaining life.
Sobo: Associated with thunder, lightning, strength, and protection. We have a free ritual on his page.
Erzulie Dantor: Fierce, protective, maternal, independent, and especially beloved by many people who have had to fight for family, dignity, safety, and the right to live as themselves.
Agwe and La Sirene: Spirits of the sea, ships, beauty, depth, abundance, and the mysteries of water. An original power couple.

Serving the Spirits and Honoring the Ancestors

One of the most useful things a beginner can understand is that Vodou is fundamentally relational. It is not simply a catalogue of spirits that a person “uses” to get something. Relationships are built through respect, service, remembrance, reciprocity, prayer, song, offerings, ritual, and time.

Ancestors matter. In many Vodou communities, the dead are not treated as though they have vanished from the life of the family. Ancestors may be remembered, fed, prayed for, spoken with, and asked for guidance. The relationship between the living and the dead is one reason Vodou can make very little sense when it is reduced to “spells.”

Likewise, service to the lwa is not a vending-machine arrangement in which an offering automatically purchases a result. A gift may express love, gratitude, obligation, petition, hospitality, or an established relationship. Different spirits and different houses have different expectations.

Rituals and Practices

Vodou ceremonies can include singing, drumming, dancing, prayer, offerings, sacred drawings, spirit possession, divination, healing work, and communal meals. Some ceremonies are public. Others may be private, family-based, house-specific, or intended for initiates because of the roles being performed. That is about the structure of a particular ceremony, not about declaring the tradition itself closed to sincere people who wish to learn and practice.

Altars and Offerings: Altars may hold water, candles, flowers, sacred images, food, drink, ritual objects, and other items appropriate to the spirits being served.

Vèvè: Sacred ritual designs associated with particular lwa. They are not merely decorative logos; in ceremonial settings they have ritual purpose.

Song, Drum, and Dance: Ceremonial music is not background entertainment. Songs and rhythms can identify, praise, invite, and serve particular spirits.

Possession: A lwa may “mount” or “ride” a person during ceremony. The person is often described as a horse, and the spirit may speak, dance, give counsel, accept offerings, or interact directly with the community.

Divination and Healing: Spiritual consultation, diagnosis, herbal knowledge, prayer, cleansing, and ritual healing may all form part of community practice.

A Few Common Misconceptions

“It is all curses.” No. Protection, healing, blessing, love, family, justice, prosperity, ancestor work, spiritual development, and community are enormous parts of these traditions.

“Voodoo dolls are the whole practice.” They are not. Image magic and dolls exist in several folk-magical traditions, but reducing Voodoo to pin-stuck dolls is largely a product of popular culture.

“The lwa are demons.” No. That language comes from hostile outside interpretations and horror entertainment, not from the way practitioners understand the spirits they serve.

“Every practitioner does the same thing.” Definitely not. House, lineage, geography, family tradition, initiation, and individual spiritual relationships matter.

“If some teachings are private, the whole tradition must be closed.” No. An open tradition can still have family teachings, house customs, and initiatory material that are shared in the proper setting. Privacy, responsibility, and learning in stages are not the same thing as telling sincere people they do not belong.

“Hollywood is research.” Please do not make the Raven Council come over there. Films have borrowed Voodoo imagery for more than a century and often replaced living traditions with fear, zombies, curses, and spectacle.

Vodou in the Modern World

Haitian Vodou remains a living spiritual tradition, philosophy, cultural force, and way of life. In 2003, Haiti formally established Vodou as equal in standing to other religions, an important change after a long history of legal and social suppression.

Vodou is also deeply present in Haitian music, visual art, community life, healing traditions, family structures, memory, and ideas about the relationship between visible and invisible worlds. Diaspora communities have carried Vodou beyond Haiti while maintaining connections to Haitian language, history, and culture.

For beginners, perhaps the most important lesson is this: Vodou is not a spooky aesthetic. It is something people live, inherit, learn, serve, protect, debate, celebrate, and pass on.

New Orleans Voodoo

Its Own Tradition

New Orleans Voodoo, sometimes called Louisiana Voodoo, developed in a different place and under different historical conditions from Haitian Vodou. The two traditions are related, and their histories repeatedly touch one another, but one should not be treated as a regional copy of the other.

Louisiana brought together African and African-descended people, Native peoples, French and Spanish colonial cultures, Caribbean migration, Creole Catholicism, folk healing, herbal practice, conjure, rootwork, and family traditions. New Orleans Voodoo grew inside that complicated world.

The Haiti–New Orleans Connection

One of the most important pieces of the story is the movement of people between Saint-Domingue/Haiti and Louisiana. During and after the Haitian Revolution, thousands of refugees came to New Orleans. In 1809 and 1810 alone, roughly ten thousand Saint-Domingue refugees arrived from Cuba, dramatically increasing the city's population and strengthening already-deep Caribbean connections.

That migration mattered. It affected language, food, music, family networks, Catholic life, African-descended spiritual traditions, and the culture of free people of color. So while Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo are distinct, the relationship between Haiti and New Orleans is not incidental. It is part of the history of the city itself.

What Often Looks Different in New Orleans

Family and local traditions:
New Orleans Voodoo has often survived through families, small circles, individual practitioners, and community networks rather than through one centralized institution. That means practices can look very different from one lineage to another.
Catholic imagery and local saints:
Catholic saints, candles, medals, holy water, novenas, churches, feast days, and cemetery customs have all interacted with Louisiana spiritual life. The exact relationship between Catholic practice and Voodoo varies enormously by practitioner and family.
Gris-gris, rootwork, and practical magick:
New Orleans traditions are especially famous for gris-gris, powders, roots, oils, candles, baths, charms, dolls, and other forms of hands-on practical work for protection, love, luck, healing, justice, and removal of trouble.
Marie Laveau and remembered spiritual leaders:
Marie Laveau remains the best-known historical Voodoo figure in New Orleans, but she was not the only practitioner, and New Orleans Voodoo did not begin or end with her. The city's history includes generations of named and unnamed healers, conjure workers, spiritual leaders, midwives, herbalists, and family practitioners.
Music, dance, and Congo Square:
New Orleans preserved powerful African and Afro-Creole traditions of drumming and dance, famously associated with Congo Square. Those traditions helped shape the city's broader musical culture. That does not mean every second line, jazz performance, or drum circle is a Voodoo ceremony; the histories overlap without being identical.
Tourism versus living practice:
Voodoo is part of New Orleans tourism, but the souvenir version is not the whole story. Museums, tours, shops, movies, and ghost stories may introduce people to the subject, yet living spiritual practice also continues privately in homes, altars, ceremonies, and family traditions.

Learning and Beginning Your Practice

If you are new to Voodoo or Vodou, you are welcome here. You do not have to prove a bloodline, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, or family connection before you are permitted to learn. Come with sincerity, curiosity, patience, and respect. Learn the history, listen to practitioners, ask questions, and allow your understanding to deepen over time.

Respect does not mean standing outside the door wondering whether you are “allowed” to enter. It means understanding that different communities may do things differently, giving credit where it belongs, and not assuming that one book, one website, one house, or one priest or priestess speaks for everyone.

A good beginner's rule Learn where a practice, word, spirit, song, or custom comes from. Ask whether it is associated with Haitian Vodou, West African Vodun, New Orleans Voodoo, Hoodoo/rootwork, a particular house, or one person's family practice. This is not about deciding whether you are worthy or permitted to learn. It is about understanding context, honoring origins, and not flattening many beautiful traditions into one indistinguishable thing.

And give yourself time. Spiritual practice is not mastered by memorizing a correspondence chart. Relationships, context, ethics, history, community, and lived experience matter. You are allowed to begin where you are, learn as you go, and build a sincere practice step by step.

Voodoo, Vodou
& Vodun