"At one time, it is said, a person could not walk down a street in the Algiers district without smelling the scent of Van Van oil. Prepared from aromatic Oriental grasses, all-purpose Van Van is favoured for dressing Amulets and Charms and is reputed to Clear Evil from the Door-Step, Change Bad Luck to Good, and Open the Way to New Opportunities."
Lucky Mojo Curio Co. catalogue
Van Van is an old hoodoo formula for oil, incense, sachet powders, and washing products that are designed to clear away evil, provide magical protection, open the road to new prospects, change bad luck to good, and empower amulets and charms. It is the most popular of the New Orleans or "Algiers style" hoodoo recipes. As an amulet enhancer, it is closely associated with both the rabbit foot and the lodestone -- clicking on the links to those two pages will take you to a 1940s advertisement for a rabbit foot key chain charm that was sold with a small vial of Van Van oil and a 1930s label for Mo-Jo Brand Lodestone in Van Van oil. This style of dual-packaging of Van Van oil with lucky amulets is still in use by the Lucky Mojo Curio Co.
Like the rest of the Lucky Mojo line, these products contain genuine reputed love-drawing herbs and herbal essential oils, not synthetic fragrances. The ingredients in Van Van include Lemon Grass, plus other herbs and essences. Lucky Mojo labels are adapted from vintage packaging and in many cases the images are as traditional as the ingredients themselves.
It is an interesting curiosity to note that due to the "Van" sound in the name of this formula, many people assume that it contains Vanilla scent -- but such is not the case. Instead, as pointed out by Dr. James Dotson, who has extensively researched the history of perfumes, Van Van is a phonetic pronunciation of the French word Verveine, a name of a flowering plant commonly known as Verbena or Vervain in English. In the Creole French dialect of Louisiana, Vervain is pronounced "Vaah-Vahn". And, indeed, Dr. Dotson has found records of old hand-written formularies archived at the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum which indicate that as early as 1900, "Verveine" perfume was made with Lemon Grass. The reason for this substitution, as best i can determine, is that Verbena itself does not produce a stable essential oil for perfumery, but Lemon Verbena, a popular species of Verbena, does smell a great deal like Lemon Grass or its close relative, Citronella Grass.
Finally, here is a label for a product that is no longer
manufactured: Valmor's Van Van Hair Dressing Pomade, which "contains our Van
Van brand oil." This hair-slicking product was marketed to
African-Americans during the 1950s and 1960s, and had the
added benefit of granting the wearer luck and protection. As
usual with Valmor hair-care products, a sad-looking woman
with "bad" hair is contrasted with happy people
whose hair has been "temporarily straightened" and appears "neat." The
same form of hair-care self-loathing can be seen in another
Valmor product from 20 years earlier, Lucky Brown Hair Dressing.
The magical aspects of the Van Van pomade are indicated to the
knowledgeable buyer in symbolic form: eye, heart,
four-leaf clover,
star, horseshoe, key, and
wishbone. Similar images appear on
Lucky Mojo brand
Van Van products to this day.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to offer my thanks to Dr. James Dotson
for his historical research help with this page.
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www.yronwode.com, the home page for the Yronwode family
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www.southern-spirits.com, Ghostly Voices from Dixie Land
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www.gardenofjoyblues.com, former hippie commune in the Missouri Ozarks
Satan Service:
www.satanservice.org, theory, practice, and history of Satanism and Satanists