2003 Inductees

2003 Inductees

Marie Laveau

Marie Laveau

1827 - 1897

This article concerns two women who extended one life. The most famous voodoo queen in North America who were actually two persons—mother and daughter. They epitomized the sensational appeal of Vodounism New Orleans during the 19th and 20th centuries. They taught and used the religion’s magical powers to control one’s lovers, acquaintances, enemies, and sex.

Marie Laveau I, the mother, supposedly was born in New Orleans in 1794 and was considered a free woman of color. Being a mulatto, she was of mixed black, white and Indian blood. Sometimes she was described as a descendant of French aristocracy or a daughter of a wealthy white planter. Her marriage to Jacques Paris, a free man of color from Saint Dominque (Haiti), is recorded as occurring on August 4, 1819; the records also indicates the Marie Laveau was an illegitimate daughter of Charles Laveau and Marguerite Darcantrel. Marie was described as tall and statuesque, with curly black hair, reddish skin and "good" features (then meaning more white than Negroid). She and Paris lived in a house, supposedly part of her dowry from Charles Laveau, in the 1900 block on North Rampart Street.

Paris, being a quadroon—three fourths white, disappeared soon after the marriage. Perhaps he returned to Saint Dominique, but his death certificate was filed five years later without any certificate of interment. Then Marie began addressing herself as the Widow Paris and took up employment as a hairdresser catering to the wealthy white and Creole women of New Orleans. This was the beginning of her later powers as Voodooienne. For the women confessed to Marie their most intimate secrets and fears about their husbands, their lovers, their estates, their husbands’ mistresses, their business affairs, and their fears of insanity and of anyone discovering a trace of Negro blood in their ancestry.

In about 1826, Marie took up with Louis Christopher Duminy de Clapion, another quadroon from Saint Dominique. They lived in the North Rampart Street house until his death in 1855 (some claim 1835). Although they never married, he and Marie had 15 children in rapid succession. She stopped her hairdressing career to devote all her energies to becoming the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.

Voodoo had been secretly practiced by blacks around New Orleans since the first boat load of slaves. New Orleans was more French-Spanish than English-American, and the slaves had came from the same parts of Africa that had sent blacks to work the French and Spanish plantations in the Caribbean. After the blacks had won their independence in Haiti in 1803-1804, the Creole planters brought their slaves with them to friendlier shores of southern Louisiana, from Saint Dominique and other West Indian islands. The slaves were avid practitioners of the ancient religion, and it grew rapidly.

Quickly tales circulated of hidden and secret rituals being held deep in the bayous, complete with the worship of a snake called Zombi, and orgiastic dancing, drinking, and lovemaking. Almost a third of the worshippers were white, desirous of obtaining the "power" to regain a lost lover, to take a new lover, to eliminate a business partner, or to destroy an enemy. These frequent meetings frightened the white masters into fear the blacks were planning an uprising against them. In 1817 the New Orleans Municipal Council passed a resolution forbidding blacks to gather for dancing or any other purpose except on Sundays, and only in places designated by the mayor. The accepted spot was Congo Square on North Rampart Street, now called Beauregard Square. Blacks, most of them voodooists, met danced and sang overtly worshipping their gods while seemingly entertaining the whites with their African "gibberish".

By the 1830s there were many voodoo queens in New Orleans, fighting over control of the Sunday Congo dances and the secret ceremonies out at Lake Pontchartrain. But when "Mamzelle" Marie Laveau decided to become queen, contemporaries reported the other queens faded before her, some by crumbling to her powerful gris-gris, and some being driven away by brute force. Marie was always a devote Catholic and added influences of Catholicism--holy water, incense, statues of the saints, and Christian prayers--to the already sensational ceremonies of voodooism.

Marie knew the sensation that the rituals at the lake were causing and used it to further the purposes of the voodoo movement in New Orleans. She invited the public, press, police, the New Orleans roués, and others thrill-seekers of the forbidden fun to attend. Charging admission made voodoo profitable for the first time. Her entrepreneurial efforts went even further by organizing secret orgies for wealthy white men seeking beautiful black, mulatto and quadroon women for mistresses. Marie presided over these meetings herself. These alleged secret meetings enviably became public. Marie also gained control of the Congo Square Dances by entering before the other dancers and entertaining the fascinated onlookers with her snake.

Eventually, Marie Laveau, with all of the secret knowledge which she had gained from the Creole boudoirs combined with her own considerable knowledge of spells along with her flair, became the most powerful woman in New Orleans. Whites of every class sought her help in their various affairs and amours while blacks saw her as their leader. Judges paid her as much as $1000 to win an election, other whites paid $10 for an insignificant love powder. She freely helped most blacks. To visit her for a reading became fashionable.

Almost every New Orleaniian had a story to tell about Marie Laveau by the beginning of World War II. Some of the stories concerned the mother while others concerned the daughter who strikingly resembled her mother and continued the dynasty. While most of the tales are exaggerated, some are more reliable, particularly those in Voodoo In New Orleans by Robert Tallant, and Mysterious Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen by Raymond J. Martinez.

At the age of 70, in 1869, Marie gave her last performance as a voodoo queen. She announced she was retiring. She went to her Saint Ann Street home, but she never completely retired. She continued her prison work until 1875, and died in 1891. Then a similar tall woman with flashing black eyes, with the ability to control lives, emerged as Marie Laveau II.

Marie Laveau Clapion was born February 2, 1827, one of the 15 children crowding the Saint Ann Street cottage. It was never known whether her mother, Marie I, chose the role for her daughter, or whether Marie II chose the role to follow in her mother’s footsteps for herself. By some accounts she shared her mother’s features. Others say the pupils of her eyes were half-moon shaped. Apparently she lack the warmth and compassion of her mother because she inspired more fear and subservience than her mother did. Likewise, she began as a hairdresser, eventually ran a bar and brothel on Bourbon Street between Toulouse and Saint Peter Streets.

Marie continued operations at the "Maison Blanche" (White House), the house which her mother had built for secret voodoo meetings and liaisons between white men and black women. Marie II was proclaimed to be a talented procuress, able to fulfill any man’s desires for a price. Lavish parties were held at the Maison Blanche offered champagne, fine food, wine, music, and naked black girls dancing for white men, politicians, and high officials. They were never raided by the police who feared that if the crossed Marie she might "hoodoo" them.

June 23rd, the Eve of Saint John’s Day was one of the most important days in the New Orleans’ voodoo calendar. All the faithful celebrated out at Saint John Bayou. Saint John’s Day (for John the Baptist) corresponds to the summer solstice (see Sabbats) which has been celebrated since ancient times. But by the time Marie II arrived she had celebrated more than once.

The Saint John's Day celebration of 1872 began as a religious ceremony. Marie came with a crowd singing. Soon a cauldron was boiling with water from a beer barrel, into which went salt, black pepper, a black cat, a black rooster, a various powders, and a snake sliced in three pieces representing the Trinity. With all this boiling the practitioners ate, whether the contents of the cauldron or not is not known. Afterwards or during the feast was more singing, appropriately "Mamzelle Marie." Then it was cooling off time at which all stripped and swam in the lake. This was followed by a sermon by Marie, then a half hour of relaxation, or sexual intercourse. Then four naked girls put the contents of the cauldron back into the beer barrel. Marie gave another sermon, by this time it was becoming daylight and all headed for home.

On June 16, 1881, Marie I, as Widow Paris, died in her Saint Ann Street house. The reporters painted her in the most glorious terms, a saintly figure of 98 (actually 87), who nursed the sick, and prayed incessantly with the diseased and condemned. Reporters called her the recipient "in the fullest degree" of the "heredity gift of beauty" in the Laveau family, who gained the notice of Governor Claiborne, French General Humbert, Aaron Burr, and even the Marquis de Lafayette. Her obituaries claimed she lived a pious life surrounded by her Catholic religion, with no mention of her voodoo past. Even one of her surviving children, Madame Legendre, claimed her saintly mother never practiced voodoo and despised the cult.

Strangely, Marie II "died" in the public eye with Marie I seeming to pass into obscurity. Since the public had made no distinction between mother and daughter, the death of one ended the career of the other. Marie II still reigned over the voodoo ceremonies of the blacks and ran the Maison Blanche, but she never regained high notice in the press. Supposedly she drowned in a big storm in Lake Pontchartrain in the 1890s, but some people claimed to have seen her as late as 1918.

Death did not end the power of Marie Laveau, however. Though reportedly buried in a vault in the family crypt in St. Louis Cemetery, no. 1. The vault bears the name of Marie Philome Clapion, deceased June 11, 1897. But this vault still attracts faithful practitioners who still leave gifts of food, money, and flowers, and ask for Marie's help after turning around three times and making a cross with red brick on the stone. The cemetery is small but the tomb seems to come out of nowhere when walking among the other crypts.

In the St. Louis Cemetery, no 2, there is another vault bearing the name of Marie Laveau. This vault has red crosses on it and is called the "wishing vault." Young women often come to it to petition when seeking husbands. Stories have it Marie rests in various cemeteries in the city. Legend also tells she frequently visits the cemeteries, as well as the French Quarter, and her voodoo haunts

Reprinted from www.themystica.com

H.P. Blavatsky

Blavatsky

1831 - 1891

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky one of the founders of the Theosophical Society, was a remarkable woman who has made a great impact on the thought of the Western world. In her own day, she was controversial because of her remarkable abilities of extrasensory perception, her forthright and outspoken nature, and her fearless attacks on hypocrisy and bigotry. Even today, she continues to be the center of curiosity and attention as the precursor of "new" ideas. Her great metaphysical knowledge is embodied in her literary work, which has directly or indirectly influenced inquiring minds all over the world.

Helena Blavatsky was born of a noble family in Russia. From earliest childhood she attracted attention with her ability to produce psychic phenomena at will. Yet she was not interested in such powers for their own sake, but for the principles and laws of nature that govern them. She became a student of metaphysical lore and traveled to many lands, including Tibet, in search of hidden knowledge. These were extraordinary travels for a lone woman in the nineteenth century. In the 1870s H. P. Blavatsky came to New York and, with Colonel H. S. Olcott, William Quan Judge, and others, formed the Theosophical Society in 1875.

In 1878 H. P. Blavatsky became an American citizen, the first Russian woman ever to do so. In 1879 she and Col. Olcott moved to India, and in 1882 they established the headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, near Madras. This remains the international headquarters for the Society, which is now established in fifty countries of the world. In 1885 H. P. Blavatsky went to Europe and settled in London, where she completed her magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine. Much of the knowledge in this book and her other writings was derived from Eastern teachers, with whom she came in touch early in life.

Through her many writings, H. P. Blavatsky-"Madame Blavatsky" or "HPB" as she came to be known-has shared some of her extensive knowledge of the philosophies and religions of the world, the wisdom of the East and the West, symbolism, metaphysics, esoteric philosophy, and the practical application of all these to life. She was a prolific writer, and newspaper and magazine articles on a variety of subjects flowed steadily from her pen. These works fill fifteen volumes of her fully indexed Collected Writings.

H. P. Blavatsky devoted her life to the service of humanity, to bringing the Wisdom of the ancients back into the awareness of her contemporaries. That Divine Wisdom, which she called Theosophy, inspires a compassion for the sufferings of our fellow human beings and a practical altruism that seeks not merely to alleviate the symptoms of misery, but to remove its cause: ignorance of our fundamental unity with all other beings. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's life and works are directed entirely to that goal.

The first major book by H. P. Blavatsky was Isis Unveiled, in two volumes. It created a sensation when published in New York City in 1877; the first edition of 1,000 copies sold out in two days. Within seven months, three printings had been issued. The book has as its subtitle A Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. Volume 1 deals with claims of "infallibility" for science, while volume 2 deals with similar claims for religion. Both show that the Ancients had a wisdom that has been partly forgotten in our time.

The author moves from ancient Greek views on matter and force advanced by Pythagoras and Plato to the Kabbalistic religious philosophy developed by Jewish scholars from a mystical interpretation of the Scriptures. Blavatsky discusses mythological stories in many religious texts, aspects of magic, ancient Egyptian writings, classical philosophies, world religions, and a multitude of other subjects. In her preface, she states that the book is "a plea for the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the anciently universal Wisdom-Religion."

Blavatsky's greatest work is The Secret Doctrine. This book appeared in 1888 in two large volumes, the first concerned with cosmogenesis, the study of the origin and development of the universe, and the second with anthropogenesis, the study of the origins and development of humanity. This book continues in greater detail the themes set forth in Isis Unveiled, its subtitle, The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, expressing the aim of the work.

HPB made it clear that The Secret Doctrine was not written as a revelation but is rather a collection of fragments scattered throughout thousands of volumes embodying the scriptures of the great Asian and pre-Christian European religions and philosophies. Furthermore, she strongly rejected the dogmatic interpretation of any of her work. The reader is asked to study the ideas from this or any other source only in the light of common human experience and reason.

The Secret Doctrine outlines a vast scheme of evolution relating to the universe and to humanity, and to the unseen as well as the seen worlds of manifestation in which life is said to exist in thousands of forms.

Reprinted from www.samsara-fr.com/hpb-uk.htm

Harry Houdini

Houdini

1874 - 1926

Harry Houdini was the stage name of Ehrich Weiss (born Weiss Erik in the native Hungarian), one of the most famous magicians, escapologists and stunt performers of all time.

Houdini was born on March 24, 1874 in Budapest, Hungary. In 1878, his family emigrated to the United States. At first, they lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father, Mayer Samuel Weiss, served as rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. After losing his tenure, Mayer moved to New York City with Ehrich in 1887, where they lived in a boarding-house on East Seventy-ninth Street. Mr. Weiss later called for the rest of his family to join him once he found more permanent housing.

In 1891, Ehrich became a professional magician, and began calling himself Harry Houdini as a tribute to the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin (he would make Houdini his legal name in 1913.) Initially, his magical career met with little success, though he met fellow performer Wilhelmina Beatrice (Bess) Rahner in 1893, and married her after a three week-long courtship. For the rest of his performing career, Bess would work as his stage assistant.

Houdini initially focussed on card tricks and other traditional magic acts. At one point he billed himself as the Card King. He soon began experimenting with escape acts, however. Harry Houdini's "big break" came in 1899, when he met the showman Martin Beck. Impressed by Houdini's handcuffs act, Beck advised him to concentrate on escape acts and booked him on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit. Within months, he was performing at the top vaudeville houses in the country. In 1900, Houdini travelled to Europe to perform. By the time he returned in 1904, he had become a sensation.

Throughout the 1900s and 1910s, Houdini performed with great success in the United States. He would free himself from handcuffs, chains, ropes and straitjackets, often while hanging from a rope or suspended in water, sometimes in plain sight of the audience. In 1913, he introduced perhaps his most famous act, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass and steel cabinet of water.

He explained some of his tricks in books written in the 1920s. Many locks and handcuffs could be opened with properly applied force, others with shoestrings. Other times, he carried concealed lockpicks or keys. He was able to escape from a milk can which had its top fastened to its collar because the collar could be separated from the rest of the can from the inside. When tied down in ropes or straitjackets, he gained wiggle room by enlarging his shoulders and chest, and moving his arms slightly away from his body, and then dislocating his shoulders. His straitjacket escape was originally performed behind curtains, with him popping out free at the end. However, Houdini discovered that audiences were more impressed and entertained when the curtains were eliminated, so that they could watch him struggle to get out.

Difficult though it was, Houdini's entire act, including escapes, was also performed on a coordinated but separate tour schedule by his brother, [Theo Weiss("Dash" to the Weiss family)], under the name [Hardeen]. The major difference between the two was in the straitjacket escape; Houdini dislocated both his shoulders to get out, but Hardeen could dislocate only one.

In the 1920s, after the death of his beloved mother, he turned his energies toward debunking self-proclaimed psychics and mediums, a pursuit which would inspire and be followed by the latter-day magician/skeptic James Randi. Houdini's magical training allowed him to expose frauds who had successfully fooled many scientists and academics. He was a member of a Scientific American committee which offered a cash prize to any medium who could successfully demonstrate supernatural abilities. Thanks to Houdini's contributions, the prize was never collected. As his fame as a "ghostbuster" grew, Houdini took to attending séances in disguise, accompanied by a reporter and police officer. Possibly the most famous medium whom he debunked was the Boston medium Mina Crandon, a.k.a. Margery.

These activities cost Houdini the friendship of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle, a firm believer in spiritualism, refused to believe any of Houdini's exposés, and the two men became public antagonists.

Houdini died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix on Halloween, October 31, 1926, at the age of 52. Houdini sustained a blow to his abdomen from a college boxing student in Montreal two weeks earlier. Contrary to popular belief, this incident is unlikely the cause of the condition.

Houdini's funeral was held on November 4 in New York, with over two thousand mourners in attendance. He was interred in the Machpelah Cemetery, Queens, New York, with the crest of the Society of American Magicians inscribed on his gravesite. The Society holds their "Broken Wand" ceremony at the gravesite on the anniversary of his death to this day.

Houdini left a final sting for his spiritualist opponents: shortly before his death, he had made a pact with his wife, Bess Houdini, to contact her from the other side if possible and deliver a pre-arranged coded message. Every Halloween for the next 10 years, Bess held a séance to test the pact. In 1936, after a last unsuccessful seance on the roof of the Knickerbokker hotel, she put out the candle that she had kept burning beside a photograph of Houdini since his death.

The United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp with a replica of Houdini's favorite publicity poster on July 3, 2002.

Harry Houdini has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7001 Hollywood Blvd. He starred in 5 silent films and wrote most of them.

A mostly fictionalized version of Houdini's life was made in a film in 1953 starring Tony Curtis. Most of the misconceptions about Houdini's life are due in part to this film. For example, it portrayed him dying from the Chinese Water Torture Cell, instead of the less spectacular peritonitis.

Reprinted from en.wikipedia.org