Marie Laveau: Voodoo Queen

I am pleasantly surprised this morning to learn how much is now concretely known about the famous Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau (1801-1881), and her daughter Marie Laveau II (1827-ca. 1890s). I first learned about her nearly 40 years ago from books, as research for a play I was writing, and back then she was presented as kind of a semi-legendary figure, which she indeed was. There have been many such figures in American culture who lived in both history and folklore: Davy Crockett, Johnny Appleseed,Grizzly Adams, Robert Johnson. All real people who came to live on in song and story, in tapestries of fact and fiction. It just so happens that Marie Laveau’s line of work was particularly conducive to such imaginative embellishments.

Marie was New Orleans’ third Voodoo Queen following Sanité Dédé and Marie Salopé. Born in the French Quarter, she was a free woman of color, of African. Native American, French, and possibly some other European heritage. Her 1801 birth predated the Louisiana Purchase; New Orleans was in Spanish territory at the time, though that would soon change. Her first husband, whom she married when she was 18, was Jacques Paris, a refugee from the Haitian Revolution, who was a quadroon, or one quarter black person of color. He disappeared some time after their marriage. After that she formed a domestic partnership with Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion, who was of aristocratic French stock.

Creole identity is all about cultural mixture. Voodoo mixes elements of African and Native American religion, Catholicism, folk medicine, and supernatural spiritualism. Marie Laveau wasn’t just a priestess but the leader of the entire Voodoo worshipping community — more like the Pope. People came to her for advice, medical care, midwifery, fortunes, spell-casting (or conjure), exorcisms, and miscellaneous magical and occult services. She sold charms and amulets and gris-gris. She led secret ceremonies in Congo Square, and at her mansion, the Maison Blanche. The fact that she also ran a beauty parlor (giving her access to all the local gossip) was invaluable to her in her reputation for “knowing and seeing all”. Her daughter Marie Laveau II was even more theatrical in her activities, which included annual St. John’s Eve ceremonies in Bayou St John, with bonfires, late night dancing and drumming. Were zombies involved? The romantic in me prefers to think so, but what is better established is that she was a community leader who volunteered her time to minister to the sick and unfortunate, often on a large scale.

After she died, Marie Laveau II (whom most people didn’t distinguish from her mother) continued her work, as though she were the same woman, for at least another decade. She seems to have been a somewhat more disreputable character, running the Maison Blanche as a bawdy house and tavern. Later, local Voodoo practitioners continued to conjure and summon Marie Laveau’s spirit; some still do this day. There is a shop called Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo on Bourbon Street, which I visited in 2015, though it surely has naught or little to do with the real McCoy. There is an International Shrine of Marie Laveau at the New Orleans Healing Center; her actual final resting place is a tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. People make offerings there in hopes it will bring them good luck. Also the Musée Conti Wax Museum had a great display on her.

Angela Bassett is probably the most famous actor to play Marie Laveau; she was a major character in American Horror Story: Coven in 2013. No one knows what she really looked like. The portrait above (c. 1837) is actually named Portrait of a Creole Woman with Madras Tignon, though for many years it was said to be Laveau.