While Marie Laveau was known for her charitable works and Voudou healing rituals, she was also feared for her curses and death conjures. Most of these stories are retold with a sinister flair, but at least one of the stories may be considered a mercy killing.
Antoine Cambre, a prisoner sentenced to death for murder, was biding his time on death row at the Parish Prison where Marie did her ministry. She had been a regular visitor of his and “would cheer him up for hours with her lively conversation.” She was chosen to erect an altar for him during his final days, and on the eve of his execution, she approached him and in her patois said, “Ti moun, avant to mouri, si to dois mouri demain, dis moin ça to oulé mangé. Ma fais tois bon diner.” “Young one, before you die tomorrow, tell me what you would like to eat. I’ll make you a good dinner.”
Too depressed to decide what he wanted for his final meal, he shook his head in resignation of his fate. In an attempt to comfort him, Marie said, “Ma fais gombo filé comme jamais to mangé dans to la vie.” “I’ll make you a gumbo filé such as you’ve never eaten in your whole life.” And that is what she did. Marie made Cambre the most delicious gumbo he had ever tasted.
A few hours after he finished eating, he was observed writhing in pain in his cell and not long thereafter he was dead. It was officially concluded that he died from a sudden attack of malarial fever, but the timing and circumstances led to the belief that Marie had poisoned him, sparing him the horrors of the gallows (Castellanos 1894).
Wishing for the ultimate demise of an enemy is a human inclination. Some would call it a weakness or a sin, while others call it something along the lines of righteous retribution. Death conjure may appear to be downright sorcery, and indeed, it can be. Nevertheless, it is not about simply destroying a person or relationship. In Voudou, its about balance and justice.
Another incident recounted in the newspapers was of a strange story of a Voudou curse by Marie Laveau on three women. Referred to as “The Fatal Sisters,” it is a tragic story of the DeCourcey family, one of the wealthiest and most influential families in Louisiana before the Civil War. DeCourcey owned at least three sugar plantations, among them the famous Magnolia Plantation. When he was a young man, DeCourcey made the bold mistake of taking Marie Laveau’s favorite granddaughter as his mistress. I have strong suspicions that this wasn’t a mere affair and that when the story is told as “taking” her granddaughter, we may be talking about sexually assaulting her because of the depth and severity of the curse. It is said that Marie was so outraged she held one of her gris gris ceremonies on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, summoned the Grand Zombi, and “recorded the anthemas against the white master DeCourcey.” Cursed in true Voudou fashion, “he would have no male heirs and his line should die with his daughters” (The Republic 1882, 2).
At first, no one took the curse seriously and it was laughed off as a joke, but over time, the story was well known by families all along the Gulf Coast. DeCourcey ended up getting married and had three daughters. But eventually the family succumbed to the curse of Marie Laveau. The father died, then two of his daughter’s lost their husbands to duels, and another lost her husband to suicide. The curse of the Voudou Queen was fulfilled. All three husbands died violent deaths and all three daughters died without having any children. The DeCourcey family lineage was effectively eliminated.
Antoine Cambre, a prisoner sentenced to death for murder, was biding his time on death row at the Parish Prison where Marie did her ministry. She had been a regular visitor of his and “would cheer him up for hours with her lively conversation.” She was chosen to erect an altar for him during his final days, and on the eve of his execution, she approached him and in her patois said, “Ti moun, avant to mouri, si to dois mouri demain, dis moin ça to oulé mangé. Ma fais tois bon diner.” “Young one, before you die tomorrow, tell me what you would like to eat. I’ll make you a good dinner.”
Too depressed to decide what he wanted for his final meal, he shook his head in resignation of his fate. In an attempt to comfort him, Marie said, “Ma fais gombo filé comme jamais to mangé dans to la vie.” “I’ll make you a gumbo filé such as you’ve never eaten in your whole life.” And that is what she did. Marie made Cambre the most delicious gumbo he had ever tasted.
A few hours after he finished eating, he was observed writhing in pain in his cell and not long thereafter he was dead. It was officially concluded that he died from a sudden attack of malarial fever, but the timing and circumstances led to the belief that Marie had poisoned him, sparing him the horrors of the gallows (Castellanos 1894).
Wishing for the ultimate demise of an enemy is a human inclination. Some would call it a weakness or a sin, while others call it something along the lines of righteous retribution. Death conjure may appear to be downright sorcery, and indeed, it can be. Nevertheless, it is not about simply destroying a person or relationship. In Voudou, its about balance and justice.
Another incident recounted in the newspapers was of a strange story of a Voudou curse by Marie Laveau on three women. Referred to as “The Fatal Sisters,” it is a tragic story of the DeCourcey family, one of the wealthiest and most influential families in Louisiana before the Civil War. DeCourcey owned at least three sugar plantations, among them the famous Magnolia Plantation. When he was a young man, DeCourcey made the bold mistake of taking Marie Laveau’s favorite granddaughter as his mistress. I have strong suspicions that this wasn’t a mere affair and that when the story is told as “taking” her granddaughter, we may be talking about sexually assaulting her because of the depth and severity of the curse. It is said that Marie was so outraged she held one of her gris gris ceremonies on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, summoned the Grand Zombi, and “recorded the anthemas against the white master DeCourcey.” Cursed in true Voudou fashion, “he would have no male heirs and his line should die with his daughters” (The Republic 1882, 2).
At first, no one took the curse seriously and it was laughed off as a joke, but over time, the story was well known by families all along the Gulf Coast. DeCourcey ended up getting married and had three daughters. But eventually the family succumbed to the curse of Marie Laveau. The father died, then two of his daughter’s lost their husbands to duels, and another lost her husband to suicide. The curse of the Voudou Queen was fulfilled. All three husbands died violent deaths and all three daughters died without having any children. The DeCourcey family lineage was effectively eliminated.
Death conjure is a cultural reality and a fascinating aspect of the conjure tradition. While a lot of practitioners deny works of harm in Voudou, the fact is there are a several different classes of works designed for harming and killing. These workings developed out of necessity from enslaved people needing to defend themselves from the abuses they endured. Many of these works are found in coffin conjure, fetishism, front porch conjure, and especially the gris gris tradition where poisoning was a very real threat. But Voudou is not the only tradition with death conjures. Ancient Greeks, for example, loved their curse tablets and kolossoi, dolls created to cause people grief and even death. This is part of human history across the globe.
In 2011, I made the first-ever videos of a class of death conjure called Killing Hurts. Part 1 illustrates the creation of two conjure doll babies and their preparation for the ant bed spell. Part 2 shows the dolls being consumed by ants. If you have not yet seen these videos, I highly recommend you take a few minutes to watch them. The working shown in the videos is further described in my book, The Voodoo Doll Spellbook (pp. 36–37).
In 2011, I made the first-ever videos of a class of death conjure called Killing Hurts. Part 1 illustrates the creation of two conjure doll babies and their preparation for the ant bed spell. Part 2 shows the dolls being consumed by ants. If you have not yet seen these videos, I highly recommend you take a few minutes to watch them. The working shown in the videos is further described in my book, The Voodoo Doll Spellbook (pp. 36–37).
Admittedly, watching a doll being consumed by ants can send shivers up the spine, but only if you have a limited perspective of the tradition. By the way, this kind of spell can be used for transformative and healing purposes as well. You can make a doll to represent a relationship you want to cut ties with, negative feelings you want to transform into meaningful ones, or a disease or illness you want to kill. Killing Hurts means a lot in Hoodoo—you can kill anything that hurts.
In the past, Killing Hurts was mostly done as revenge on a scorned lover. If a man or woman was carrying on with a lover while married, or if there was a couple that a person wanted broken up, then this kind of conjure was believed to work well. If someone wanted a person to disappear— and this can be interpreted as go away or die—then this kind of conjure was said to work. However, Killing Hurts could also be used for more positive purposes, as I have mentioned.
In conjure, we rely on sympathetic magick for which the basic premise is like produces like. In reading the tarot, for example, we know that pulling the Death card doesn’t necessarily mean death. It can mean transformation or the death of something as opposed to someone. This same concept holds true with death conjure and Killing Hurts.
Let’s say, for example, you have a problem with anger and you just can’t seem to get it under control. You can create a doll and name it for your anger, put it on an ant bed, and let the ants help you destroy that anger. Or say you are grieving the loss of someone or are feeling emotionally stuck. Make a doll from cookie dough that represents your grief and stick it on the ant bed and ask the ants to help you transform the grief into healing. In a way, you would be using the trick as a sort of road opener or obstacle remover. This kind of working would be great to perform at a crossroads.
You can do this kind of work without the ant bed, of course, by simply burying the doll and letting Mother Earth take care of it. You can put a doll in a potted plant spell with a handful of earthworms and let the earthworms devour the doll. In this case, you would have to make sure the doll is made entirely of vegetable matter. You could then plant a plant on top of the doll and as the doll is consumed, so is your grief, anger, or obstacle. As the plant grows, so does the healing or transformation.
On the other hand, you could create a doll from plant matter that represents an enemy, and the very same working of planting the doll to decompose in the earth has a very different meaning. Or create a meat poppet and leave it out in the wilderness where an animal will consume it. Intention is key in magick.
Goophering (also goofering) is another class of death conjure. Growing up in the ’60s and ’70s in New Orleans, my only knowledge of the use of goofer dust was strictly for death conjure. So it was avoided, of course, and if you were exposed it was a serious situation. Nowadays, with the advent of the internet and influence of people from outside the tradition, goofer dust has been demoted to its use in harming. It is packaged and sold alongside graveyard dirt, love powder, and mojo bags. Personally, I do not sell it for ethical reasons.
In the past, Killing Hurts was mostly done as revenge on a scorned lover. If a man or woman was carrying on with a lover while married, or if there was a couple that a person wanted broken up, then this kind of conjure was believed to work well. If someone wanted a person to disappear— and this can be interpreted as go away or die—then this kind of conjure was said to work. However, Killing Hurts could also be used for more positive purposes, as I have mentioned.
In conjure, we rely on sympathetic magick for which the basic premise is like produces like. In reading the tarot, for example, we know that pulling the Death card doesn’t necessarily mean death. It can mean transformation or the death of something as opposed to someone. This same concept holds true with death conjure and Killing Hurts.
Let’s say, for example, you have a problem with anger and you just can’t seem to get it under control. You can create a doll and name it for your anger, put it on an ant bed, and let the ants help you destroy that anger. Or say you are grieving the loss of someone or are feeling emotionally stuck. Make a doll from cookie dough that represents your grief and stick it on the ant bed and ask the ants to help you transform the grief into healing. In a way, you would be using the trick as a sort of road opener or obstacle remover. This kind of working would be great to perform at a crossroads.
You can do this kind of work without the ant bed, of course, by simply burying the doll and letting Mother Earth take care of it. You can put a doll in a potted plant spell with a handful of earthworms and let the earthworms devour the doll. In this case, you would have to make sure the doll is made entirely of vegetable matter. You could then plant a plant on top of the doll and as the doll is consumed, so is your grief, anger, or obstacle. As the plant grows, so does the healing or transformation.
On the other hand, you could create a doll from plant matter that represents an enemy, and the very same working of planting the doll to decompose in the earth has a very different meaning. Or create a meat poppet and leave it out in the wilderness where an animal will consume it. Intention is key in magick.
Goophering (also goofering) is another class of death conjure. Growing up in the ’60s and ’70s in New Orleans, my only knowledge of the use of goofer dust was strictly for death conjure. So it was avoided, of course, and if you were exposed it was a serious situation. Nowadays, with the advent of the internet and influence of people from outside the tradition, goofer dust has been demoted to its use in harming. It is packaged and sold alongside graveyard dirt, love powder, and mojo bags. Personally, I do not sell it for ethical reasons.
New Orleans Death Rite
The following is recounting of a severe New Orleans Death Rite using the coffin by Zora Neale Hurston (1931) in the Journal of American Folklore. It’s inclusion in this volume is purely for its historical and folkloric value, and serves to illustrate the continuum of spells for which the coffin was utilized in New Orleans.
Make a coffin one-half foot long. Dress a small doll in black and put the doll in the coffin. W rite the victim’s name on paper and put it in the coffin under the doll. Don’t cover the coffin. Dig a trench much longer than the coffin. Take a black cat and put it in the grave. Cover the open grave with cheese-cloth and fix it so the cat can’t get out. Take a black chicken and feed it one-half glass of whiskey in which a piece of paper with the victim’s name has been soaked. Put the chicken in with the cat and leave them there for a month. They will die. Then put the coffin in and bury it with a white bouquet at the head and foot. (Hurston, 1931 as cited in Haskins, 1990, p. 116).
For Bad Work
This example comes from Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men. The working calls for the following:
Write the name of the person you want to get rid of on a piece of paper in the shape of a coffin. You can draw a coffin and write the name inside the drawing, if that is easier for you. Poke a hole in one of the eyes of the coconut and drain the liquid. Take the name paper and roll it up so that it will fit into the hole. Put beef gall and vinegar into the coconut, and write the person’s name all over the coconut. Then stand the coconut in sand and set one black candle on top of it and light it. When the candle is burned down to a nub, light another candle and set it on top of the nub of the previous candle. Repeat this a total of fifteen times. The candle must
never go out until the last candle is burned. When the last candle has burned down, place the coconut in a paper bag and bury it in a cemetery. The target should be gone shortly thereafter.
- A coconut
- Beef gall
- Vinegar
- 15 black candles
Write the name of the person you want to get rid of on a piece of paper in the shape of a coffin. You can draw a coffin and write the name inside the drawing, if that is easier for you. Poke a hole in one of the eyes of the coconut and drain the liquid. Take the name paper and roll it up so that it will fit into the hole. Put beef gall and vinegar into the coconut, and write the person’s name all over the coconut. Then stand the coconut in sand and set one black candle on top of it and light it. When the candle is burned down to a nub, light another candle and set it on top of the nub of the previous candle. Repeat this a total of fifteen times. The candle must
never go out until the last candle is burned. When the last candle has burned down, place the coconut in a paper bag and bury it in a cemetery. The target should be gone shortly thereafter.
