American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World Read Online Free PDF Page A

the healing powers of Christ using a bead-wrapped palo mayombe staff.
A woman like that didn't disappear. She was still in town, still preaching the Gospel, and still practicing voudou. I would find her when it was time, and in truth that's how I wanted it. A thing you learn about voudou is that you don't rely on plans and timetables. If the search were a drawing, it would resemble the Dahomean snake-god Dambada-Wedo, which encircles the earth and creation, tail in mouth, without beginning or end, and history moves through it like a rat. To see the movement of voudou is to know what the snake knows, go where the snake goes.
I ran down several useless telephone numbers and even traced Reverend Mitchell's old eastside apartment, where I'd seen, as opposed to participated in, my first sacrifice ritual. I drove back toward downtown and picked up Esplanade to Broad Street, in the general direction of the State Fairgrounds, to the F&F Botanica, where Lorita learned her trade giving readings in an adjacent shed, kicking back to the Cuban owner Felix a healthy cut of her income, about $25 per consultation, not counting fees for sacrifices. She and Felix had been heading for a falling out, and I figured they'd had one. He said he didn't know where she was.
I decided to look for leads through other botanicasshops which sell religious supplies, herbs and iconography, and cater to both voudou and Christian (mostly Catholic) customers. Although they vary in degree of legitimacyand honestymost
     

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are true touchstones to voudou in a community offering spiritual advising and similar divination services. They aren't as plentiful in New Orleans as in say, Miami or the Bronx, where Cuban and Puerto Rican communities are filled with botanicas and the santeros (Practitioners of santeria) who patronize them, but I spotted a shop on Elysian Fields, a long boulevard east of the Quarter. The Solano Botanica looked like a 200-year-old grocery store on a Mississippi backroad.
The interior was dusty and dark, as was Solano himselfa small, sour-faced man smoking a stubby cigar and wearing a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. Fleshy circles under his eyes made him appear vaguely malevolent, and he tried to spook me, saying if I wanted to study voudou I would have to become ''involved." I wasn't sure if he meant become initiated or merely buy something, such as an expensive plastic-wrapped supera on one of the shelves. It was the opening gambit in a head game some occultists like to run.
I told him I was just looking for Reverend Mitchell. I described her. I figured if he knew anything about voudou or santeria he would know about Lorita. He said he didn't.
I had turned to go when someone knocked on the door. Solano opened it, admitting an older, heavyset black woman in a blue flower print dress. She seemed perturbed, and I lingered to see why. Ignoring me, she told Solano she was having trouble collecting money owed her and wanted some herbs. Solano rebuked her for not coming around earlier. She said she had, and they were quibbling about it when I broke in, introduced myself to the woman, and tried my questions on her.
She reacted immediately. Yes, she'd heard of Lorita Mitchell, especially when I used the surname Honeycutt, the name of one of Lorita's four ex-husbands who himself had been a minister. "Honeycutt, she's around," the woman said. "I don't know where, but I think she's at Reverend Francis's church over in the Ninth Ward."
     

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Antioch Spiritual Church in New Orleans, near the Ninth Ward neighbor-
hood where Lorita Honeycutt Mitchell grew up.
I found the Antioch Spiritual Church of Christ where the woman said it was, and cajoled the Reverend Oscar Francis, also known as Bishop Francis, into giving me Lorita Mitchell's new phone number. I called the next morning. The heavy New Orleans drawl, thick with husky directness, was unmistakable. "Yeah, dahlin', why don't you come on over tomorrow about six," she said. "We're