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 a creole...her mother was mulatto not her.
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 while explaining that it is no longer done because of the damage it causes.
[edit] Birth record info
http://appl003.lsu.edu/unv002.nsf/PressReleases/PR1721
[edit] Please sign!!!! ¡ ¿ ~~~~
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 >;
[[ hopiakuta | [[ [[%c2%a1]] [[%c2%bf]] [[ %7e%7e%7e%7e ]] -]] 09:27, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
