The Mystic Voodoo
Where Art, Psychology, and Mythology Collide
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The Mystic Voodoo Where Art, Psychology, and Mythology Collide
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Marie Laveau Continued...
Eventually, Marie Laveau, with all of the secret knowledge which she had gained from the Creole boudoirs combined with her own considerable knowledge of spells along with her flair, became the most powerful woman in New Orleans. Whites of every class sought her help in their various affairs and amours while blacks saw her as their leader. Judges paid her as much as $1000 to win an election, other whites paid $10 for an insignificant love powder. She freely helped most blacks. To visit her for a reading became fashionable.
Almost every New Orleaniian had a story to tell about Marie Laveau by the beginning of World War II. Some of the stories concerned the mother while others concerned the daughter who strikingly resembled her mother and continued the dynasty. While most of the tales are exaggerated, some are more reliable, particularly those in Voodoo In New Orleans by Robert Tallant, and Mysterious Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen by Raymond J. Martinez.
At the age of 70, in 1869, Marie gave her last performance as a voodoo queen. She announced she was retiring. She went to her Saint Ann Street home, but she never completely retired. She continued her prison work until 1875, and died in 1891. Then a similar tall woman with flashing black eyes, with the ability to control lives, emerged as Marie Laveau II.
Marie Laveau Glapion was born February 2, 1827, one of the 15 children crowding the Saint Ann Street cottage. It was never known whether her mother, Marie I, chose the role for her daughter, or whether Marie II chose the role to follow in her mother’s footsteps for herself. By some accounts she shared her mother’s features. Others say the pupils of her eyes were half-moon shaped. Apparently she lack the warmth and compassion of her mother because she inspired more fear and subservience than her mother did. Likewise, she began as a hairdresser, eventually ran a bar and brothel on Bourbon Street between Toulouse and Saint Peter Streets.
Marie continued operations at the "Maison Blanche" (White House), the house which her mother had built for secret voodoo meetings and liaisons between white men and black women. Marie II was proclaimed to be a talented procuress, able to fulfill any man’s desires for a price. Lavish parties were held at the Maison Blanche offered champagne, fine food, wine, music, and naked black girls dancing for white men, politicians, and high officials. They were never raided by the police who feared that if the crossed Marie she might "hoodoo" them.
June 23rd, the Eve of Saint John’s Day was one of the most important days in the New Orleans’ voodoo calendar. All the faithful celebrated out at Saint John Bayou. Saint John’s Day (for John the Baptist) corresponds to the summer solstice (see Sabbats) which has been celebrated since ancient times. But by the time Marie II arrived she had celebrated more than once.
The Saint John's Day celebration of 1872 began as a religious ceremony. Marie came with a crowd singing. Soon a cauldron was boiling with water from a beer barrel, into which went salt, black pepper, a black cat, a black rooster, a various powders, and a snake sliced in three pieces representing the Trinity. With all this boiling the practitioners ate, whether the contents of the cauldron or not is not known. Afterwards or during the feast was more singing, appropriately "Mamzelle Marie
On June 16, 1881, Marie I, as Widow Paris, died in her Saint Ann Street house. The reporters painted her in the most glorious terms, a saintly figure of 98 (actually 87), who nursed the sick, and prayed incessantly with the diseased and condemned. Reporters called her the recipient "in the fullest degree" of the "heredity gift of beauty" in the Laveau family, who gained the notice of Governor Claiborne, French General Humbert, Aaron Burr, and even the Marquis de Lafayette. Her obituaries claimed she lived a pious life surrounded by her Catholic religion, with no mention of her voodoo past. Even one of her surviving children, Madame Legendre, claimed her saintly mother never practiced voodoo and despised the cult. in Lake Pontchartrain in the 1890s, but some people claimed to have seen her as late as 1918.
Death did not end the power of Marie Laveau, however. Though reportedly buried in a vault in the family crypt in St. Louis Cemetery, no. 1. The vault bears the name of Marie Philome Clapion, deceased June 11, 1897. But this vault still attracts faithful practitioners who still leave gifts of food, money, and flowers, and ask for Marie's help after turning around three times and making a cross with red brick on the stone. The cemetery is small but the tomb seems to come out of nowhere when walking among the other crypts.
In the St. Louis Cemetery, no 2, there is another vault bearing the name of Marie Laveau. This vault has red crosses on it and is called the "wishing vault." Young women often come to it to petition when seeking husbands. Stories have it Marie rests in various cemeteries in the city. Legend also tells she frequently visits the cemeteries, as well as the French Quarter, and her voodoo haunts. A.G.H. Reference
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen.
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Haunted New Orleans Wish Spell
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." Then it was cooling off time at which all stripped and swam in the lake. This was followed by a sermon by Marie, then a half hour of relaxation, or sexual intercourse. Then four naked girls put the contents of the cauldron back into the beer barrel. Marie gave another sermon, by this time it was becoming daylight and all headed for home.
