americanwizarding:There are few figures as polarizing the study of American Magical History as that

americanwizarding:There are few figures as polarizing the study of American Magical History as that of the Voudon Queen of New Orleans, Marie Laveau. Business woman, religious leader, spiritual icon, mother, political-power broker, and teacher, Marie Laveau wore more hats in her long life than even the most talented haberdasher would have been able to supply for. Some historians claim she was potentially the most powerful witch to have ever raised a wand in North America’s recorded history. Others claim she was one of the most manipulative flim-flam artist the world has ever seen, who rose to power on the sheer force of her intoxicating personality and venomous ambition.Marie Catherine Laveau was the half-blood off-spring of a wealthy, wizard plantation owner and his muggle, creole mistress. As the International Statute of Secrecy was not reliably enforced in Louisiana generally, and New Orleans specifically until well after the purchase of the territory by the muggle-government of the US, wizards and witches living in the territory were more open about the practice of their magic, especially in the crescent city where real magic was hidden naturally by the background of mysticism for which it was famed. Mssr. Charles Laveau, her father, was more cautious than most about practicing magic in front of the general public, but did not necessarily believe in the benefits of the Statute. So when Marie began exhibiting tremendous sorcerous talent at the age of 5, he immediately began her education in the arts, if not in discretion while practicing them. As the only one of Mssr. Laveau’s many children, legitimate or otherwise, to show magical power, Marie quickly became on of his favorites.Marie was well educated by her Mssr. Laveau in both the mundane talents he felt a woman should know, and also the magical control he felt her powers mandated. Though he was originally averse to teaching Marie magic that French-Louisiana culture commonly dictated to be above her station as a woman, a half-blood, and a person of color, he found her quick mind and avid desire to learn irresistible, especially when his other sons and daughters were all born without magical talent. His personal documents, kept by the Laveau Academy, point out that Charles had seriously considered sending Marie to Beauxbatons, but decided against it when both her mother and grandmother protested her being sent so far away. Instead, at the age of 11, Charles hired Marie a full-time tutor named Madame Le Croc, a recent Beauxbatons graduate who had come to Louisiana looking to make a future. She gave Marie the basics in French magical-practice before running off with a Spaniard and falling out of history as we know it.Marie gained a reputation as a great beauty before she was 16 years old, and was quite popular in New Orleans society. She had also already started to gain a certain mystical reputation around the city, due in large part to her burgeoning association with the voudons and hoodoo workers of the community. Marie’s tutor had run off on her after only four years, and she refused to accept another from her father. Being creole herself, Marie had the social flexibility to move back and forth between the magical communities of both whites and non-whites, being fully accepted in neither place, but neither being shunned completely. Though there were no direct sources of education in African sorcery available to her (there being no African wizards amongst the enslaved) Marie did find Black wizards and witches who had constructed a unique magical tradition from what little they garnered from European wizards and witches, and the traditions of their homeland. While the majority of voudon practice belongs to muggle believers who are simply going through the motions, Marie did find real power in those beliefs, and began studying it to augment her own power. Along the way, Marie also picked up tricks and tips from the wide variety of wizards and witches from different cultures that passed through New Orleans or called it home. Whether they were Catholic Ceremonialist, Native American’s practicing the oldest form of magic in America, or Dutch sorcerers plying the sorcery of sea and weather, Marie was always an avid student for whatever magical knowledge they were willing to throw her way in return for money, services, or, if the rumors are to be believed, more intimate favors.Her rise to power was meteoric. By the age of 19, Marie had an incredibly broad if not overly deep knowledge of magic, which she used to cobble together her own power-base in the city. With her father’s help she established herself as a hair dresser to the wealthy and powerful gentry of New Orleans. In this position she was able to both garner information and collect hair samples of some of the crescent city’s most powerful and prominent men and women. By the time the Statute of Secrecy was fully enforced in the city, Marie Laveau had already entrenched herself as a political and spiritual authority that not even the Wizarding Congress could hope to uproot. As Marie’s influence was largely used to bring the magical community of Louisiana into the the magical union, little real effort was made to dissuade her or weaken her rule over the city and its surrounding environs. Marie married when she was 25. Her husband, a powerful Hatian wizard, gave Marie her original foundation in the magical practices of Africa. Though known to history as Jacques Paris, many suspect Mssr. Paris may have actually been Le Loup, the legendary sorcerer who came to Haiti with a cadre of African magicians in the late 1700s and helped start the Haitian revolution, and whose niece and nephew started the Allegiance Academy, the first school ever established for Black wizards and witches living in the America. Whatever his true identity, he taught Marie much in those strange sorceries before disappearing within two years of their marriage, leaving Marie a “widow” at the age of 27. The theories of this disappearance are as broad the bayou, but best left for another day. Save it to say Marie never took a second husband, and publicly kept the surname of “Paris” attached to her own. She did, however, find another paramour in Christophe Glaipon some years later. Glaipon was a squib, but he and Marie apparently loved each other fiercely, and legend says he fathered 15 children on Marie. The number is, of course, ridiculous. Marie only bore five children: one daughter, and four sons, all of whom inherited their mother’s magical talent. The number “15” is derived from Marie’s unofficial adoption of numerous muggle-born witches and wizards, for whom she became a guide and tutor. She held class in a room hidden in the folded space in the back of her small home, and while many ascribe her the worst motives (building a fanatical power base to support her already cemented rule) Marie found she actually loved teaching young people, and this time in her life probably strongly influenced her founding of an Academy for magic near the end of her life.Sadly Christophe died well before Marie (some say killed by her political rival, the ill-fated Cressius Malfoy…but that is yet another story for another day) and in the 1870s she began to grow bored with ruling New Orleans. She handed over the reigns of power to her daughter, Marie the Second, and retired to an enchanted manor in the depths of the swamp, which many believe once belonged to the doomed and lost Louisiana Malfoys (again, a story for another day). There she founded her Academy, bringing many of her former pupils as staff and gaining instant notoriety for her methods of teaching, designed to bring the strengths of every students to the fore and nurture them to their fullest potential. Marie dropped out of the public eye completely in 1881 after feigning her death, and devoted herself to teaching. In 1900, 15 years before her actual death, the Laveau Academy was recognized by Congress as an official source of Magical Education, along with The Randolf-Peyton Institute and the Salem Institute.Marie Laveau is one record as dying in 1915 at the age of 119. Since then sightings of Marie Laveau’s ghost have been a frequent occurrence, even though no such specter has ever come to register at the Bureau of International Magical Peoples (The Imp Bureau) as is required by law. Many who knew Marie or have studied her life do not think such an oversight would be that surprising from the Voudon Queen of New Orleans, who never lived by anyone’s authority but her own. There is even a small sector of Wizarding society that believes the wily enchantress is still alive somewhere, subtly manipulating American society from behind the scenes. These rumors are certainly just that, of course.(SOURCE: The amazing and incomparable Angela Basset as Marie Laveau on the most recent season of American Horror Story, beside a portrait claimed to be of the Vodoun Queen herself) -- source link

More pics about