Saturday, May 21, 2011

" ... how to make a human zombie with poison extracted from a blowfish ..."

Meet Mr. Jerry Gandolfo, New Orleans' reigning Voodoo savant!

"Gandolfo, 58, is a caretaker, not [a] voodoo witch doctor --

"in fact he's a practicing Catholic..."


Of the Brackettville, Texas - style of Catholicism, maybe??!! :)


Snippet from the Smithsonian magazine's profile, New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum. In the June 2011 edition.

"A former insurance company manager, Gandolfo, 58, is a caretaker, not [a] voodoo witch doctor -- in fact he's a practicing Catholic."

Inside the museum: "Labels are few and far between, but the objects all relate to the centuries - old religion, which revolves around asking spirits and the dead to intercede in everyday affairs."

There are also "statues of the Virgin Mary, a clay govi jar for storing souls, and the wooden kneeling board allegedly used by the greatest voodoo queen of all: New Orleans' own Marie Laveau.

"Gandolfo says, I try to explain and preserve the legacy of voodoo.

"Gandolfo, who is unmarried and has no children is usually on hand to discuss voodoo history or to explain -- in frighteningly precise terms! -- how to make a human zombie with poison extracted from a blowfish.

"[H]e says, Put it in the victim's shoe, where it is absorbed through sweat glands, inducing a death - like catatonic state.

"Later the person is fed an extract containing an antidote to it as well as powerful hallucinogens.

"Thus the zombie appears to rise from the dead, stumbling around in a daze ...

"[S]ays Martha Ward, a University of New Orleans anthropologist who studies voodoo, The museum is an entry point for people who are curious, who want to see what's behind this stuff. How do people think about voodoo? What objects do they use? Where do they come from? [The museum] is a very rich and deep place...

"It's unclear how many New Orleanians practice voodoo today, but Gandolfo believes as much as 2 or 3 percent of the population, with the highest concentrations in the historically Creole Seventh Ward.

"The religion remains vibrant in Haiti ..."

Kinda of curious, when you stop to think that New Orleans was "visited" by Hurricane Katrina & Haiti by an earthquake, huh? :(

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