Marie Laveau (c. 1801-1881), also written as Laveaux, was the most famous voodoo queen of New Orleans. She was at her height from the 1830s to the 1850s and has since become a figure of legend. There are at least eight songs about her, like “The Witch Queen of New Orleans” (1971) by Redbone. She even appears as a character in Marvel Comics (as a white witch in black latex). If you visit her grave and draw “XXX” on it with chalk you can make a wish.
She had a daughter of the same name who looked very much like her. She is known as Marie Laveau II, also a voodoo queen. It is hard to tell where the mother leaves off and the daughter begins. It seems likely the daughter took over in the 1860s.
As a voodoo queen Laveau healed the sick, told fortunes and sold gris-gris, a voodoo charm. For $10 you could buy a love powder. For up to $1000 she would use voodoo to help you win an election. She sported a snake.
Some say her power came less from voodoo or any kind of magic and more from knowing the right things about the right people: she was a hairdresser who worked for the wives of the top men in New Orleans. It seems likely she knew all about their love affairs and business deals – either from the wives themselves or from their servants.
It is hard to know where fact ends and fiction begins with her. In what seems to be the truest story a man came to her desperate because his son was about to be sentenced to death by a judge. He offered to give her a house. A few days later, to everyone’s surprise, the son got off.
She was Creole, one of the French-speaking people of New Orleans, and a quadroon too, meaning she was one-fourth black: her father was a white planter, her mother was half white and half black (and maybe part Native American too). Laveau was a free person of colour: she could own property but could not marry a white person.
She married her first husband in 1819, Jacques Paris, a free person of colour who fled the slave uprisings in Haiti. He died a year later and she became a hairdresser known as Widow Paris. Her next husband was Christophe Glapion. Because he was white their marriage was a common law one. Some say she had 15 children, but others say that some of those were her sister’s, also named Marie Laveau.
Laveau was a believing Catholic and even went to mass every day. It was common in those days for people to believe in both Catholicism and voodoo at the same time.
There were sightings of her after she died. Some may have been her daughter, but some took place even after she had died too. Laveau’s ghost is said to appear on St John’s Eve, June 23rd, wearing a handkerchief with seven knots.
– Abagond, 2010.
See also:
- voodoo
- Creoles
- Catholic
- Haiti: a brief history
- Redbone: Witch Queen of New Orleans
- diunital cognition – how Laveau could be sincerely both a voodoo queen and a devout Catholic
Wow. Fascinating post.
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I still believe that my scott-free escape from the clutches of some rather nasty New Orleans cops back in 1988 was due to Marie’s intervention.
Seriously.
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I remember learning about Marie Laveau when I first went to New Orleans and been fascinated by her ever since. I didn’t know her Second husband was white though. I thought it was a common law because his first wife ran off and since the marriage was still valet in the eyes of the Catholic church hence why they were common law. Well that’s what I read. So I don’t know.
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Glapion, from what I read, was white but passed as a person of colour for most purposes.
More here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=O9ezkMf_ce0C&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=Christophe+Glapion&source=bl&ots=Jj-zW4SjlZ&sig=Dd5OEsN9RjTS9IXJBQA5hcEFKds&hl=en&ei=EQR7S4G_H8eztgfZgP2wCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CC4Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=Christophe%20Glapion&f=false
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Ah I see how. Thanks for the Link Abagond. Wow a white man passing for “colored” that’s something you don’t hear everyday.
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interesting but creepy, which means i’m going to read further 🙂
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Laveau was a believing Catholic and even went to mass every day. It was common in those days for people to believe in both Catholicism and voodoo at the same time.
Still common here in Brazil today. In fact, many terreiros won’t let you take devotions UNTIL you’ve been baptized in the Catholic Church.
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Thank you for giving the world a historical tidbit of the people of Louisiana. Those with African ancestry helped revive Voudou and other African-based cultural religions in the New Orleans community and in other parts of the world. All was not lost during Slavery as was hoped for because our ancestors maintained much of what they could regardless of the circumstances.
Marie Laveau was a descendant of wealthy “gens de couleur libre” in NOLA where many who left Haiti and the other French Caribbean Colonies as refugees for France, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Louisiana or elsewhere flourished. Others, however, remained in Haiti and played an influential role in Haiti’s liberation too bad with the later descendants adding to Haiti’s misery.
Desiree Rogers claims she is a descendant of the Glapion Family and that Madame Laveau is a relative.
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Interesting. I don’t think the revival of Voodoo is a gd thing… Regardless of where ur from or where you are lol! But still quite interesting. I know someone whose religion is voodoo (they’re from Haiti) I’m not surprised tht ppl try an tie Cathoolism up w/ voodoo its (Catholism) is BARELY even Christian, lol. Catholics diverge sooooooooooo much from what The Bible actually teaches! Lol. Ah dear!
Gd post.
Thad! Tell us! I would luv to know why u feel tht way u seem so logical, and well… An unbeliever in spiritual things…
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Well, I and a few other punks were spreading lit around the French quarter in 1988 calling kids to come protest against a Klan rally prior to the 1988 Republican convention in town. 6 very racist cops picked us up and kicked the shit out of us for four hours. The only one of our group who got away was a native-born NOLA resident. She went to Laveau’s tomb that night and asked that she intervene.
The cops charged us with all sorts of nasty crap, like they normally do when they beat people up: assaulting an officer and the like. Serious stuff, some of it felonies. Mysteriously, no prints or fotos of us were taken at booking. We were released to our own recognizance 3 days later under incomplete names. It’s the only time I’ve seen American cops screw up that gratuitously and I still can’t rationally explain the whole deal.
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Marie Laveau was also featured in Neal Gaiman’s book American God. Clarence King was another example of the rare phenomenon of white men passing as black to marry a black women. The well known explorer and scientist passed himself off as a Pullman porter to his wife, who did not find out the truth until he died.
Check out the story: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HST/is_2_5/ai_99375223/
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hmm, getting beaten up for 4 hrs doesn’t sound fun….
I must say I’m nt sure if I would ave run to the grave of sum1 to ask for hlp… Lol. Interesting story thnks for sharing.
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To RainaHavock:
At certain points in my life I have passed as “mixed”. I even had an elderly African-American gentlemen in the south (Alabama) refer to me as a “half-breed”. I am white; however, I used to have coarse, curly hair which I feel people often assumed I must have been mixed. Put that together with a tan inthe summer time, and you end up with a white man passing for “light skinned” brother.
An interesting note: I used to live in Brazil. Everyone there considered me white although they would use an expression with me jokingly. They would say that I must have “a foot in Africa.” (meaning heritage due to my hair.) The irony is that I inherited my hair from my mother who was predominantly Irish.
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I enjoyed the story relayed by Abagond about the white “Glapion” family member going to great lengths in order to be with Marie Laveau and be a family.
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today i wake up with only one picture in my mind , i just have a sensation that i need it to , look for help in new orleans and the only thing i knew was that i needed to talk with a lady in new orleans, and i need to look for st mathews street, i google it
and i reallized that in new orleans almost all the street have saint names and and googloling more i found the name of marie lavoe and i knew that that was the lady that i looking for , i stat reading about her and i realize that she is dead for more than a 100 years
i start reading more and i found that we there were some coinsidence about me and her , im half black , half white,im born in santo domingo (republica dominicana), im catholic but im also believe in vodoo and she die in 1881 and i born in1981 almost a 100 years after her dead. it was kind of a lot of coincides, i want to got o neworlens to visit the tumb i think she is calling me, if somebody know hoe i can get in contact with any meber of her family please let me know
i will appreciated that so much
my email is heidy2581@hotmail.com
thanks.
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Great entry! I just posted a link to this on my art page on Facebook… I’m about to start a painting of her 🙂 I browsed through your blog a bit… Nice work 🙂
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August 2 0 1 2 ! ! ! I HAVE A L W A Y S L O V E D QUEEN MARIE STORIES ! ! ! I WAS FINALLY BLESSED TO GET TO VISIT HER FINAL RESTING PLACE. IT WAS A SLIGHTLY CLOUDY DAY. I IMMEDIATELY FELT HER PRESENCE. SHE IS REALLY WITH US IN STRONG SPIRIT TODAY, BELIEVE IT. I ASKED HER TO INTERCEDE FOR ME (FOR A CRISIS). I LEFT HER A GIFT OF A SWEET FRAGRANCE . I WANTED MORE TIME AT THE SITE BUT THERE WERE SOOOOO MANY PEOPLE WAITING TO DO WHAT I JUST DID. WE LEFT THE SITE AND WENT TO GIVE THANKS IN A NEARBY SHRINE. AS WE WENT TO THE SHRINE’S GIFT SHOP I WAS GOING TO BUY SOME ANNOINTING OIL . I WAS GOING TO PAY FOR IT AND THE LADY AT THE COUNTER SAID SHE WOULD TAKE CARE OF IT AND SHE WISHED US A SAFE ROADTRIP HOME. SHE WOULD NOT LET ME PAY FOR THIS OIL!. I ACCEPTED HER OFFER AND SAID I WOULD PRAY FOR HER WELLBEING ALSO. WHEN I GOT IN THE CAR I THOUGHT THIS WAS A KIND GESTURE. LATER THAT DAY I LOOKED AT A PICTURE OF QUEEN MARIE . I THOUGHT OF THE LADY IN THE GIFTSHOP, SHE RESEMBLED QUEEN MARIE ! ANOTHER THING, WE NEVER MENTIONED COMING TO NEW ORLEANS ON A TRIP SO HOW WOULD SHE KNOW ? ? ?
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Thanks for directing me to this post. I read her first husband disappeared after 6 months of marriage.
Do you believe in voodoo or things of the supernatural?
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