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New Orleans Landmark: Westgate Necromantic
As New Orleans prepares to celebrate Mardi Gras, the Pagan flavor is clearly evident. There are other places in that great city, however, where various Pagan traditions are in evidence year 'round. One such is the Westgate - Westgate Necromantic.
Founded in 1979, the Westgate is "the world's first and only gallery of Necromantic Art and Literature". Leilah Wendell and Daniel Kemp chose New Orleans for the site of their enterprise after Leilah visited the city for four days in 1990. "I immediately fell into love with the city and its energies," she relates. "It felt like being on the edge of a knife. This city is rife with what I call the "death energy"... New Orleans is a very haunted city. Life and Death dwell side by side here with a great appreciation and acceptance of one another."
These energies inspire Leilah's incredibly unique artistic/writing endeavors.
"No matter where you go, you can feel things. One of the things I like doing
is walking around at night and just 'picking up' on the diverse vibes that come
from some of the old houses. Almost as if you can feel and see all of the lives
that have lived and died there. That coupled with the wonderfully dense fogs
and fantastic lightning storms can make for a very surreal backdrop."
Daniel concurs. "This city is unique. It makes you open up and be honest with yourself. Living here has helped me to find my own voice."
For Daniel, this voice is used to put on paper
"the voice of the night sky", the Lady, which "is and always will be the inspiration behind all of my writings, and everything else. She is what I think of constantly, and She is always present, in everything I do."
Daniel's writing has been well received, in New Orleans, and elsewhere. Leilah's widely-known artwork elicits a variety of reactions from people who view it. "A LOT of people came crawling out of the shadows with their own stories of interactions with the Angel of Death. It seems that no one wanted to be the first to tell their story. Westgate acted like a kind of floodgate, once we creeked the door open, out came many, many similar tales. All in all, we've had wonderful reactions, often very emotionally charged and very grateful for our simply being here for them to talk to when others turn away."
Leilah sees the Angel of Death - Azrael - as part of her spiritual as well as creative life. She explains, "Too often many people tend to think that Necromantic practice and Necromancy are one and the same. In fact, that couldn't be further from the truth.
"In earlier times, Necromantic rituals were often elaborately ghoulish, and irreverently brutal. Because of this, Necromancy (or divination through the dead) was considered a 'black' art. Something engaged in only by practitioners of 'sinister magic'. Necromantic workings, such as those I do, do not involve using brutality, desecration of the dead, or any other practice that one would consider the antithesis of reverence. Such methods are the trappings of fear and ignorance. We do not seek to have the dead tell us our futures, nor to call souls back from that distant realm to do our bidding. In High Necromantic practice, the cadaver is simply a consecrated catalyst - an empty chalice, if you will, that we will attempt to fill with a potent spirit. It is the host body. The death house is not violated, nor is the host. All elements are treated with the love and sacrosanctity a true magician must have if he or she ever hopes to succeed in contacting and sharing consciousness with a divine entity.
"Such Necromantic rituals are neither 'black' nor 'white' magic. They are rites of twilight, a merging of dark and light in a beautiful and natural union where all dividing lines become a blur. Black and white are simply sides of the same coin of Truth. There is no balance of one without the other. In recognizing that death is the twilight of life, can we then ignore that if there was no dark, there would be no light? Everything in the universe must have its balancing factor, or there would be no universe at all. There is great beauty and divinity in the darkness, though fear of the unknown keeps many from looking. As to what it has to do with my art and writing, I would simply say that both are more stream of consciousness interpretations rather than ritualistic approaches."
Daniel understands Leilah's point of view, but looks at things a bit differently. "Certainly, Death and Night have much in common, and share certain imagery. But my focus is towards the living sky, that which we all
inhabit and dance within, living out our lives encompassed by infinity," he explains.
Together, Daniel and Leilah have integrated their respective spiritual and creative efforts into the Westgate's business enterprises - art gallery, publishing house, etc. "People resonated to what I wrote in a big way," Leilah ventured. "I needed to continue doing what I do for Azrael. Other jobs that I had interfered immensely with my inspirations and communications with Azrael, so the natural things was to try to make a living from what I was put here to do full time.
"Now that Westgate has grown so greatly over the passed 21 years, unfortunately our staff has not, which leaves Daniel and I with often way too much rote work at times than we can handle. Naturally, this detracts from time spent simply being open and creative. We try to balance it as best we can, but I'm sure some things suffer because of certain sacrifices we have to make simply to make ends meet and keep Westgate going as a tangible place. Wouldn't it be great if we could pay the electric company in blood, sweat and tears. I think that anyone who commits their entire lives to what they believe in, forsaking all else is forced to walk the same tight-rope, but in the long run, I wouldn't want to be doing anything else."
Daniel hopes to write more in the future, "Also to do more with the
computer via art - photo-collage work and such. This is a new avenue of
expression for me. Seeing as how I can't paint or draw, it gives me a
viable medium through which to express what I feel in a way other than
words. But sometimes, words can paint 
better pictures than images themselves."
Leilah looks forward to doing some new artwork, among other projects. "It's been a while since I've painted. The website takes up so much of our time around here. I'm also working on a hand-made hardcover edition of Our Name is Melancholy which will incorporate all of the Azrael material, including End-Time Fragments and completely new chapters that will update everyone as to what's been going on between Azrael and myself since the last printing of that book. So much needs to be added, as I am not the same person as I was when I began writing that book almost 20 years ago now. I'd like to cap it all off and take the whole Azrael project full circle, and back to source, which is one of my major 'hopes' for the New Year, to return back to that purely inspired part of myself regardless of how much of the world has intruded upon our intimacy."
Still, Leilah admits to being a "spur of the moment" person. "We just listen to the muses and see which direction we are meant to go next. I know that the Westgate as a whole is evolving. Into what next......this I do not know."
This evolution will be interesting to watch.
******
Westgate Necromantic is located at 5219 Magazine Street, New Orleans. Phone: (504) 899-3077. Visit their website: www.westgatenecromantic.com