Tag: history

The Footprint of the Past

August 21, 2025

The Footprint of the Past

When I first moved to New Orleans, my soon-to-be husband and I would visit restaurants in the West End area of the city near the Lakefront. West End is a man-made rectangle of land on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Back then, it boasted of such culinary establishments as Brunings, The Bounty, and Fitzgerald’s, as well as many others. After we were married and our first son had just been born, I would wait out in the car with the baby while my husband ran into Fitzgerald’s to take out a seafood platter for us to split back home. And I have to tell you, it was quite a treat.

But once we moved away from the city and Hurricane Katrina hit, all of those restaurants were gone, and to this day, none are rebuilt in that area. I often see people online in New Orleans groups saying, “Remember those restaurants at West End!”

Across the street from them, around a series of boathouses, was a park, just a walking park filled with trees and benches here and there. Well, in digging around the past for my novel, The Alchemist’s Bride, I discovered there used to once be much more. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was a popular amusement park in that very spot often called the “Coney Island of New Orleans.” It was filled with rides, hotels, restaurants, and a boardwalk. But there is not a trace of it anymore, except that sedate walking park. To this day, many people don’t even realize that it ever existed.

And with all of this, there is one more thing. Between West End and Pontchartrain Boulevards, there is a broad, long, well-landscaped neutral ground now filled with trees, grass, and sidewalks. On a hill near its center is a Celtic cross. In my time in New Orleans, we would often pass that cross, wondering why it was there. Once I found out about West End Amusement Park, I also found out there was once a great canal in that very spot called the New Basin Canal. It was a shipping canal built with the intent of connecting Lake Pontchartrain through the swamp land to the uptown section of the city. In 1831, Irish immigrants were brought into the city as cheap labor for this project. An estimation of 8000 of these laborers died during its construction, many from yellow fever and cholera, working in the swamp water to build the canal. And this enigmatic Celtic cross commemorates that loss of life. But so many don’t know this history, unless you dig to find it. And as a result, that cross stands silent and mysterious to most.

I suppose the point is that there is a precariousness in forgetting and even suppressing history, distorting facts. It so important to remember the good and the bad so that it can always serve to illuminate our steps in the future.

Chiseling into the Past – The Society of Magnetism

July 27, 2025

This summer, I’ve been intensely involved in deep edits for my novel The Alchemist’s Bride. This book, entirely set in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, has afforded me the opportunity to dig around in New Orleans’ illustrious past. And finding a few historical nuggets that I had no idea existed previously.

As this book touches on some metaphysical concepts, such as astral projection, alternate planes of existence, and mesmerism, it was of great value to me to discover that a group formed back in the 1850s, composed predominantly of French-speaking citizens, studied mesmerism, drawing from the renowned work of Franz Mesmer. They were called The Société du Magnétisme de la Nouvelle-Orléans or The Society of Magnestism of New Orleans. During its existence, its membership included doctors, attorneys, and brokers.

“The Société du Magnétisme de la Nouvelle-Orléans was the largest, most active, and most enduring American mesmeric (hypnotic) organization of its day.

This important group was officially established in 1845 and was in existence until the time of the Civil War. French influence upon the early course of development of hypnosis in America was significant in New Orleans, and also New England. The New Orleans Society’s transactions were published in a Paris-based French-language periodical, Journal du Magnétisme, the constitution was published in the 1847 volume.

Rules of the New Orleans Society of Magnetism

The study of magnetic phenomena and research into their origins, as well as the most appropriate procedures for bringing them about.
The dissemination of magnetism by informing the world of the universal means of healing and preservation that nature has given to each of us.
The therapeutic application of human magnetism to the treatment of diseases.
To reach that goal, the New Orleans Society of Magnetism, founded on the 9th of April 1845, established …

The New Orleans group dissolved probably because of the blockade of the South which disrupted contact with France and other difficulties occasioned by the conflict. … No hypnosis organization of consequence subsequently appeared on the American scene until nearly a century later when the Society for Clinical and Experiment Hypnosis was founded in 1949.”

Gravitz, M.A., Gerton, M.I. (1986) The Société du Magnétisme de la Nouvelle-Orléans: its place in the early history of hypnosis in America. International Journal of Psychosomatics. 33(4):11-4.

It is no secret, or perhaps in our present-day society it is, that the Spiritualism movement, which took root overseas in the early nineteenth century, also gained a foothold in New Orleans, attracting considerable study in the realm of esoteric arts. It seems that the lost Society of Magnetism may have also been part of that wave.

There is no question that there are still treasures in the past and knowledge that may require a bit of rediscovery.