New Orleans Hoodoo Signs

Call them signs, call them sigils, call them chicken scratchings or illiterate art, but, for the purpose of this article, we're going to call them New Orleans Hoodoo Signs.  They're everywhere.  Here is Exhibit A:

New Orleans Hoodoo signs seen in Mid-City, New Orelans.

You can find chalk drawings and finger-scribbles in the dirt all over New Orleans.  When you look down while you are walking in New Orleans you'll discover a multitude of details most people overlook.  Keep your eyes open.  New Orleans is full of overlapping charms.  The city is like an onion.  The deeper you get into New Orleans the more dense it gets.

There is voodoo in New Orleans.  Like love, voodoo is in the air here.  

Keep your eyes open in New Orleans.  Keep your eyes open for colors and voodoo.  Keep your eyes open for New Orleans hoodoo signs.  It could be something so innocent-seeming as a hopscotch court scratched onto the asphalt, or it could be something so diabolical as your full name as it appears on your birth certificate written in pig blood on the inside of every window of your house.  That last one is the worst.

Sometimes it's a joke, a lark, a prank.  Sometimes its a scam, a hoax, an advertising gimmick.  Most of the time it's a gang of kids between the ages of 11 through 14 having a good time at someone else's superstitious expense, except when it's not.  When it's not, it's a real curse.  Real like your name is written in the Devil's address book to take you to where you deserve to go.  It is so real there's no mercy.  

It's no walk in the park when someone curses you with some real New Orleans hoodoo signs.  Brrrrr.  Even only the thought of it will give anyone with any sense the shivers.  

New Orleans hoodoo signs come in many variations:

Some people say the Chariots of the Gods landed in New Orleans.

Sometimes you can tell what they mean.  Most of the time you can't.  Who knows?  Somebody does.  If you tallied up all the unexplained accidents that bloom like skunkweed every day in New Orleans, and you compared that to the number of New Orleans hoodoo signs around the city, I expect you would come up with a 2:1 ratio.  Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

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They run an excellent blog over there, too, in case you're interested.  The focus is a little different but it's all pure New Orleans state of mind.  Be a New Orleanian when you're in New Orleans.