After the storm has passed

All that is New Orleans is not just in New Orleans.

The people and the spirit of New Orleans exists not in the land or the buildings but in the hearts of the people who carry her energy forward. We might try to think that it is the ground where men and women settled more than 5 centuries ago, but the truth is that every person who was displaced from New Orleans but the storm and ravage carry in their hearts the energy and the signature soul of the Old Town.

To be a real citizen of the French Quarter meant that one had several important qualities:

1. A sense of individuality. Uniqueness applies to the citizens not just to the architecture.
2. An awareness of magic. One could not walk through the city and live there without feeling the magic that embues the vitality of the place. From voodoo to passion for fine dining... the magic continues.
3. A sense of history. When one walks through the town, history touches one around every corner.
4. A sense of play. Even when folks are suffering from day-to-day living there is always a sense of celebrating life. No where is the inner child more free to play than in the energy of this city

The important thing is to recognize that all of us have this energy of New Orleans in our soul. As a collective we all have the magic that was, is, and will be New Orleans.

The Promise

The Promise
I am she who brings promise of birth
Because I am she who embraces death
I am she who promises the awakening
Because I am she who welcomes to you to the night to sleep
I am daughter, I am the mother, I am the grandmother
Because I am the crone and I am all in one
I am she who brings transmutation
Because I am she who recognizes the divine circle that is life
I am she who colors the spring, the summer and the fall
Because I am she who sleeps beneath the snow
I give you power
Because I remember the past, the present and the future.
I am she who manifests your destiny
Because I am she who recognizes your manifest divinity
As daughter, as mother, as grandmother,
As the crone the one who transmutes the three into reality.

Next encounter with Jaguar Soul

As he reached out for me I felt a sudden rush of heat ... like those sultry nights on Isla Mujeres.

My heart was beating another rhythm that seemed to change not only my tempo but the frequency that connected me to the universe. For some reason or another I felt as if I were the physical manifestation of the divine goddess of love.

Adored.

Worshipped.

Recognized by all mankind as the source of passion and resurrection.

As I danced the dance

I remembered.

I remembered by awakening to the Cosmic Dance.

The embers from which I arise lift me to a sense of infinite awareness.

I am moving and I am totally still at the same time.

Adored yet distant in the magic of the moment.

There is no wrong. There is no right.

There is just pure and passionate awareness of the dance.

The Cosmic Dance.

de je vue

Sitting in the courtyard of the Napoleon House, I am taken back in time. I feel the present slip away and I am once again in a courtyard of many centuries ago. This is but one of the first of many experiences that I would have as I lived, loved, and, sometimes cried in the Vieux Carré.


The heat and humidity was the first senses to awaken my memories of the life that I once knew as a girl of thirteen in old New Orleans. A child of France and poverty I was shipped off as an indentured servant. The Ursuline nuns took me under their wings.


The Ursulines were unique for their time. In the autumn of 1727 they admitted girls into their schools. Slaves and free, rich or poor, white or black., Indian or immigrant - all were welcomed by these women whose goal was to lift up women through education. In and around New Orleans was a group of women who created a confraternity and named themselves the Children of Mary. The goal of this group of women, under the guidance of the Ursulines, took upon themselves the holy mission to catechize their slaves.


Many young girls of poverty were shipped off to the New World to be servants, brides of man or God, or prostitutes. The Ursulines would be the clearing house for these young girls. Those who were deemed capable of being wives were married to the men of the settlement. Those who were attractive enough but not quite able to be wives, perhaps because of being criminals in the old world were to become prostitutes it is said in the brothel that is sang about as The House of The Rising Sun which is just across the street from the current Ursuline Convent. The least marketable became Nuns of the New Orleans order. The racial diversity of the Ursulines was unique for the time period and the literacy rate for women of that time in New Orleans was 71 percent and higher than the men. In the other colonies the literacy rate for women was half that of the men.


But I digress as I tell my story of my memories of a life when I was incarnated in New Orleans. As I sat in the courtyard of the Napoleon House, I was moved back in time. I could feel myself dressed in a loose white dress that was sheer and comfortable and allowed the air to reach my perspiring skin. I was older now and mistress of the house and ran it from my courtyard in the summer. I can see little children at my feet some black and some white. Children of master and slave playing in the heat with an openness that I often saw in the schoolyards in the Quarters as I would walk from Ursuline Street where I lived to up Royal to St. Phillips. Fragments of memories came back to me – smells, sounds of horses’ feet on muddy streets after the rains, rich dark coffee, and feelings of being trapped like a bird in a gilded cage.


Many times as I would walk through the Quarter in my modern reality I would know what house I would see before I turned a corner. I would get a flash of a memory, sometimes pleasant and sometimes sad but always everything new seemed like de je vue and I would be swept back in time again.

back in the life-style

Michelle had a look of quiet desperation that seemed to fit her like a silk chemise even though she was always dressed in some kind of “what ever I can pick up off the floor and doesn’t stink too much” style. Tattoos adorned her body from various vantage points and she was festooned with cherries and dragons and a bit Celtic art. Her black hair was dark as a raven out of a bottle of Miss Clairol. Her favorite hobby was drinking and every time she would climb on her old bike and head back home you were thankful that somewhere a guardian angel was watching her.


Michelle was always there for her friends in need unless she needed a fix. It was not that she was irresponsible she was lost in the fog of alcoholism that seemed to keep her safe in her own reality. Working as a bartender at Molly’s on Decateur Street she managed to keep her bills paid and even when broke another bartender at any bar up and down the street would always make sure her glass was full. Michelle had come from a good family and her education was always evident in her conversations. Michelle left town one day because of a death in the family. Rumor had it she had inherited some money and went into rehab and then back to school where she completed her college education.


It was a few years later when I heard about Michelle again. She had been drawn back to the Quarters again and was back in the life-style. All her inheritance spent she was now caught back into her addictions. While at a convenience store near her home in the 9th Ward Michelle was attacked as she came out after buying a pack of cigarettes by a crack junkie. A claw hammer tore off half her face. She tried to get the owners to let her call the police or get help. They rushed her out of the place. Crawling, bleeding and in extreme pain for a couple of blocks and she found a pay phone. The police arrived and took her to Charity Trauma Center.


The doctors did an amazing job. Her face was repaired and there was only a scar at the top of her head which could be covered by hair. However, the deeper scars of fear and desperation could not be healed by the doctors only by spirit. The attacker was free on the streets and was going to find more victims. Every corner she would turn she thought that she saw him only to face the illusion of recognition that her fear put on a face.


I was also traumatized and shocked by this news about Michelle. I went to a group that I belong to on the net that is populated by shamans and light workers. When I told them what had happened, there was an immediate rallying of allies to discover and bring the perpetrator to justice. Using the tools of the magic trade shape shifting astral jaguars and dragons began to comb the city of New Orleans.


Two days later I received a call.


The perpetrator had been found and arrested. He had been using the same m.o. (modus operandi) and quite a few other women had been attacked and ravaged like Michelle. The police caught him in the act and arrested him. Bringing pictures to the house, Michelle was able to select him from a gallery of photographs. He would no longer be attacking those who walked the streets of the Quarter.


But in the wake of Katrina when prisoners escaped and created havoc on the streets and those poor souls who could not evacuate, one has to wonder – is he free?

Jaguar Soul -- a fable about New Orleans

I could feel my body flush when I glanced from behind the bar and across the room at a young man who had just entered Sin City. I could feel that shiver rush up my body as I felt called to the hunt by the jaguar that lived within my soul.


Tall and dark, he seemed tense and ready to explode from carrying his power to close to his chest. As he sat down at a stool at the end of the bar, I felt myself walking toward him with a deliberate and sensuous movement toward what might be a very interesting prey.
My voice was almost guttural as I looked him in the eye with my body poised slightly toward him so that my breast appeared to welcome him and asked: “What would pleasure you today?”
He ordered a shot of Jägermeister. I bent down into the cooler and I could feel my nipples harden maybe from the rush of cold air or maybe from the rush of energy as I watched him throw back his head and swallow the cold, herbal elixir.


Yes the hunt was definitely on.


I could feel my pupils dilating and my lids becoming more slanted as if I could focus more on sending him the energy that would call him to be mine. I rubbed my hands together with an instinctual sense of a well-prepared dinner waiting to be enjoyed till there was nothing more that I could do but collapse into the abyss of contentment that comes when a passion is indulged in fully.


It was midnight and my son was coming to take over the night shift at our bar. We had opened Sin City on St. Phillip Street in the heart of the French Quarter about a year ago. The name is not about Las Vegas but remembers Basin Street down by Congo Square where all the swells would go to find the best whores and jazz. Located in the building that was the oldest standing mortuary in New Orleans, we attracted our share of those men and women who liked to walk on the dark side – they are like those swells of old who wanted to wander down to Basin Street for a little of the other side of life. I had a feeling my young visitor would be very open to sharing that walk with me.


My young dark prey was still sitting on his stool as I picked up my things and walked out. I could feel that this was definitely the start of an interesting amusement. As I stepped outside the oppressive wetness of the air heated by August made me feel even more in the mood for a moon lit hunt. But, after all, I am the jaguar. I stalk and I wait and I strike with time is perfect. I had never lost a prey and I was not going to now in spite of the passion and desire that I could feel filling me to the brim waiting to be released.


Even though our apartment was upstairs over the bar and the balcony certainly was tempting on this exquisite evening, I decided to take a walk to cool down my passions. I wandered up St. Phillip toward the old blacksmith shop that now housed the Lafitte Bar. I could feel the ghosts of New Orleans walking beside me and keeping me company.


Priestess Miriam said that I was protected by Bridget, the loa or spirit of the bride of the Baron. They protected the cemetery where Marie La Veau was buried and were the only ones in the Voodoo pantheon that could walk in both the dark and the light. You could not live in New Orleans without the blessings of these ghosts of the old religion. You were either protected by them or taunted by them.


I went to my regular seat at the piano bar and it seemed that the piano man knew my mood. He slipped easily into the rhythm of That Old Black Magic. Every pore of my body was oozing the energy and passion of the dark magic that seemed to sometimes capture my spirit. And it had been evoked by that sensual young man who ordered his Jägermeister. I knew I would have no sleep tonight.


My altar called to me for a sacrifice to my loas. The ancients were demanding that I prepare to walk on the dark side.


It was easier when I was younger. 13 moons created 13 rituals. My blood ran warm and thick and smelled of the jaguar goddess. Now, while on the outside I appear younger than I am, inside I have joined the ancients. However, those old primitive rites, passed down mother to daughter, for centuries without end still have meaning even if the means to evoke the spirit may have changed with the times.


I put a CD on with ritual drumming which stirs my spirit even more. I light the candles and taking a sharp knife I quickly draw a line down my arm and allow the blood to drip down into a stone bowl. Just the smell of the warm blood heats my senses even more. I find myself moving with the drum beat and as I crouch down I can feel the jaguar mount me and take form. As we merge into one, I take my finger and dip it into the blood and mark upon my forehead ancient symbols that bring me into oneness with my matriarchy. I am the high priestess incarnate of the Jaguar goddess and my time for feeding has come. The pitch and fever of my dance rises. I can feel myself moving through the jungle of the Quarters and searching out my prey. He is sleeping in a hotel just around the corner from where I am evoking my power. I can feel his pulse in my soul and as I look at him resting but restless I put out my hand over him and he becomes calmer. I speak the words: “Give me your soul!” and then I find myself back in my body standing on the balcony overlooking Saint Phillip Street and I see over the roof tops a shadowy image of the jaguar formed as the moon plays against the clouds.


It is morning and while I may spin my web darkly at night, come day out walks a woman of the light. As my mother had taught me, I swept every corner and pushed the negative energies and memories out of the door. I lit my incense and let the smoke curl around the room bringing the clearness to the house. I make my coffee rich and dark with a little Chicory. I walk outside with a cup and offer it to the Damballah who resides in the banana tree growing on the balcony. My friend the Raven flies by and tells me good morning. I know that my magic has been accepted.
I am hungry so I quickly dress in a red silk shirt and jeans. I sometimes find it hard to believe that my body still is so lithe and sensuous. The silk feels good against my body and the naturalness of it handles the humid winds coming off the Mississippi delta. A pair of sandals and off to the pastry shop on Urselines where I love to sit in the back garden where I can smoke, drink coffee, and a fresh roll with butter. I got to turn left on Royal and suddenly change my mind and head down to Decateur Street and the Café Dumond. A little powdered sugar on a begnets never hurt anyone and I like to feed the birds.


A clown is making balloons for children. A saxophone horn warms up the scene with “Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?” The gypsies and artists are lining Jackson Square. I find a seat and order. And as I look around seated next to me is the dark young man who drank the Jägermeister. I smile and inside thank my Goddess.


I look at him turning my head in that typical southern way and ask: “What would pleasure you today?”


That same energy begins to rush through my body as he smiles back and stands up and walks over to my table.


“It would pleasure me to spend the day with you.” He sat down and I knew the hunt was on for sure. Remember Jaguar wait till the right time to pounce.


“I am Marinette Chamani and I enjoyed having you last night – at my bar.” I could feel my eyes becoming slit again and I almost purred. My long red nails pushed my blond hair back from my face and I just listened to him never taking my eyes away from his.


We walked over to Jackson Square where the Goddess was giving readings. As usual there was a line of people waiting for her advice. My young man, whom I learned was Tony from Texas, sat down. The Goddess looked up at me and gave me a knowing look. Goddess was born in Haiti and was one of the few initiates that I knew in Haitian voodoun. She had him shuffle the cards and place them in three piles. She picked up the cards and started to lay them out.


First, she laid the Lovers Card on the table. Then she lay the Empress down. Then the tower being struck by lightening crossed the top. She was truly working her magic.


“Love is coming to you or is near you,” she said and continued: “You have in your energy an older woman who is powerful and is a part of your destiny. Beware there could be danger and you will never be the same again.”


As we walked away, I looked up at him, tossed my head as we southern women tend to do winked and said: “Sugar, are you ready for a dangerous older woman?”



Night was coming and the jaguar was about ready to strike.

With every joy there is a sorrow.

There are times when we feel that life is slipping into a dark cave and we are trying very hard to find a handhold that will keep us in the light. But grasp as we might the joy keeps slipping through our fingers and we are drawn further and further away from it.


It is the comedy and tragedies of life that when we are in joy we worry about when it will end and when we are in sorrow we worry about when it will go away. Ever since I can remember the advent of what I call the New Age (and always with a smile on my face) presented a mantra that always repeated this chorus: Be here now! This almost seems to be the ultimate Zen of Life.


This morning I awoke and my mind would not leave me alone. It just had to go there. I said, hey Myriam, I have been there and done that. But Ms. Myriam would not listen she had to drag me down memory lane to painful issues so I realized that I can try and fight it or I could give in to these thoughts that needed to be healed.


It is all about being a mother and my sense of loneliness that my children and I do not have the fantasy relationship that I thought we would have someday. Some people are so lucky that they have moderately dysfunctional families where there are a few buttons implanted to keep one within a family norm but when one has mental illness in one’s families the buttons all seem to be bigger than life.


My son Jimmy who lived in New Orleans and is now a refugee in Texas with my granddaughter Joliet, his wife and Joliet’s mother is a drug addict. I want to figure it out. I want to blame me. I want to blame his mental illness. I want to blame my ex-mother-in-law the wacko from hell. I want to blame God or Goddess or Mother Nature. I am so into the blame game now but the truth is I am pointing fingers to keep from feeling the deep, deep sorrow that breaks my heart and stifles me from rising from that cave of depression into the light of joy.


The recent events in New Orleans has not only flooded the Old City, but has flooded my mind with images of people that I met and knew there. I have realized today that each one of those lost souls that I met also had a mother. Many of those mothers are probably feeling the same sorrow that I am feeling as I look at how easy it is to loose a child perhaps to an act of nature but often to just the circumstances of life which can be the rampant drug abuse in our community, the increasing rise in diagnosed mental illness, and the social pressures that are changing us at an accelerated pace.


I think rather than lost souls, the folks I am remembering are wounded souls. Perhaps we are all wounded and the magnitude of recent events are a clarion call that it is now time to heal ourselves individually and collectively so that we can finally climb out that deep pit that has kept us from becoming the manifestation of good that was planted within with our birth.

Voodoo Mambo

On Patrick’s first visit to New Orleans, we wandered over to Rampart Street to visit the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. I was surprised because it reminded me more of one of those storefront churches that I remembered from my childhood. This place was totally different than the voodoo shops through the French Quarter that were basically built to cater to the tourist trade. There were hand packaged herbs, hand made gris-gris bags, cowry shells made into necklaces, and amulets of various descriptions. An impressive black woman dressed in a hand sewn extremely colorful dress and head cover walked out of the back room to greet us. It was Priestess Miriam. We all chatted a bit, and Patrick and I bought some magical potions and left.


Outside, Patrick turned to me and said I now know the Black Mother Miriam and the White Mother Myriam. Little did we know that my knowledge of the temple would grow over time through some interesting coincidences and that my respect and knowledge of fusion religions would forever be changed.


A week later, I met a French spitfire that was a friend of my son. Claudine was a tour guide in the French Quarter and did a voodoo tour in the afternoons and an evening ghost tour. She offered to let me go on her tours free which I gladly accepted.


She met the tourists, me included, at a small bakery and we began to walk through the voodoo history of New Orleans.


As we walked Claudine never stopped talking but with her accent and rapid-speed delivery I didn’t understand half of what she said. Her hands moved as fast as her lips as she pulled us through the Quarter pointing out places of interest from the classic tourist traps of the area but then she started walking toward to the edge of the Quarter and paused in front of a house that had been the home of Marie La Veau. She then began to spin the story of this famous scion of New Orleans’ voodoo.


Marie La Veau was a free woman of color who worked as a hairdresser to the wealthy and often offering them advice, potions and spells to handle the problems of love, health and business. Apparently someone had tried to take away Marie’s home and she cast a spell that caused him to get into dire circumstances. The final resolution that to have her remove the spell, he had Marie’s home returned to her.


As we continued our walk we arrived at Congo Square, now called Louis Armstrong Park which is located across from the Voodoo Spiritual Temple and Priestess Miriam.


It seems that Marie was definitely more than a hairdresser and helper of the wealthy elite. In New Orleans, slaves were given Sunday afternoon’s off because – well because it was a way to allow the slaves to worship. Voodoo to those not in the know or perhaps those in the know preferred to think that the slaves were just Christians but beneath faces of Saints lay the spirit of the loas and teachings of the African religion that the slaves brought with them to America.


On Sunday afternoon till six in the evening the slaves would gather on Congo Square where Mare La Veau was their Priestess. They would drink rum, smoke cigars and seem to be apparently just having a little steam release from the pressures of life. What was going on was the rituals of the old religion. The beating drums would intensify as the day wore on and Marie would be seen in the center of a circle dancing and expressing her passion for her spirits. There were often sacrifices of live animals, usually chickens and the blood and rum would flow and the drums would beat out the passion of divinity. As Marie would intensify her dance, she would be ridden by a loa with messages for the people. To be ridden by a loa is to have one’s body taken over and to become a channel.


As we left Congo Square we walked to the cemetery. Before we entered, we heard the story of St. Bridget and the Baron – the bride and groom of the cemetery. These are the loa that can exist in the underworld or the black side of magic and in the upper world which is the white side of magic. Upon entering the cemetery for protection, one would place coins at the entrance as gifts to the loa for protection. As we walked around we stopped at the tomb of Marie La Veau where one would see flowers and gifts placed as at an altar. There were red crosses marked on the tomb which were thanks for petitions that had been granted through the intercession of Priestess Marie.


As we walked through the cemetery, Claudine told the story about how widows would come at night with lamps and walk around the cemetery to listen for bells. At a time where people were sometimes buried because they appeared to be dead, but actually might be in a coma bells were tied on the fingers of the corpses and widows would come and walk and listen for the bells. People in the tour stopped and then heard tinkling bells. I looked down and remembered that I had on some bells that I carried as talismans that came from Malta and were considered protection from St. Christopher. We all sighed in relief and proceeded to the end of the tour which was the Voodoo Spiritual Temple on Rampart right across from the place where Marie La Veau conducted the rituals of her people.


We entered the storefront where I had first visited with Patrick but there was more to see. Priestess Miriam invited us into the temple which was in an adjoining room. It was filled with colorful and interesting altars in the name of various loa where one could make an offering to the divinity that is Voodoo. The gifts were simple. Cigarettes, a cup of coffee, some cornmeal, a bottle of rum, were some of the examples we saw. Each loa had a Saint’s name and the saint would have similar energies as the loa whom they masked.


At the back of the temple was a simple area with a bench, a table and some chairs. It was here that Priestess Miriam would do readings for the faithful and the curious. I noticed a cage which housed a snake which I was informed was Congo which Priestess Miriam would dance when doing rituals for her congregation in the same manner as Priestess Marie La Veau had done some hundreds of years ago.


I don’t know how to explain this but I felt at home. I felt a kinship with Miriam that I seldom feel with another person. It was not but a few weeks later through the help of Claudine that I came to work with Priestess Miriam or as some know her Mambo Miriam.