LeBeau Plantation: 1850-2013

I sold a print of this house, which Trish and I photographed last April, on Friday morning. Which is good, but the reason why I sold it sucks: it burned to the ground about 2:00 in the morning.

The woman who bought the print said her husband grew up across the street from the house and used to play in it as a kid, so she wants to give him the print as a Christmas present. He was one of nine kids, and they all played there as children, so she might be buying more.

No one’s lived there in decades and it has no electricity, so when I heard about it I pretty much figured it had to be arson. But I thought it would turn out be accidental: teens having a bonfire or homeless people trying to stay warm, it got out of hand, oops. Turns out it was deliberately set by a bunch of grown-ass men; they were drunk and smoking pot and trying to “summon ghosts” (the place has a reputation of being haunted, which I’m sure is bullshit), and when they didn’t show up, one of them decided to set the place on fire. You can’t see it, but I’m making the angriest, most disgusted face you ever saw right now.

I never could figure out who owned this property when I researched it earlier in the year; turns out a foundation has owned it since the 1960s with the stated intention of restoring it. They’ve collected about $100 million towards that goal and spent about 1% of it, mostly in the form of huge salaries for themselves. Typical Louisiana corruption, in other words. Too bad they couldn’t have parted with some of that money to hire a night watchman.

It’s a very eerie feeling, to know that something I photographed is gone forever. That must have been how Clarence John Laughlin felt towards the end of his life, going over the plates for Ghosts Along the Mississippi and realizing that about 1/3 of those houses are just gone.

I’d like to go photograph what’s left, but that’s going to have to wait because it’s probably still an active crime scene right now.

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Blessing Oil

This is apparently one of those oils that has lots of different recipes, I’ve seen several and very few of them had more than one or two ingredients in common. The one commonality is that they seem like they’d all be very sweet-smelling.

In the end I wound up pulling elements from a few different recipes, so this is more or less a custom blend. It’s ylang ylang, lavender, orange, patchouli, and sandalwood oils in a base of sweet almond oil, with pinches of angelica root and agrimony.

Blessing Oil is an all-purpose oil for petitioning saints (some saints have their own personal oils, but in a pinch you can use this one for any saint); it can also be used in candle spells, in floor washes or baths, and as a personal scent.

The bottle is another $1.99 bottle from World Market.

Money Lamp

This is something I made out of a Topo Chico bottle (a Mexican brand of sparkling water) when I noticed what a lovely shade of green it was. To a lesser extent, yellow is also associated with money in Hoodoo–yellow for gold–but green is the most traditional color. Also, I like green better than yellow.

They don’t have twist-off caps, but if you very gently pry off the cap in several spots, it will remain unbent enough to enable you to pop it back onto the bottle neck. I made a hole in the cap with an awl and fed my wick through it. I’ve given up using vegetable oil and natural wicks–they were always going out and required constant fussing with, and I just got tired of it. I bought some woven wicks and some paraffin oil on Amazon and I’m much happier with the results. (Also, paraffin oil does not go rancid.) Spring for the the ultra pure-burning stuff, it doesn’t smoke or smell at all. And make sure the bottle says it’s for oil candles, not just oil lamps–technically these are oil candles and not lamps.

Inside is a bunch of money-drawing goodies: a cinnamon stick, some dried allspice berries, a High John root, pyrite chunks, and lodestone gravel dressed with gold magnetic sand. They were anointed with Special Oil No. 20 (I haven’t made any money-specific oils yet) and smudged in patchouli incense before being placed inside the lamp. (I had to get over my patchouli prejudice for that. It’s lovely as a base in a complex oil, but by itself it smells like dirt and hippies.)

I had a really cool idea for a paperless name paper that involved carving my initials onto an array of coins that added up to my age–which means I’d have had to to add another penny on November 23rd–but alas, the neck was too narrow for coins, even dimes. So instead I wrapped some paper money around one of my business cards, and put it under the lamp.

Baton Rouge Capitol Building: Fuji Neopan in the Yashica MG-1

This was shot during the August meetup, but I procrastinated on getting the film developed.

I think we have one of the prettiest state capitol buildings, but I really like Art Deco architecture. It’s the tallest, too.

Huey Long’s memorial. He was assassinated inside the building and the bullet holes are still in the wall. Louisianans revere his memory, which I find hilarious because they’d never vote for him today. From his Wikipedia page:

Long is best known for his Share Our Wealth program, created in 1934 under the motto “Every Man a King.” It proposed new wealth redistribution measures in the form of a net asset tax on corporations and individuals to curb the poverty and homelessness endemic nationwide during the Great Depression. To stimulate the economy, Long advocated federal spending on public works, schools and colleges, and old age pensions.

He was also a corrupt son of a bitch, but because of him Louisiana was actually a lot better off during the Great Depression than many other parts of the country–hell, probably better off than we are now.

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Crown of Success Oil

This is another complex oil, I think of it as kind of like the offensive counterpart to the defensive Fiery Wall of Protection Oil. It’s only used for positive works, though. It’s especially good for adults returning to school and people who run their own businesses, but it can be used in any situation where you desire to succeed.

There are a lot of ingredients in it. Mine has more oils than a lot of other rootworkers might use; I don’t like to have a lot of solids in my oils and if I can use the essential oil instead of dried herbs I usually will.

I used orange, allspice, cinnamon, geranium, lavender, bergamot, and rosemary oils; you could use dried herbals for the lavender, bergamot, and/or rosemary if you wanted. I added a pinch of anise seed, a small piece of High John the Conqueror root, and a chunk of pyrite. I’ve read of some rootworkers using a pinch of gold glitter, but glitter is made of plastic (sorry to bust your bubble if you thought it was made of unicorn farts) and I only want organic ingredients in my oils.

The bottle is from World Market, they have a good selection of small bottles for just $1.99.

Crown of Success can be used in candle spells (purple would be the right color here), used to dress things like resumes or business cards or school papers (dab a bit on each corner), or used as a personal fragrance. It’s got a really complex, but clean and bright, smell.

Lomographers of Acadiana: Algiers Point, NOLA

This was October’s meetup. Algiers is an old neighborhood, only the French Quarter is older. It’s on the Westbank, but because of the way that the Mississippi River curves around New Orleans, it’s geographically east of the Eastbank neighborhoods. And the most direct way to get there from western Louisiana is to cross the river twice: first via the Hale Boggs Bridge in St. Charles Parish; then again within the city, via either the Canal Street Ferry or the Crescent City Connection.

It’s a quiet neighborhood, mostly residential, since tourists rarely bother to cross the river. It’s really pretty though, I could see living there if I lived in NOLA. It felt like a real place, and not like the amusement park that the French Quarter and even some of the adjacent neighborhoods sometimes feel like.

Some of these were taken with the Smena 8M and some with the Polaroid Z2300.

Algiers Point is directly across the river from the French Quarter, you can see St. Louis Cathedral and the Cabildo.

The door to the organ loft was open in this Catholic church, so Hope and I poked around up there. I guess this leads into the bell tower.

Algiers Point is supposedly Hoodoo Central in NOLA, but none of the rootworkers advertise. I guess people just know about them if they live in the city and are into it. I’m positive that this place–which looked like a store building, not a house, but didn’t have any signage and had a residential-type door–was one of them.

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Fiery Wall of Protection Oil

This is the most complicated oil I’ve made yet. I used olive oil as the carrier, my gut told me that was the right choice (and anyway this isn’t an oil you would ever use as a personal fragrance–it’s got cayenne pepper in it, for one thing).

There are 3 basic categories ingredients that go into this oil: protective ingredients, ingredients to “heat up” the oil, and things that I think of as “booster” ingredients that add strength.

Protective ingredients:

• Rue
• Sandalwood oil
• Angelica root
• Bay leaf
• Dragon’s Blood resin

“Hot” ingredients:

• Cayenne pepper
• Cinnamon oil
• Ginger

“Boosters”:

• Frankincense
• Blessed salt

You can make your own blessed salt by praying the 23rd psalm over any type of salt. I happen to have a stash of Dead Sea salt crystals that an Etsy seller included as a freebie, so I used a couple of those. I’ve heard of rootworkers who prefer pink salt for this oil, because it’s the presence of iron oxide that makes it pink.

You can use this oil to dress candles, anoint your window and door frames, or as a component in left-handed works to protect yourself from counterattack.

Jeanerette & Franklin, LA

These are 2 old sugar towns that are pretty close to each other off of LA-90, although Jeanerette is in Iberia Parish and Franklin in St. Mary Parish.

I’ve always been fascinated by bricked-up windows and doors.

Alice Plantation was built in 1790, but in the neighboring town of Baldwin. In the 1960s it was floated down Bayou Teche to its present location.

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Mason Jar Vigil Lamp

Lamps have been used in magico-religious systems much longer than candles, although candles are a lot more common now. Lamps are good for long-term spells, and once you have the materials they’re actually more economical than candles. Plus they can be “loaded” with appropriate items.

This is a lamp for protection of the family, so I used a blue mason jar. The fuel is canola oil (olive oil would also be appropriate here), and the wick is a length of rolled cotton bandaging. Inside is a whole angelica root, a chunk of dragon’s blood resin, and a cat’s eye shell–all strong protective items. They were all dressed with Peaceful Home Oil (and I added a few drops of it to the fuel oil) and smudged with sandalwood incense before being placed in the jar. Under the lamp is a petition paper; a family photo would also work.

You can use these lamps for virtually any purpose, just fill them with items appropriate to the purpose and make sure you use the right color. Apparently some people leave theirs perpetually lit, but I am way too paranoid for that. I light it when the sun goes down and pinch it out when I go to bed. (NEVER blow out a lamp, or a candle unless the spell is over–and usually you’re supposed to let them burn out. Blowing a flame out signifies the spell is over.)

Peaceful Home Oil

This one is not, as the kids say, canon. I started with a base of the traditional oil ingredients, but mine has a few extra.

The 3 traditional ingredients for Peaceful Home Oil are lavender, rosemary, and pennyroyal. I used essential oils for the rosemary and lavender, but a local essential oil company mildly freaked out on me when I inquired on their Facebook page if they carried pennyroyal essential oil. They were like NOOOOO THAT DAMAGES YOUR LUNGS IN EVEN SMALL AMOUNTS DO NOT USE IT IN AROMATHERAPY, which was weird because I thought even in aromatherapy they diluted the oils? Undiluted essential oils are overpowering at the very least, and a lot of them can be irritants or even harmful. Anyway, I was like uhhh chill, it would be diluted in a large amount of carrier, but thanks, I’ll just go elsewhere. Anyway, I decided to use it a dried herb instead of an oil.

To the rosemary and lavender oils I added sandalwood oil, which is associated in Hoodoo with happy homes and keeping out evil. And to the pennyroyal I added a pinch of shredded angelica root, which is a powerful guardian and healer; and a small piece of pyrite, because what do (adult) members of a household argue about more than money? The carrier I used was sweet almond oil.

Blue is the color in Hoodoo that corresponds with family matters and spiritual peace, so of course I decided to put it in the little blue bottle that I bought last month. It probably contained medicine of some sort originally. Like the bottle I used for the Uncrossing Oil, the original cork was long gone, so I whittled down a wine cork, then dripped melted sealing wax over the top. Keeping oils in dark glass bottles is practical too, because it keeps out light. Light will makes oils get rancid faster.

So this is my own personal recipe for a supercharged Peaceful Home Oil. It can be used for dressing candles, anointing objects used in Peaceful Home spells, added to floor washes or bathwater. Use it, share it, I would prefer you not sell it but realistically it’s not like I would know.