There Once was a Witch Queen in Old New Orleans: The Story of Mary Oneida Toups

 

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ary Oneida Toups is recognized to this day as the most powerful witch to have practiced in New Orleans in the 20^th century.  She was the founder of a powerful coven - The Religious Order of Witchcraft - the first to be recognized by the State of Louisiana as an official “church,” and formed the central axis of a powerful network of practitioners dedicated to the pure, unfettered study and practice of Old Style European witchcraft that still exists in New Orleans today.

   Many things about Mary Oneida (she preferred just Oneida) are shrouded in mystery, such as her origins.  She is said to have been born in Mississippi, in the heart of Delta country, in April 1928 and, like many youths of her generation, when she reached her teens she began to feel restless and took to the road. Hitchhiking, exploring the back roads and byways of the rural South, her path eventually brought her to New Orleans, where she soon became part of a burgeoning there.      

     The New Orleans of the early 60s was filled with a current similar to that moving through cities such as San Francisco and New York, a youthful current of exploration and discovery, sometimes aided by drug use that culminated in the Summer of Love and Woodstock moments.  In New Orleans, where everything has always been more “laissez faire” or laid back, the moment crystallized in an “Age of Aquarius” kind of esoteric awakening.  Oneida arrived here just as this new awareness was about to bloom.

   Always attracted to the supernatural and unexplained, and possessing tremendous innate psychic gifts, Oneida plunged deeply into esoteric and occult studies.  Soon she met a man whose interests in the occult complemented her own; they hit it off immediately; this man was “Boots” Toups.  The couple quickly set up house together and after a whirlwind courtship, they were married.  They shared several mutual friends, and this tight-knit group of like-minded individuals became Oneida’s most loyal followers were about to form.

Excerpt from Hoodoo and Conjure magazine, There Once was a Beautiful Witch Queen in Old New Orleans: The Story of Mary Oneida Toups by Alyne Pustanio. 

Image Copyright 2013 Denise Alvarado, All rights reserved worldwide. 

Article Copyright 2013 Alyne Pustanio, All rights reserved worldwide.