Mary Oneida Toups

Toups was born on April 25, 1928 in Meridian, Mississippi to Arthur Hodgin and Mary Ellen Killing. She moved to New Orleans in 1968.[1] Toups was married to Albert Toups, a Cajun who was a high-ranking Freemason and ran a bar on Decatur Street.

On February 2, 1972 she chartered the Religious Order of Witchcraft, the first coven to be registered as an official religious organization within the state of Louisiana.[2][3] The order, which often gathered at Popp Fountain in City Park, practiced Western ceremonialist magic, not Afro-Caribbean rooted practices like voodoo and hoodoo that are commonly associated with New Orleans.[4] Later in 1972, Toups caught the attention of writer Howard Jacobs, who wrote about her in his column Remoulade, after she publicly defended witchcraft when the practice had been blamed for a murder in Opelousas.[1] She ran two witchcraft shops in the French Quarter, opening her first store on September 1, 1970.[5] Toups also published the occult text Magick High and Low in 1975.

Toups died in 1981.[1]

Toups is mentioned in the 1994 memoir Under A Hoodoo Moon: The Life of the Night Tripper.[1] She is also mentioned in the book Real Zombies, the Living Dead, and Creatures of the Apocalypse by Brad Steiger.[6]

On the first episode of American Horror Story: Coven Jessica Lange's character, Fiona Goode, references Toups and her coven practicing witchcraft at Popp Fountain in City Park.[1]

• Marie Laveau