Talk:Marie Laveau

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It is illegal to "draw" XXX on Madame Laveau's tomb. This practice has no base in the voodoo religion and was something that was started by tourists. People who deface the tomb can face a large fine and even jail time

Marie was not a mulatto; her mother was mulatto.

August 2, 2006 It is not true that the ritual at the Widow Paris tomb is a recent practice introduced by former cemetery caretaker Buddy Ansbacher. In the late 1930s fieldworkers from the WPA Federal Writers’ Project interviewed elderly New Orleanians (born in the 1850s and 1860s) who remembered that Laveau devotees began making cross marks and leaving offerings at the Widow Paris tomb, and at a wall vault in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, in the 1880s, shortly after Marie Laveau died. The fieldworkers also interviewed Ayola Cruz, caretaker of the St. Louis Cemeteries since the 1920s, who reported that people “come almost daily to make offerings to Marie’s spirit. They make crosses with red brick, charcoal, and sharp rocks.” Mr. Cruz, acting under the orders of archdiocesan authorities, immediately removed the markings, but the interviewer noted that “close observation discloses scratched crosses under the fresh whitewash.” There were also occasional newspaper stories about the practice in the 1920s and ‘30s (“Tribute of Flowers and Prayers for City's Unforgotten Dead,” New Orleans Morning Tribune, November 2, 1928, p. 1, col. 4-5; “Voodoo Faithful Put Magic Marks on Great Queen's Grave,” New Orleans Item, June 22, 1936, p. 14; “Voodoo Queen's Grave,” New Orleans States, September 2, 1937, flysheet p. 2).

The practice of drawing cross-marks is, in fact, rooted in African and Haitian tradition. In the religion of the Kongo people, life is represented as a sacred cosmogram, a cross within a circle. The intersection of the two crossed lines symbolizes the point of concentrated power where the realm of the living intersects with the realm of the spirits and the ancestors. The African cosmogram became conflated with the Christian cross in the Afro-Catholic religions of the New World, and this symbol, sometimes an X, sometimes an upright cross, is seen throughout the Americas. In Haiti the practice is called kwasiyen, meaning to sign with a cross, and is used to establish contact with the lwa [Vodou deities] and the dead. It is hoped that tour guides will be able to educate the public about the meaning of the ritual at Marie Laveau’s tomb (officially known as the Glapion Tomb) while explaining that it is no longer done because of the damage it causes.

However, very few of the markings and offerings at the Glapion Tomb are left by actual voudou practioners; most are left by tourists who know nothing about the practice of Afro-Catholic spirituality.

Birth record info

http://appl003.lsu.edu/unv002.nsf/PressReleases/PR1721

Please sign!!!! ¡ ¿ [[ %7e%7e%7e%7e ]]

I do not advocate an article about this; but, I do think that it should be mentioned someplace. Possibly this could be researched by others.

"Bloody Mary" Mary Millan claims to be a voodoo priestess, as well as ancestry by Robert the Bruce, Robert Bruce, Bloody Mary, Marie Laveau,...

She claims frequent communication w/ Marie Laveau{'s ghost}.

I do wonder whether any of this can be certified.

Thank You.

< http://bloodymarystours.com/biography.html >;

< http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:7YGQ2RnihLgJ:bloodymarystours.com/biography.html+site:bloodymarystours.com+%22priestess%22+%22%22+%22%22+%22%22&hl=en&gl=as&ct=clnk&cd=1 >.

Bloody Mary is a tour guide who also claims to be a wiccan witch.

[[ hopiakuta | [[ [[%c2%a1]] [[%c2%bf]] [[ %7e%7e%7e%7e ]] -]] 09:27, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Song "Marie Voodoo Laveau"

Heard this song the other day with "..Marie voodoo Laveau.." in the chorus , sounded like it was from the '70s (I believe it was on cable radio). Soulful, not country. I checked on iTunes and couldn't find anything that sounded quite like it. Any guesses? I'm not suggesting it be added to the Music section here, which seems rather long and somewhat tangental trivia.--Justfred 06:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Answered my own question. Redbone, "The witch queen of New Orleans", 1971. Already referenced on the page.--Justfred 06:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Sgsmith, nola (talk) 20:02, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

"Someone with powers" is invoked below, and that is deliciously fitting for the Marie Laveau wiki discussion. In future weeks i will be researching in order to add to the Marie Laveau > music sub heading, because i believe it is missing some important earlier recordings. Dr. John, for example, one of my musical heros, did add a great deal of creative influence to the song, but imho, did not author it. I believe we can call the origins of the Dr. John song "traditional," not attributable to a single author. Researching Marie Laveau is very difficult because of the volume of lore and mystery around her subject, but perhaps i'll be able to at least add to the discography. -sgsmith, New Orleans. 6-21-08 @1455. Sgsmith, nola (talk) 20:02, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, adding such material is usually considered trivia and shouldn't be added without proper referencing. I'd be a very happy to see more added to the main body of the article, with proper referencing. Wildhartlivie (talk) 21:45, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

shouldn't the songs listed be marked as cover versions when they are instead of presented as each being a different song by each artist? The Dr. Hook song is a cover of the Bobby Bare song. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.129.191.209 (talk) 03:42, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

Marie did not play in the Wizard of Oz, and she was never married to someone named Justin Samford. I don't know if I am allowed to just delete these lines or not, so someone with powers, please do.

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Doubleas2380 (talk • contribs) 19:16, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Role in Computer Game

For the sake of completeness regarding the list of mentions in "modern fiction", Marie Laveau (as well as Voodoo and New Orleans) plays an important role in the 1993 computer game "Gabriel Knight: Sins of the fathers" by Sierra. This is how I heard of her. You can even "visit" her tomb in the game. 217.87.4.215 (talk) 19:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Computer games are not part of modern fiction, they are games. Wildhartlivie (talk) 06:43, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Video games are part of modern culture though. It should be included. Only a moron rejects the important contribution of video games in modern culture. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.117.10.243 (talk) 04:00, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Common Law Marriage?

Re: "She took a lover, Christophe (Louis Christophe Dumesnil de) Glapion, with whom she lived in a common-law marriage until his death in 1835."

There is no common law marriage in Louisiana, and as far as I know, there never has been. Louisiana has wacky laws...people say it's the "Napoleonic Code" but a recent law graduate told me that's a common misconception and that Louisiana follows a French code rather than an English one (the rest of the US follows English, from what I understand). Should this sentence be rephrased to reflect accuracy? Is there another word for a partnership in which the couple considers themselves informally married? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.38.21.34 (talk) 05:25, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

In the state of Louisiana a common law marriage is seven years. As a lifelong resident I'm sure. I don't know what you are speaking of. I would guess you are not from the parts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.64.143.87 (talk) 03:15, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

No, there has never been common law marriage in Louisiana. It explicitly says so in Common-law_marriage_in_the_United_States, the relevant wikipedia article, and I have no reason to doubt it, since Louisiana civil law isn't based on English common law. See also http://family.findlaw.com/marriage/state-laws-common-law-marriage.html Tarchon (talk) 00:01, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

article not scholarly in tone and content -> rewrite/source?

The article is riddled with phrases like:

• was said
• claimed
• believe/believed
• reportedly
• suggested
• supposed
• may be
• (some) assert

The associated text is things we don't know. Even for some things supported by source(s), the sources themselves use words like the above. The number of existing inline annotations is staggering. This article needs to be redrafted by a skilled writer and historian, keeping or stating only what can be verified by valid sources like birth and death certificates, Louisiana/New Orleans historical records, and accounts of historians or writers from that time.Sbalfour (talk) 21:07, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Intellectual history and the history of ideas

Hegel was a contemporary of Laveau, and if anybody who wasn't quite famous had a song, a comic book, or a computer game about Hegel, that might not be germane, because that might not have much to do with Hegel's standing in intellectual history. For better and for worse, Laveau belongs to the history of ideas, in which rumors, jokes, and fantasies mix with an amount—sometimes a small amount—of hard data.

Husband's Name

Jacques and Santiago are variants of the same name. Santiago is Spanish for Saint Jacques basically. Tarchon (talk) 00:01, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Death of Jacques Paris

Is there any evidence that Jacques Paris was murdered by Delphine Lalaurie in real life and not just American Horror Story? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.16.163.254 (talk) 22:12, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Changing of Marie Laveau's picture

i think the picture of Marie Laveau should be changed to suit her actual appearance. The picture for her now is portraying Marie Laveau as light skinned woman when her heritage really would give her dark skin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.140.212.91 (talk) 09:05, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with this. As someone who stopped by the page to learn about the subject, the picture initially threw me off. Even for a pretty un-fact-filled page, the picture is misleading and directly contrasts the contents of the text.

Voodoo

yous best  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 40.132.51.220 (talk) 13:56, 30 March 2016 (UTC)