Steven Cornelius was born and raised in Northeast Mississippi and is married to a beautiful, auburn haired second generation Irish woman with deep roots in Galway and Sligo. His love of books began at a very early age. When night fell on the farm and chores for the day were complete, he and his family sat around the fire and read until bedtime. Many of his childhood adventures are featured in his writing. He attended the University of Mississippi, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees while participating in Air Force ROTC. Steve completed more than thirty years Air Force service in the US and overseas. For the Distant Traveler Trilogy, he drew upon experiences and memories collected during assignments around the world. After retiring in 2015, Steve decided to get serious about a lifelong passion for writing. His most recent work has been published in Mississippi magazine (October 2022) and Louisiana Living (November 2022). He just finished a multicultural novel set in Cuba and Houston Texas featuring Hispanics as the main characters. Steve has written one hundred and five short stories collected in two volumes and posted stories on the Mississippi Folklore and True Appalachia webpages and has a following of more than 3,000 regular followers on each page.

Marie Laveau

By Steven Cornelius

I first learned Marie Laveau’s story when I stumbled upon her House of Voodoo[1] and Museum one hot October afternoon in the French Quarter while wandering down Bourbon Street. It was 1978 and I was a young hick from North Mississippi having my eyes opened by all there was to see and do in the big easy. The supernatural, odd and arcane have always fascinated me and New Orleans is a concentrated dose of earthly pleasures to tempt tourists, locals and country boys like me; everything seems to come at you from everywhere, all at once. The sights, smells and sounds of the French Quarter can be overwhelming assault on the senses, especially during the long, hot summer season. Marie’s shop is a microcosm of all that can be found in the Quarter, minus the wonderful food and in your face strip club action. Once inside, I loved the weird sights and exotic smells of the small shop. Tiny cellophane packages stuffed with pungent herbs hung from small display boards, but the real eye opener for me was glancing up to see yellowing bundles of amputated chicken’s feet dangling just above my head. Their tendons dried and contracted turned the deep yellow feet into wicked looking claws. The sight was so New Orleans crazy, I laughed out loud, causing the emerald green and crimson dashiki wearing clerk to glance my way. I pointed up and asked, “Are those chicken feet real?” She nodded her silk turbaned head, offered a toothy grin and assured me, “Ya mon…dey’s the real deal.” I returned her smile and continued exploring…tiptoeing down each narrow, overcrowded aisle, careful not to break anything.

Curiosities and treasures big and small filled every nook and cranny. Colorful glass bottles filled with scented oils leaned against a large plate glass window in gravity defying haphazard stacks…each bottle catching bright autumn sunlight…small prisms flooding the shop with a kaleidoscope of colored light. Along each side wall, shelf after shelf was piled high with scented candles of all shapes and sizes. A couple of bookcases flanked the cash register, groaning under the weight of voodoo related reference books. Jewelry with strange symbols and designs (Veve’s) hung on the wall behind the cash register. I never bought anything in her shop but returned several times. The same clerk was there each time and never crowded me or acted annoyed over my loitering around and being a tightwad. I have always been a sucker for book shops and during frequent visits to the city that care forgot, I prowled the city looking for antique books. That was how I found Marie’s place. A creature of habit, I returned time after time to prowl around The Quarter. It was easy to fall in love with the crescent city with her narrow streets and back alleys. I usually spent time wandering Bourbon, Dauphine and Saint Anne Streets. Once in a while, if it wasn’t too hot or raining, I stretched my legs and invested a little shoe leather walking north of Bourbon Street about a mile and stepping through the plastered brick and wrought iron gate of St. Louis Cemetery Number 1.

I am that odd duck who loves the serene beauty and reverent atmosphere of cemeteries, the older the better. St. Louis #1 was the jackpot! It was calming to walk through row after row of raised, elaborately decorated, white marble and plaster funeral crypts. I don’t recall walking past Marie Laveau’s mausoleum; I’m sure I would have remembered doing so. Sadly, and a sign of the times I suppose since 2015, vandalism, robberies and assaults caused the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans to close the cemetery except to approved tours. Everywhere I roamed in New Orleans and especially the French Quarter, three hundred years of terrible and wonderful history intermingled and hung in the air; a thick mist of pain, sorrow and joy swirling around me as I walked through dimly lit cobblestoned back alleys. Marie’s Voodoo shop was a tiny, concentrated dose of New Orleans, very intriguing and a lot spooky.

A few movies, like the 1973 James Bond film “Live and Let Die,” showcased Voodoo as a frightening and powerful way to raise the dead to do your bidding or torment the living by putting Voodoo spells or hexes on them. As with any religion or supernatural belief, there are true believers and an equal number of hucksters preying on the needy and desperate, running scams to line their own pockets. Everything I’ve read about Marie Laveau convinces me that she was a true believer who tapped into the spiritual side of that powerful, pagan religion. Voodoo as practiced by Marie had little in common with the sensationalized depictions in Hollywood movies from the 1930s until present day. The Vodou Religion Marie Laveau embraced offered thousands of Caribes and Africans a small measure of comfort to those unfortunate souls forced into slavery and relocated to south Louisiana never to see their families again. Through Marie Laveau and Voodoo, the spiritually and geographically dispossessed had a connection to family left behind in Haiti, Jamaica or Africa…alive and dead.

Marie was attuned to and focused upon spiritualism and the unseen world “beyond the veil” that separates us from the spirit world. Sharp as she was, Marie must have realized early on that Voodoo could also be a powerful insurance policy, protecting her and her family…keeping thieves and other mischief makers away. I have no proof but do believe that mystic powers attributed to Marie kept rogues away from her and those she loved by playing on their ignorance and superstition…stoking fears that she would turn them into zombies or maybe a toad.[2] In keeping with the live and let live attitude that has always permeated New Orleans, Marie intermixed Catholicism with Voodoo practices with no great objections or protests from local priests. Her legend as a Voodoo priestess aside, Marie was also a remarkable woman with a big heart when it came to helping those in the community. Accounts of the time describe her as a beautiful creole woman who was as smart as she was pretty. Though there is no record of her sitting for a portrait or photograph, several likenesses of her have been painted, one of which is included on page 1.

The fact that she was a free woman of color in the pre-civil war south was amazing in itself. Marie Catherine Laveau was born September 10, 1801, of African, French and Spanish blood, a time when New Orleans was still under Spanish control. Marie excelled at what many of us have trouble doing today regardless of sex or color…she made her way and prospered in a world fraught with peril. I’m sure Marie quickly grasped the fact that then as now, no one owed her anything and would take everything she strived to attain without a moment’s hesitation. Her reputation as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans spread far and wide and was instrumental in her prosperity. Many traveled hundreds of miles seeking her intervention in their material or spiritual affairs. Marie also provided comfort and prayed with death row prisoners. It would be wrong to paint her as only a practitioner of Voodoo. She was a community leader and helped whenever and however she could. Marie loved New Orleans and performed many good works within the city, including caring for the sick by providing herbal remedies and prayers during the Yellow Fever outbreak of 1878. She would have been about 77 years old at that time, which makes her work with the sick and dying during the outbreak even more remarkable.

On August 4, 1819, she married Jacques Paris (also known as Jacques Santiago in Spanish records), a Quadroon free man of color who was a refugee from the Haitian Revolution raging in the former French colony of Saint-Domingue.^[7] Their marriage certificate is preserved in the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.^[1] Marie and Jacques had two daughters, Félicité in 1817 and Angèle in 1820. Both disappear from public records in the 1820s. Jacques Santiago Paris was a carpenter who died shortly after the birth of his second child with Marie. Jacques Paris’ death certificate was recorded in 1820.^[4] A widow with two small children before reaching the age of 21, Marie entered into a common law marriage (domestic partnership) with Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion, a nobleman of French descent. She lived with Christophe until his death in 1855. According to birth and baptismal records, they had 15 children, though that number may include grandchildren. Sadly, only two daughters survived into adulthood. The older was named Marie Eucharist Eloise Laveau (1827–1862) and the younger was named Marie Philomène Glapion (1836–1897). Both were baptized in the Catholic tradition. A reporter from the New Orleans Republican, in an article published on May 14, 1871, described Marie Laveau as a “devout and acceptable member of the Catholic communion.”

The Voodoo Queen also sought pardons or commutations of sentences for those she favored and was often successful in her efforts. In addition to prison visits, she provided midwifery training and practical household management lessons to women of the community and performed religious rituals without charge. Laveau was a dedicated practitioner of Voodoo, and a homeopathic healer before that term entered our vocabulary, a herbalist, and successful entrepreneur. Marie was a prominent and respected religious and community leader. Marie Laveau opened a beauty parlor where she was a hairdresser for the wealthier families of New Orleans. A sharp operator, she excelled at obtaining inside information on her wealthy patrons at the beauty parlor by listening to ladies gossiping, or from their servants whom she either paid or offered herbal potions to heal mysterious ailments. She then used this “inside information” during Voodoo consultations with those same wealthy Orleanian women to enhance her image as a clairvoyant; and to give them practical advice. Marie also made money by selling her clients Gris Gris [3] as charms to help their wishes come true. In her role as a Voodoo practitioner, customers often appealed to Laveau for help with family disputes, health, finances and romance. Laveau could be seen performing rituals and services in her home on St. Ann Street and on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

Laveau’s is generally believed to have been buried in plot 347, the Glapion family crypt in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans, but this has been disputed by Robert Tallant, a journalist who used her as a character in his novels. Until 2015, tourists could visit her mausoleum. According to a decades-old tradition, people wanting Laveau to grant them a wish had to draw three X’s on the crypt face, turn around three times, knock on the crypt and yell out their wish. If it was granted, the supplicant was expected to return, circle their X, and leave an offering. Some followers of Louisiana Voodoo pray to Laveau as if she were a Lwa [4] spirit, asking her for favors and channeling her via spirit possession, though not all Louisiana Voodoo believers do this. Some leave offerings of hair ties by the plaque at her former home at 1020 St. Ann Street, gifts which honor her fame as a hairdresser.

A number of songs have been recorded about Marie Laveau, including “Marie La Veau” by Papa Celestin; “Marie Laveau” written by Shel Silverstein and Baxter Taylor and recorded by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show (1972) and Bobby Bare (1974); “The Witch Queen of New Orleans” (1971) by Redbone; “Dixie Drug Store” by Grant Lee Buffalo; “X Marks the Spot (Marie Laveau)” by Joe Sample; “Marie Laveau” by Dr. John; and “I Will Play for Gumbo” (1999) by Jimmy Buffett.

Plaque at the grave of Louisiana Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau

The Los Angeles based blues band Canned Heat featured a five-minute instrumental called “Marie Laveau” on their second album Boogie With Canned Heat (1968), written by and featuring their lead guitarist Henry Vestine. A musical from 1999, Marie Christine, is also based on the life of Laveau. Laveau inspired a number of fictional characters as well. She is the protagonist of such novels as Robert Tallant’s The Voodoo Queen(1956); Francine Prose‘s eponymous Marie Laveau (1977); and Jewell Parker Rhodes‘ Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau (1993). Laveau appears as a supporting character in the Night Huntress novels by Jeaniene Frost as a powerful ghoul still living in New Orleans in the 21st century. She also appears as a background character in Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January mystery series, set in New Orleans. Marie Laveau appears in Neil Gaiman‘s novel American Gods, under her married name, Marie Paris. Marie Laveau’s tomb is the site of a secret, fictional underground Voodoo workshop in the Caster Chronicles novel Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Laveau’s gravesite is the setting of a pivotal scene in Robert J. Randisi‘s short story, “Cold As The Gun,” from Foreshadows The Ghosts of Zero. The mother of Hazel Levesque, one of the characters from Rick Riordan‘s The Heroes of Olympus book series, was known as “Queen Marie,” a famous fortune-teller who lived in New Orleans. In Charlaine Harris’s True Blood (Sookie Stackhouse novels) book series, the character Hadley is lured to her death at the site of Marie Laveau’s tomb.

References

“Marie Laveau | History of American Women”. History of American Women. 2012-07-01.
Fandrich, Ina J. (2005). “The Birth of New Orleans’ Voodoo Queen: A Long-Held Mystery Resolved”. Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 46 (3): 293–309. JSTOR 4234122.
Marie Laveau The Mysterious Voodoo Queen: A Study of Powerful Female Leadership in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans by Ina Johanna Fandrich
Loustaunau, Martha, Denmke. Marie Laveau. Salem Press Enclycopedia.
“Marie Laveau: Separating fact from fiction about New Orleans’ Voodoo queen”. NOLA.com.
“Dictionary of Louisiana Biography – L – Louisiana Historical Association”. www.lahistory.org. Archived from the original on 2020-12-01.
Vitelli, Dr. Romeo. “The Marie Laveau Phenomenon”. archive.randi.org.
Tallant, Robert (1946). Voodoo in New Orleans (1984 reprint). New York: Macmillan Company – reprint Pelican Publishing. ISBN 978-0-88289-336-5.

[1] a traditional Afro-Haitian religion. Vodou or Voodoo represents a syncretism of the West African Vodun religion and Roman Catholicism by the descendants of the Dahomean, Kongo, Yoruba, and other ethnic groups who had been enslaved and transported to colonial Saint-Domingue (as Haiti was known then) and partly Christianized by Roman Catholic missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. The word Vodou means “spirit” or “deity” in the Fon language of the African kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin).

Vodou is a worldview encompassing philosophy, medicine, justice, and religion. Its fundamental principle is that everything is spirit. Humans are spirits who inhabit the visible world. The unseen world is populated by lwa (spirits), mystè (mysteries), anvizib (the invisibles), zanj (angels), and the spirits of ancestors and the recently deceased. All these spirits are believed to live in a mythic land called Ginen, a cosmic “Africa.” The God of the Christian Bible is understood to be the creator of both the universe and the spirits; the spirits were made by God to help him govern humanity and the natural world.

The primary goal and activity of Vodou is to sevi lwa (“serve the spirits”)—to offer prayers and perform various devotional rites directed at God and particular spirits in return for health, protection, and favour. Spirit possession plays an important role in Afro-Haitian religion, as it does in many other world religions. During religious rites, believers sometimes enter a trancelike state in which the devotee may eat and drink, perform stylized dances, give supernaturally inspired advice to people, or perform medical cures or special physical feats; these acts exhibit the incarnate presence of the lwa within the entranced devotee. Vodou ritual activity (e.g., prayer, song, dance, and gesture) is aimed at refining and restoring balance and energy in relationships between people and between people and the spirits of the unseen world. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2022

[2] Zombi, in Vodou, a dead person who is revived after burial and compelled to do the bidding of the reviver, including criminal acts and heavy manual labour. Scholars believe that actual zombis are living persons under the influence of powerful drugs, including burundanga (a plant substance containing scopolamine; reportedly used by Colombian criminals) and drugs derived from poisonous toads and puffer fish. (See also zombie.)

[3] Gris-Gris is a talisman, amulet, voodoo charm, spell, or incantation believed capable of warding off evil and bringing good luck to oneself or of bringing misfortune to another. Merriam-Webster Dictionary.com

[4] Lwa, also called loa or loi, are spirits in the African diasporic religion of Haitian Vodou. They have also been incorporated into some revivalist forms of Louisiana Voodoo. Many of the lwa derive their identities in part from deities venerated in the traditional religions of West Africa, especially those of the Fon and Yoruba. Wikipedia