Try this new one:
Voodoo Queen
The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau
'The forty-four cemeteries of New Orleans lend themselves to mystery, ghost
stories and occult tourism. Local citizens call them 'cities of the dead'.
First time visitors receive a surreal shock - ancient ruins, marble
monuments and tall crypts celebrate death and refuse to sterilize, deny or
make it merely a medical fact Against the skyline, angels, crosses and
statues of grieving mothers make the aura of decomposition exquisite. Mile
after mile of tombs resemble houses, small mansions or places of worship -
neighborhoods where another branch of the family lives . . . The Creole
citizens of New Orleans came to be infatuated with tales of open graves,
gruesome deaths and skeletons or ghosts who lead independent lives along the
avenues of the cities of the dead. . . (p. 94)
This new biography by Martha Ward is published by University of Mississippi
Press, at approx 20 UK pounds (ISBN 1-57806-629-8). Beneath the dull gray
cover lurks a colorful hardback documenting the history of the New Orleans
Voodoo clan of Marie Laveau and her eponymous daughter. Marie I, born in
1801 died 1881, is buried in the famous New Orleans Tomb which every year is
visited by many thousands of pilgrims. She and her daughter lived
extraordinary lives, spanning the purchase of Louisiana by the fledgling
USA, the civil war, the decline and suppression of Voodoo and the rise of
segregation.
Its unlikely that any earlier author had as much freedom to research the
subject, using original documentary material, her own intuition and the
extensive archive of oral history compiled during the years of the
depression by the Federal Writer's Project. Marie Laveau's magick is clearly
neither wholly black nor white - she was charismatic enticing her second
racially white husband to declare himself black despite the vicious race
laws of the time. Time and time again her actions emerge as not quite what
they seem - the accusation that she owned slaves changes significance when
the author's painstaking research exposes how she and her husband
manipulated the law to resist slavery and secure a kind of freedom to anyone
in their orbit.
Her daughter (also Marie Laveau) at first resisted but later embraced
Voodoo. 'she liked parties, she loved the attention men paid to her striking
good looks. She danced the Bamboula and the Calinda in Congo square on
Sunday afternoon. There each time she ran into Jim Alexander (Dr Jim not Dr
John??) a voodoo practitioner and respected two-headed doctor of Hoodoo, he
confronted her; he told her that she radiated power. He offered to initiate
her, to be her mentor, to take her through the door to the spirits. She
turned him down time after time, because "she would rather dance than make
love". One night however ' a great rattlesnake entered her bedroom and spoke
to her.' p110.
Some say that in 1999 she returned to a St John's Eve Voodoo gathering on
Bayou St John - hopefully she will return. Highly recommended book [Mogg]
: ) .....................................: )
Mandrake.uk.net
Publishers
PO Box 250, Oxford, OX1 1AP
+44 1865 243671
homepage: <http://www.mandrake.uk.net>
Blogs =
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-----Original Message-----
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jolane Abrams
Sent: 06 January 2006 13:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Delurking: Maya Deren on Voudou
Hello out there - been hanging around in the background for a while. My
background is mostly scientific - I've done molecular biology and
neuroscience - but I'm getting more and more interested in esoterica these
days, possibly as a result of frustration at the limits of scientific
method :).
I've been interested in African Diaspora religions for about 10 years now
and have just read Maya Deren's classic Divine Horsemen:the Living Gods of
Haiti.
What I find particularly interesting is her evidence for the combination
of of indigenous American traditions into Voudou, and I wondered if there
had been any further work done in this area. A Google search has not
turned up anything useful, other than "Her argument seems frail." (I don't
have access to any university databases, unfortunately).
Any pointers much appreciated...
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