Voodoo queen

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Voodoo in New Orleans can scarcely be separated from its dominant figure, Marie Laveau, about
whom many legends swirl. According to one source (Hauck 1996):
She led voodoo dances in Congo Square and sold charms and potions from her home in the 1830s.
Sixty years later she was still holding ceremonies and looked as young as she did when she started.
Her rites at St. Johns Bayou on the banks of Lake Pon[t]chartrain resembled a scene from hell, with
bonfires, naked dancing, orgies, and animal sacrifices. She had a strange power over police and judges
and succeeded in saving several criminals from hanging.
Writer Charles Gandolfo (1992), author of Marie Laveau of New Orleans, states: Some believe that
Marie had a mysterious birth, in the sense that she may have come from the spirits or as an envoy from
the Saints. On the other hand a plaque on her supposed tomb, placed by the Catholic Church, refers to
her as this notorious 'voodoo queen.'
Who was the real Marie Laveau? She began life as the illegitimate daughter of a rich Creole plantation
owner, Charles Laveaux, and his Haitian slave mistress. Sources conflict but Marie may have been
born in New Orleans in 1794. In 1819 she wed Jacques Paris who, like her, was a free person of color,
but she was soon abandoned or widowed. About 1826, she began a second, common-law marriage to
Christophe de Glapion, another free person of color, with whom she would have fifteen children.
Marie was introduced to voodoo by various voodoo doctors, practitioners of a popularized voodoo
that emphasized curative and occult magic and seemed to have a decidedly commercial aspect. Her
own practice began when she teamed up with a heavily tattooed Voodoo doctor"-known variously as
Doctor John, Bayou John, John Bayou, etc.-who was the first commercial Voodooist in new Orleans to
whip up potions and gris-gris for a price (Gandolfo 1992, 11). Gris-gris or juju refers to magic
charms or spells, often conjuring bags containing such items as bones, herbs, charms, snake skin, etc.,
tied up in a piece of cloth (Antippas 1988, 16).
Doctor John reportedly confessed to friends that his magic was mere humbuggery. He had been
known to laugh, writes Robert Tallant in Voodoo in New Orleans (1946, 39), when he told of selling
a gullible white woman a small jar of starch and water for five dollars.
In time Marie decided to seek her own fortune. Working as a hairdresser, which put her in contact with
New Orleans social elite, she soon developed a clientele to whom she dispensed potions, gris-gris
bags, voodoo dolls, and other magical items. She now sought supremacy over her rivals, some fifteen
voodoo queens in various neighborhoods. According to a biographer (Gandolfo 1992, 17):
Marie began her take-over process by disposing of her rival queens. . . . If her rituals or
gris-gris didn't work, Marie (who was a statuesque woman, to say the least) met them in the

street and physically beat them. This war for supremacy lasted several years until, one by
one, all of the former queens, under a pledge, agreed to be sub-queens. If they refused, she
ran them out of town.
By age thirty-five Marie Laveau had become New Orleanss most powerful voodoo queen-then or
since. She won the approval of the local priest by encouraging her followers to attend mass. While she
charged the rich abundantly, she reportedly gave to the needy and administered to the suffering. Her
most visible activities, however, were her public rituals.
By municipal decree (from 1817) slaves were only permitted to dance publicly at a site called Congo
Square. These public displays of Voodoo ceremonies, however, revealed nothing of the real religion
and became merely entertainment for the curious whites (Antippas 1988, 14-15). More secret
rituals-including fertility rituals-took place elsewhere, notably on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain.
It is difficult at this remove to assess just how much of Maries rituals was authentic voodoo practice
and how much was due to her incredible imagination and an obsession for the extreme. She staged
rituals that were simulated orgies. Men and women danced in abandonment after drinking rum and
seeming to become possessed by various loas (figure 1).
Seated on her throne, Marie directed the action when she was not actually participating. She kept a
large snake called Le Grand Zombi that she would dance with in veneration of Damballah, shaking a
gourd rattle to summon that snake deity and repeating over and over, Damballah, ye-ye-ye!
Once a year Marie presided over the ritual of St. Johns Eve. It began at dusk on June 23 and ended at
dawn on the next day, St. Johns day. Hundreds attended, including reporters and curious onlookers,
each of whom was charged a fee.
Drum beating, bonfires, animal sacrifice, and other elements-including nude women dancing
seductively-characterized the extended ritual. Offerings were made to the appropriate loas for
protection, including safeguarding children and others from the Cajun bogeyman, Loup-Garou, a
werewolf that supposedly fed on the blood of victims (Gandolfo 1992, 18-23).
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