MARIE LAVEAU

As the infamous voodoo queen of New Orleans, Marie Laveau held a vast following in the mid-1800’s, from the superstitious masses as well as prominent men and women of society. She brilliantly blended elements of christianity with Haitian voodooism, and her intervention could deliver anyone from seemingly insurmountable problems. Matters of society, government, love, health, and money were all under her control.

Some considered her powers saintly, while others believed her demonic, but they all had faith in her charms of protection and flocked to the weekly rituals held in the yard of her home on St. Ann Street. With the rhythm of drums and vulgar dancers, she would appear with her monstrous snake, the Great Zombi, and dance herself into a trance. The serpentine energy would overtake her body, and the ancient African deity of the snake would speak through her. The serpent has long symbolized the spinal Kundalini energies, representing creation, wisdom, clairvoyance, and the primal life force. When excited, these energies raise the lower forces of sexual desire to a higher vibration of spiritual awareness. This tradition conjures images of Eve in the Garden of Eden and the serpent’s tempting invitation to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Marie acknowledged this connection of our higher and lower selves, and her orgiastic dance rituals were great events. The rich and famous often attended in disguise to join the hysteria. Her revels culminated on St. John’s Eve. The yearly ceremony took place on June 23rd on Bayou St. John where the flickering light of bonfires and the sound of drums filled the night.

The facts of Marie’s life are complicated by legend, but this much is known. She was a free person of color, uneducated, and thought to be a mixture of black, white, and Indian blood, and rumored to be descended from the noblest bloodline in France. Her first husband was Jacques Paris, a free man of color, who disappeared after three years of marriage. Marie became known as the “Widow Paris” (as carved on her tomb in the St. Louis Cemetery). She later formed an alliance with Captain Christophe Duminy Glapion, also a free man of color. Although they never married, they had fifteen children together, and she buried him in her family tomb.

Marie was obsessed by the fate of condemned prisoners and had permission to visit the captives in jail. She took them food she had prepared, and she nursed yellow fever victims without fear of infection. In general, she was a charitable person who lived simply. Later in life she turned to the church. In 1881, she died at home, in her sleep, at the age of 87, and she was laid to rest in a dignified Catholic manner with no mention of her Voodoo past.