Denise Alvarado - The Magic of Marie Laveau: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans

The Vodou community has been eagerly awaiting Denise Alvarado's fabulous addition to Marie Laveau's canon. Alvarado reaches deep into her academic, spiritual, and cultural backgrounds to provide us with a clear and resonant sense of the great Vodou Queen and her work. As an academic, she affords to Vodou the serious inquiry it deserves; as a practitioner, she gives a legitimate and informed insider's insight into traditions that merit respect. Because Alvarado knows her subject so well, she is able to bring Laveau to life for the reader. We feel a closeness to Marie Laveau, as if we walked and served with her in the New Orleans of the 1800s, and this also helps us to recognize her presence as she walks with us in our contemporary experience.

Vodou is beautiful and life-affirming, and it is also practical. It has to help people endure life's challenges, just as it helped enslaved people endure the horrors of slavery. The Magic of Marie Laveau includes practical workings and gris-gris that provide a hand up to the reader in addition to lyrically presented and well-informed information about Laveau and the world in which she walked. I am grateful to Denise Alvarado for her years of research, her faithful devotion, and for her work to spread understanding and respect for Vodou and New Orleans' famous Queen, Marie Laveau. Respect and praise to Denise Alvarado!

Sallie Ann Glassman, author of Vodou Visions
and cocreator and artist for The New Orleans Voodoo Tarot

My bloodline has been in New Orleansmy hometownfor three hundred years and I proudly uphold the spirit of New Orleans Voodoo. I hail Mlle Marie and Le Grand Zombi every single day. Though my own Voodoo teachings vary from some presented in The Magic of Marie Laveau, I do not disagree with author Denise Alvarado's findings. As a priestess of New Orleans Voodoo and a full-time teacher of Marie, I can personally testify that it is near impossible to reconstruct her full magical life. It is no easy task to try to put oral traditions into words or to separate modern practices from those centuries old. It's even more difficult to sift the true Marie out from the sea of slander, secondhand information, and outside opinion that envelops her. Yet despite all of this, Denise has successfully combined both history and practical magic into one accessible book, making it possible for those far and wide to reach the Great Queen. The Magic of Marie Laveau brings Marie Laveau to life, adding further mystic lifeblood to her story. Long live Queen Marie Laveau!

Voodoo Queen Bloody Mary, author of Bloody Mary's Guide
to Hauntings, Horrors, and Dancing with the Dead
and curator of the New Orleans Haunted Museum

The Magic of Marie Laveau is the ideal blend of the academic and the mystical. Denise Alvarado creates a historic understanding of how Mlle Laveau not only shaped the traditions and culture of New Orleans Voodoo but also influenced all Hoodoo and Conjure practices around the world. Through the biography of Mlle Laveau, Alvarado teaches that your daily spiritual practice and compassionate works are integral to your magical prowess. There is so much to learn in this book, reading it a second and third time is a must.

Jacki Smith, author of Coventry Magic with Candles, Oils, and Herbs,
and founder of Coventry Creations

The Magic of Marie Laveau is a monumental piece of work. As an active member of the New Orleans Voodoo Spiritual Temple since 2000, I have venerated, served, and benefited from the spiritual force that is Marie Laveau in countless ways. I have striven to know and learn more about her throughout that entire time and continue to do so. The Magic of Marie Laveau is unique, as is the author Denise Alvarado, who, as an academic and a practitioner, marries both rivers into a wonderful book of impressive research, historical legacy, and hands-on magical worksomething that is unprecedented in regard to Marie Laveau. I learned a great deal from reading The Magic of Marie Laveau and believe this book will become definitive in the continually growing legacy of the greatest Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. A must-have for your collection and a truly wonderful read.

Witchdoctor Utu, author of Conjuring Harriet Mama Moses Tubman
and the Spirits of the Underground Railroad

New Orleans Voodoo has a tradition of strong women practitioners. To have one such strong practitioner writing about another is not only a pleasure, it is most proper and most appropriate. The Magic of Marie Laveau's three parts move effortlessly from history to practice to legacy. With sure strokes, Denise Alvarado draws together the past, present, and future creating a literary veve imbued with honor and respect for the great Marie Laveau. Ours is a growing tradition, and this work combines both accurate information and inspiration to provide sure ground for such growth.

Becoming a Devotee, the second part of this book, speaks directly to the present growth of New Orleans Voodoo. The homeless, the sick, and the poor are not forgotten by Denise in this section, as they were not forgotten by Marie in her practices. Marie Laveau's actions toward society's most vulnerable is as a valuable guide to devotees. Alvarado does not portray Laveau as embodying an unattainable idealperfect in all thingsbut as a much-needed model manifesting greatness of heart. This book is a celebration of the divine feminine as it manifests in a much-misunderstood form of spirituality. Denise Alvarado's love for Marie Laveau's work is evident. I am sure that Marie Laveau, the Mother of New Orleans Voodoo, returns the sentiment.

Louis Martini, author of The New Orleans Voodoo
Tarot and Waters of Return

New Orleans native Denise Alvarado brilliantly crafts a spiritually delicious reference book combining extensive historical research with a lifetime of personal experiences! Filled with snippets from the past, pearls of wisdom, and a detailed outline of Alvarado's Laveau Voudou tradition to which many readers will feel an immediate connection, The Magic of Marie Laveau is a valuable addition to any practitioner's bookshelf, especially those called to serve.

Cairelle Crow, founder and coordinator of the
New Orleans Witches' Ball

Whether you're a Marie Laveau devotee or are only beginning to learn about her, this is the book for you! Brimming with little known facts about her life, her relationships, and her charitable works, The Magic of Marie Laveau is much more than a well-researched biography. It also offers a plethora of valuable information for magical practitioners, including detailed instructions not only for working with her spirit, but also for performing many of the rituals and spells for which she is known. Reading this book truly changed my lifeand I have no doubt that it will change yours as well.

Dorothy Morrison, author of Utterly Wicked

This edition first published in 2020 by Weiser Books, an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2020 by Denise Alvarado

Foreword 2020 by Carolyn Morrow Long

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing