“To understand a spiritual practice one must understand both the history and culture in which it flourished. Many people will tell you that there is no such thing as New Orleans Voodoo. According to them, the whole thing started as a marketing campaign to woo tourists.

Later, a few bored white folks created a “tradition” by reading some books on African and Afro-Caribbean spirituality, then combining that information with African American folk magic, Wicca, hermeticism, and just about anything else they could find that was suitably “mysterious” and “spooky.” Those criticisms aren’t entirely without merit. And yet they miss the greater point:

New Orleans Voodoo has become for many a powerful and meaningful religious tradition., the book strips away myth and fallacy, leaving us with fact, and gives us an insider’s view of the faith’s deepest mysteries.