A Woman with Answers

The tradition of Southern Conjure is centuries old, tracing its history back to the forced migration of Africans to the Americas during the era of the slave trade. In New Orleans, Louisiana, the unique blend of Creole culture and Catholic tradition yielded Louisiana Voodoo and its undoubted queen, who served the people of New Orleans as a healer, herbalist, entrepreneur, spiritual leader, social worker, and community activist. This episode brings you the story of Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. 

Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben, with original music by Purple Planet.

Episode sources 

For more on spiritual practices in the African Diaspora, check out Oracles of the Woods.
For more on the history of the Ursuline nuns, check out The Devils of Loudun.

Chapters

• 0:00 Pre-roll
• 0:07 Intro
• 1:55 Marie Laveau
• 7:56 Louisiana Voodoo
• 15:01 The Laveau Legacy
• 18:06 Conclusion
• 20:10 Outro

Transcript

Pre-roll
You’re listening to Enchanted, a podcast on the history of magic, sorcery and witchcraft. I’m Corinne Wieben.

Intro
In a collection of stories from Black folklore in the United States, one account tells of a young preacher who had trouble getting members of his parish to attend Sunday services. He reported, “I was in my study praying when the door opened and a little Conjure man came in and said softly: ‘You don’t understand de people. You must get you a hand as a friend to draw ‘em. Ef you will let me fix you a luck charm, you’ll git ‘em.’” The minister took the charm from the Conjure man and for the next four years had a packed church every Sunday, but he knew the real reason. “I knew it was not the gospel’s power,” he said, “but that wretched ‘luck ball.’” Ridding himself of the charm, he claimed, “I… have never been able to draw an audience since.”

The tradition of Southern Conjure is centuries old, tracing its history back to the forced migration of Africans to the Americas during the era of the slave trade. In New Orleans, Louisiana, the unique blend of Creole culture and Catholic tradition yielded Louisiana Voodoo and its undoubted queen, who served the people of New Orleans as a healer, herbalist, entrepreneur, spiritual leader, social worker, and community activist. In this episode, I bring you the story of Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.

Marie Laveau
Marie Catherine Laveau was born a free woman of color in New Orleans, Louisiana on a Thursday, September 10, 1801. Born under Spanish rule, her Creole ancestry marked her as a woman who bridged worlds and transcended boundaries. Members of Louisiana’s Creole community represent a unique blend of French, Spanish, West African, Central African, and Indigenous American ancestry and culture. After a brief transfer of power to the French, the United States of America purchased the territory of Louisiana from the Republic of France and its First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1803, and Marie, who had gone from being under Spanish rule to French before she could walk, now found herself a citizen of the United States.

To fully grasp Marie Laveau’s place in New Orleans, it may help first to introduce Père Antoine. Arriving in New Orleans around 1780, Padre Antonio de Sedella had set up shop as the leader of the Spanish Inquisition. However, unlike his colleagues, he failed to prosecute heretics or to seek out women accused of witchcraft. Instead, he became embroiled in local church politics, angering his superiors and fellow clerics. His legacy is such that he would later be celebrated in New Orleans as a local saint in the form of Père Antoine. One of the priest’s special causes was lending spiritual and political support to help women and children of color secure their freedom from slavery. Marie Laveau devoted herself to assisting Père Antoine in his ministry, especially in visiting prisoners and tending to the sick and dying.

That Marie Laveau would be Catholic was almost a given. Since the 1752 Code Noir or “Black Laws” instituted as French royal policy in Louisiana, Catholic authorities were under orders to immediately baptize incoming Africans into the Catholic faith. Since there was a shortage of clergy to educate these new Catholics in doctrine and practice, that fell to the Ursuline nuns. The Ursuline order in France had long catered to the daughters of elite households, granting them a surprising amount of liberty compared to other monastic orders and providing them with religious education. It was these nuns who built a system of public education and a convent that received women of all races. In January of 1815, when Marie was just thirteen years old, British forces attempted to seize New Orleans as part of a series of conflicts following the War of 1812. Some 1,800 British troops landed on the eastern shore of the Mississippi River and marched toward the city, but when an American commander escaped and warned General Andrew Jackson of the impending attack, American troops besieged the British camp, eventually forcing the British to withdraw. As the Battle of New Orleans raged just a few miles from the city itself, the citizens gathered at the Ursuline chapel as the nuns prayed for the city’s deliverance. The nuns begged the Virgin Mary to spare the city, promising to say an annual Thanksgiving Mass if she would only award victory to General Jackson’s troops. The nuns prayed through the night until a messenger arrived at dawn, announcing the American victory.

It was with the Battle of New Orleans that a young Marie was initiated into nursing the sick and wounded, beginning her career as a “fever nurse” serving the city. A few years later, on August 4, 1819, Marie married Jacques Santiago Paris, a free man of color who had fled the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution in 1809. Père Antoine performed the ceremony. That Marie could marry at all was nothing short of a miracle. It was forbidden for a woman of color to marry a white man, and free women of color outnumbered free men of color three to one. They remained married until Jacques’ disappeared in 1820. While Jacques’ fate was officially unclear, Marie began styling herself “The Widow Paris” and working as a fever nurse within the city. Their two daughters, Félicité, born in 1817, and Angèle, born in 1820, disappear from the records shortly after this.

As a widow, Marie then moved in with Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion, a nobleman with French ancestry. This quasi-martial arrangement, called plaçage, in which a white man agreed to provide for a free woman of color and any children they produced, was not only typical for New Orleans but encouraged by city authorities, one further reason for outsiders to condemn New Orleans as a city of sin and excess. Together, Marie and Christophe reportedly worked to free enslaved peoples, including forging official documents. The couple would remain together until his death in 1855. Over the course of their long relationship, they had at least seven children, though only two lived to adulthood: Marie Eucharist Eloise Laveau, born in 1827, and Marie Philomène Glapion, born in 1836. Throughout her youth, Marie also assisted her community by learning and perfecting the spiritual practice that would later be known as Voodoo.

Louisiana Voodoo
Both Marie and her daughter, Marie the Younger, used the power and glamour of Voodoo to help those in need in their communities, whether that meant providing healing, offering spiritual empowerment, or, as one rumor held, sparing Death Row inmates the indignity of a public hanging by offering them poison. Voodoo women served as social workers, helping to provide guidance and smoothing conflicts within their communities. When white residents complained of raucous Voodoo gatherings in Congo Square, the New Orleans police sought to keep people of color from congregating there. The dances held at the square were displays of unity among the African diaspora of New Orleans, which white city authorities no doubt viewed as part of the problem. In 1843, the city built an iron fence around the square and posted police at the entrances. Marie Laveau used all the powers at her disposal—both magical and political—to gain access. One onlooker reported, “People complained about her and policemen were stationed at the gates. When Marie saw those policemen, she looked at them, never said a word, and walked right in. She just mesmerized those men and a lot of other people, ‘cause they never said a word or tried to harm her.” Another said, “Marie Laveau brought the people into the square with her unmolested by the policemen. She hypnotized them and they could not do anything.” In the square, Marie would dance and sing, winding a snake around her body and enacting rituals of spirit possession, calling power into her own body and the body of her community.

Marie the Elder offered nursing, herbal remedies, and prayers for patients suffering from the constant epidemics of fever in the city, and for those who saw her heal, the relationship between Voodoo and medicine was blurred. One witness reported seeing Marie treating victims of cholera, saying, “If that cramp and fit isn’t broken in ten minutes you die. She made a charm of brimstone, tar and feathers, and when a person would be taken with a fit, she would lit it under their nose and it would immediately and perceptibly abate the cramps. She was very powerful in the yellow fever too, and in fact, was a mighty helpful woman in the community. She had a powerful knowledge of the human system, and knew what to do to keep off or cure any kind of sickness.” Her own younger daughter Philomène said, “She was skillful in the practice of medicine and was acquainted with the valuable healing qualities of indigenous herbs. She was very successful as a nurse, wonderful stories being told of her exploits at the sick bed. In yellow fever and cholera epidemics she was always called upon to nurse the sick, and always responded promptly. Her skill and knowledge earned her the friendship and approbation of those sufficiently cultivated, but the ignorant attributed her success to unnatural means and held her in constant dread.”

For the Voodoo women who served New Orleans, secrecy was essential, in part to protect themselves from any outside interference and in part to maintain the mystique that increased their social status and political power. Marie, like many Voodoo practitioners, wove together Catholic and Creole traditions into something entirely unique. In August of 1928, the novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston came to New Orleans to find and interview practitioners of Conjure and root workers. There she met a man she labeled Luke Turner, a “conjure-priest“ who claimed to be a grand-nephew of Marie the Younger. To Hurston, Turner revealed the Psalms of Voodoo, a series of prayers and invocations that offered help and answers to those seeking help. One such prayer, called “The Lady Who Wishes to Cross Her Enemies,” reads, “O good mother, I come to you with my heart bowed down and my shoulders drooping and my spirit broken for an enemy has sorely tried me… On my knees I pray to you, good mother, that you will cause confusion to reign in my enemies’ house, and that you will take their power from them and cause them to be unsuccessful.” The priest or priestess then answers on behalf of the Good Mother, “Oh my daughter, go you in peace and do the works required of you so that you will have rest and comfort from your enemies, and that they will have not the power to harm you and lower you in the sight of your people and belittle you in the eyes of your friends. So Be It.”

Both Catholic and civic authorities viewed Voodoo with some suspicion since at least the mid-eighteenth century, when courts adjudicated the effectiveness of gris-gris, magic designed to protect or harm its target through the use of amulet bags called hands, charms, spells, and potions. The existence of gris-gris threatened to overturn racial, social, and gender hierarchies, as authorities and slave owners feared that those they enslaved might use it to claim power and assert their own agency over their lives and bodies. Marie’s New Orleans Voodoo carried a decidedly Catholic flavor, focusing on the intervention of her namesake, the Virgin Mary. However, Voodoo expanded on the Catholic concept of the Madonna and combined her with the notion of the Good Mother, creating Mary as a goddess of fortune and of the Earth, the embodiment of feminine divinity. In this tradition, Mary incorporates the qualities of Yoruba goddesses, including Yemọja, goddess of creation, the moon, and motherhood, Oshun, goddess of water, fertility, and love, and Ọya, goddess of storms and the dead. 

In addition to the Great Mother, New Orleans Voodoo, like Catholicism, incorporates the veneration of saints into daily spiritual practice. One such saint is unique to New Orleans and remains a beloved source of help. St. Expedite (Espidee) is depicted as a Roman soldier standing on a raven that croaks, “Cras! Cras!” In Latin, cras is the word for “tomorrow,” meaning “wait on it, do it later.” However, a nearby sundial in the image reads “Hodie,” meaning “today, now.” One woman’s testimony demonstrates the results of venerating St. Expedite, saying, “Once you is gris-grised always call on St. Expedite for help. I found salt on my steps one mornin’, and right away I snapped my fingers and St. Expedite heard me. A woman across the street let out a scream and I found out later she had fallen off a ladder and broke her arm. She was the one what had tried to put a curse on me. You see how fast St. Expedite work?”

The Laveau Legacy
Marie Catherine Laveau Paris Glapion died on June 15, 1881, at the age of 79. The account of her funeral in the Louisiana Writer’s Project states that it was a lavish affair attended by a wide cross-section of New Orleans society. New Orleans’ conservative newspaper, The Democrat, wrote that “Much evil dies with her, but should we not add, a little poetry.” Her legacy is far-reaching, and a rich tradition of lore surrounds her and her family. One such tradition maintains that people saw Marie the Elder in New Orleans after her death. However, some historians have pointed out that this confusion could be caused by the fact that her daughter, Marie the Younger, took up her mother’s practice and position as a Voodoo priestess in the city.

The life and practice of Marie the Younger was very different from her mother’s. Marie the Younger was serving as a Voodoo priestess in a post-Civil War New Orleans, a very different world from that which existed just a few decades before. When Marie fell in love with a married man—and bore him five children—she felt the increasing burden of the scrutiny of city authorities and the press. Shortly after her mother’s death in 1881, Marie the Younger disappeared, giving rise to any number of rumors and wild stories about her alleged death, escape, or spiritual ascendance. After 1881, New Orleans city authorities began to crack down on Voodoo practitioners, especially women, causing hundreds to abandon the city after lengthy campaigns of stalking and harassment.

Thanks to the mystique and sense of power surrounding both Maries, images of Marie Laveau abound in the visual art of the city. She is the subject of at least a dozen popular songs and name-checked in dozens more. She has appeared as a character in novels, television, and film, including Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, Charlaine Harris’s True Blood series, the Marvel Comics Universe, and played by Angela Bassett in the television show American Horror Story’s Coven and Apocalypse seasons.

Marie Laveau’s legacy lives on in New Orleans. She is believed to have been buried in the Glapion family crypt in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1. To this day guests visit the site, some marking the tomb with X marks, knocking on the tomb, and speaking their wish aloud. If their wish is granted, they are to come back, circle their X, and leave an offering, keeping Marie Laveau firmly entrenched in the lives of the people of New Orleans and beyond.

Conclusion
On December 17, 2013, a vandal crept into St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and vandalized Laveau’s tomb by covering it in bright pink latex paint. The Archdiocese of New Orleans washed the paint off the plaster covering the tomb since the paint would seal in moisture and ultimately destroy the structure. Following this incident, the Archdiocese closed off public access to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Those who wish to visit the historic cemetery today must book a guided tour. In 2017 the Abandoned Tomb Initiative began the restoration of family crypts without current descendants in the city, starting with the tomb of Marie Laveau.

In her obituaries, news sources described Laveau as “woman of great beauty, intellect, and charisma who was also pious, charitable, and a skilled herbal healer.” Some Lousiana Voodoo practitioners have incorporated Marie Laveau into their practices as a lwa, a spirit who serves as an intermediary between practitioners and the divine. In death, she continues her work as a priestess, bridging the worlds of the living and the spirits once more.

In her poem, “Portrait of Marie Laveau,” Mary Morris writes:

She sees the future      a king with a dream / Knows in the underworld of grief / people write with a wishbone given by the Madam / of St. Ann Street         because she listens / to yearning        this queen of aspiration / a princess noir        a woman with answers

Outro
If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe to Enchanted wherever you listen. This episode was produced by me with original music by Purple Planet. You can find them at purple dash planet dot com. If you want to learn more about Marie Laveau, be sure to check out the sources link in the show notes, especially Martha Ward’s Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau. Special thanks to Enchanted’s Patreon patrons for supporting the production of this and every episode. If you want to support Enchanted, please visit patreon dot com slash enchantedpodcast. If you’re looking for a way to support the show that won’t cost you anything, you can always give Enchanted: The History of Magic & Witchcraft a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, Audible, or wherever you listen and recommend it to your friends. You can get in touch with me via email at enchantedpodcast at gmail dot com or follow on Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr at enchantedpodcast. As always, for more information and special features, visit enchantedpodcast dot net. I’m Corinne Wieben. Thank you for listening and stay enchanted.