Horse Magick: Spells and Rituals for Self-Empowerment, Protection, and Prosperity - Lawren Leo 2020

The Triumphant Horse

Magick manifests spontaneously and we always need to be ready to recognize and receive it. On a recent trip, I visited the tomb of Marie Laveau (1801—1881), the mysterious Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Just before I returned home, a magickal message came to me in the form of a story from an elderly Uber driver.

“The airport please,” I said, as I got in the car. It was the end of a wonderful trip, but I had time to kill and the driver had stories to tell.

“You have a lot of time before your flight leaves,” he said. “And I've lived here all my life. That's over sixty-some years. Do you want me to tell you a story? It was told to me by my grandmother, who learned it from her grandmother. I can even show you where it happened.”

Without hesitation I answered: “Absolutely!”

The story was bone-chilling.

Marie Laveau and the Five Black Horses

Once there was a white slave owner who was notorious for her cruelty. She had five black slaves—all males. If she felt one needed to be disciplined, even on a whim, she shackled all five to an iron cross leaning on its side. The cross was a traditional Christian cross, but it was pushed over, with one arm stuck in the ground. This eerie torture device—something holy that was defiled by this woman—held true to its symbolic meaning of suffering.

The slave owner had had an ironsmith attach five pairs of shackles along the arms of this cross, and when she needed to use it for discipline, she herself shackled each of the five slaves to it. She contorted their bodies, placing one hand in a shackle near the ground and another hand in a shackle toward the top of the cross, almost pulling joints out of their sockets. Sometimes she would twist their arms as if they were in a straitjacket, pulling the left arm over right or the right over the left. When she was finished, all five slaves were cuffed in the five pairs of shackles—twisted, nude, and gagged. All anyone heard were guttural moans, and no one could do anything to help for fear they would be killed.

But the spirits who watched over the slaves had power, too. The legend goes that, at night when everyone was asleep, the slaves turned into black horses—powerful with bloodlust and seeking vengeance for their mistreatment. Together, they chose a local slave owner to trample, kick, and bite to death. In the morning, their owner found the five men still shackled as if they had never left the cross—but covered with blood, sweat, and dirt.

Finally, one evening, the five slaves chose their owner as the object of their revenge. She was found the next day, shackled to the same cross on which she had punished them, with her head crushed; there were hoof prints embedded in her chest and pieces of flesh had been bitten from her body. As members of her household took her down from the same cross she had used to punish her slaves, no one wept. It was a closed-casket funeral.

Today, people still pray to Marie Laveau to exact vengeance in a karmically correct manner. They ask her to send the five black horses of the night as arbiters of justice, especially in the face of discrimination and racism.

Marie Laveau's five black horses.

SPELL FOR JUSTICE AND TO END DISCRIMINATION

Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau's iconic status and power still exist on the astral realm. Her energy waits for your call for help. You can invoke that energy with the following spell and use it to build or reestablish your self-esteem, lift yourself up, or maintain your strength in difficult situations. Most important, this spell can protect you and others from injustice and counter any attempts to discriminate against you and others. Use it to gain equality for yourself and to help others. It only takes one voice to change history!

What you need:

Three peach moonstones.

Instructions:

At midnight, go outside. Under the night sky, hold the three moonstones in your hand and think of the person or people who wish to harm you. Ask Marie Laveau to come to your aid. As an offering to her, throw the moonstones among flowers, or simply to the ground. If you can, go to New Orleans and place the three peach moonstones at the foot of her tombstone. Alternately, you can place them on rose petals on your altar before a picture of her as if you were placing them at her tomb. (You can easily find famous paintings of Laveau on the Internet.) Recite the following spell as many times as you wish. As you do so, imagine your enemies and all their hatred and desire to hurt you wasting away to nothing:

You pull my tail, you twist my mane;

I'll play along, you'll think I'm lame.

You'd brand oppression on my destiny's scroll,

But your action's void; no one owns my soul.

You've gone too far, you are a piece of waste;

The sky will fall, you'll be crushed by disgrace.

I'm the dark, dark horse that won the race.

All the grief was a gift, raising me higher;

All your hatred made a forge for my crystal fire.

Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen,

Set all aright with magick unseen.

Three moonstones peach I leave at your tomb;

Where once there was war, now flowers bloom.

Why did I choose peach moonstones? Moonstone catches the qualities of the moon. It is also known to quell angst, and to draw out hatred from a black or bitter heart. The peach hue and glimmer are important, because they capture and reflect the warmth of the heart of the high priestess of Voodoo, Marie Laveau.

Why did I choose three peach moonstones? The number three is associated with the Qabalistic energy source of the Great Mother, whose powers bind and give shape to an otherwise chaotic force of shapeless potential, sometimes in a way that we may consider violent.

Cameo portrait of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Secondary sources

Alvarado, Denise. The Magic of Marie Laveau: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans (Newburyport, MA: Weiser Books, 2019).

Long, Carolyn Morrow. A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006).

Ward, Martha. Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau (Oxford, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2004).