Weekly Reader: Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Leveau by Martha Ward; The Voodoo Queens Come To Colorful Life In This Engaging Enchanting Biography

Weekly Reader: Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Leveau by Martha Ward; The Voodoo Queens Come To Colorful Life In This Engaging Enchanting Biography

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: In New Orleans, the name Marie Leveau is a familiar one. In her lifetime, she was considered “The Voodoo Queen”, a priestess who used her connections to Voodoo to help friends and curse enemies. There are plenty of Voodoo shops dedicated to her memory and her grave in the St. Louis Cemetery is often decorated with beads, rum, and other gifts from people who wish to bestow good fortune upon friends or ill luck upon enemies. Many have reported encounters with what could be her ghost. (including this Reader who had a Tarot reading from a very strange woman who disappeared right after.) In her book, Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Leveau, Martha Ward, University Research Professor of Anthropology, Urban Studies, and Women's Studies at the University of New Orleans captures the colorful and controversial spirit of Leveau, showing us a woman and a religion that have both been misunderstood and giving us a book that is both an engaging and effective way in explaining who Leveau was and what Voodoo was really all about. Many misconceptions that people have about Leveau and Voodoo are challenged by Ward’s excellent research and writing that helps the Reader understand Leveau and a religion that has been demonized by Hollywood films and zombie culture.




One of the misconceptions that Ward dispelled right away was that Marie Leveau was only one woman. Actually, she was two: a mother and daughter, Marie the First Leveau Paris Glapion (1801-1881) and Marie the Second Eucharist Heloise Leveau Glapion (1827-1875?). Both women studied Voodoo and developed reputations within their communities as leaders in both the sociopolitical and religious structures.




Much of the book focuses on the Leveaus’ involvement as community leaders as well as priestesses. New Orleans Voodoo, as described by Ward, appears to be a spiritual practice that thrives on communal involvement. The Laveaus often led ceremonial dances and meetings in which the guests sang songs, danced, and ate gumbo while appealing to “La Grand Zombi” (or the Great Spirit.). Their get-togethers were also filled with magic as people appealed to the Leveaus to aid them in obtaining money to repay debts or to curse someone who wronged them. Many of the passages describe the give-and-take process as people who believed in Voodoo offered trinkets, food, and other items to the Leveaus in exchange for their aid in casting spells and offering gris-gris (amulets and other magical talismans that offer protection for the users.).




Voodoo is explored brilliantly in this book by bringing it down to its historic roots. Brought by enslaved people from West Africa to America, Voodoo has its roots in Catholicism as its practitioners communicate with Saints and participate in Catholic rites and rituals as well as Shamanism in which the religious figures have a close connection to the Spirit World and are bridges between the Spirits and the Physical World. Those who follow Voodoo also invoke ancestors as well as spirits who protect them from harm.

The book also is quick to show the differences that New Orleans Voodoo has compared to others such as the more well-known branch, Haitian Voodoo. The emphasis on community is much stronger in the New Orleans branch as Voodoo is often used as a means to bring people together and to challenge the sociopolitical structure around its users.(This was particularly important as many of the practitioners of Voodoo in the Leveaus’ day were often escaped slaves, freed blacks who purchased their freedom, and white women who recognized the following as one that offered them power.)

Also there is a strong female-oriented presence within the New Orleans version as many of the rituals and meetings are headed by women such as the Leveaus. The spiritual training is often passed down from mother to daughter (as between Marie the First to Marie the Second and possibly how the First learned from her mother.) though the training can be between a man and a woman (as one of Leveau's descendants known as “Luke Turner” did to author, Zora Neale Hurston). The female leaders were called Voodoo Queens.

While Voodoo does involve spells from people seeking revenge against hated enemies is present, Voodoo is not the Satanic Zombie-creating religion many perceive. Instead it is a vibrant spiritual practice which involves a deep sense of community and a personal connection with Spirits.




Besides using Voodoo, the Leveaus were also involved in aiding the people around them on more physical levels. Marie the First often helped nurse the sick during the Yellow Fever epidemics and she and her husband also used some clever legal means to buy slaves with the intent of freeing them from bondage.




Marie the Second was just as committed to helping the people around her as her mother. She formed friendships with powerful judges, attorneys, and city government employees. She also used both her magic and allegiances to aid others such as protecting women who were abused by their husbands or obtaining defense for people who had been wrongfully convicted.




The book also focuses on the Leveaus’ complicated lives as Creoles and their romances with men who were considered unsuitable by society's standards. The Leveaus, like many residents of Louisiana, were Creoles, people who had their origins from various places such as France, Spain, and the West Indies. In Marie the First's case she also had ancestry from Africa as well as Europe. Her mother's family came from Central Africa and her father may have been white. Because no portraits or photographs exist of the Leveaus in their lifetimes, no one had a definite idea of their physical appearances. Many eyewitnesses described them as “tall and extremely dark-skinned” or “small and so fair-skinned that they could pass for white.” Their appearances were almost a mirror of New Orleans society and the strange dynamic that the city had among the races which suggested more inclusion and acceptance but still as a Southern state in pre-Civil War America participated in the institution of slavery and later in segregation.




Even the romances between the Maries and the men in their lives were dictated by the standards at the time. Many accounts in Marie the First's lifetime described her husband, Christophe Glapion as a “Free Man of Color,” a description that couldn't be further from the truth (though Ward wrote that many biographers even to this day report this as fact. Even Leveau's younger daughter, Philomene, described him as such.). Actually, he was a white man who declared himself a free light-skinned black man so he could marry Leveau. Despite the anti-miscegenation laws, Leveau and Glapion married, had five children though only two daughters, Marie the Second and Philomene survived to adulthood, and bought a house on St. Anne St.

Marie the Second also had a disadvantageous union. She fell in love with Pierre Crocker, a married man who already had an official mistress (therefore was not permitted to legally have another). Despite this, Marie the Second had five children by Crocker and a longtime relationship with him. The romances between the Leveaus and the men in their lives showed the hypocrisy of New Orleans society which considered itself more free-spirited and liberal than the rest of the U.S.’s more rigid laws, but only up to a certain point. They had definite opinions about racial mixing and that relationships outside of marriage could only be tolerated so far.




Ward’s book also reveals the decline of the Leveaus’ influence but not by magical or spiritual means, but by something that Ward described as “a bird that was more powerful:” Jim Crow. The Jim Crow Segregation laws, put to a stop the Leveaus’ interracial get-togethers and caused their influence in New Orleans society to decline. They never recovered even after Marie the Second disappeared from the public eye in 1873 and may have died in 1875 (though no one knows what actually happened to her) and Marie the First died of natural causes in 1881. However, they got the last laugh as Voodoo and their legacy are still a part of the fabric in New Orleans history and current society.




Voodoo Queens: The Spirited Lives of Marie Leveau, is a brilliantly written and well-researched book that brings the two women to life in a biography that humanizes both them and their religion.