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Mambo Marie Charles
Mambo Marie Charles is the senior priestess, mother, and elder of our house, and it is primarily from her teachings that the house draws its liturgy and tradition. Mambo Marie has over 20 years experience as a mambo of the Vodou having taken the asson in Haiti at age 18 from Mambo Jacqueline Anne-Marie Lubin, who had taken the asson some 30 years prior from Felicia Louis-Romain, the famous Kintonmin- Bo Mambo daGinea of Bel-Air, one of the first mambo to receive the asson lineage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in the early 20's. It is from this antique lineage that she finds her knowledge, inspiration, and strength. Mambo Marie was born in the country of Haiti into an affluent and influential Petionville family; the proud daughter of the well-known M. Menthor Alexandre Loiseau LeGran. She was child number 14 of 64 children! Her heritage is not only Haitian, but also French, Cuban, and Tayino Indian.
Mambo Marie currently resides on Long Island in NY. She is a highly respected mambo within the New York Vodou community and in the Diaspora as well, having a large following who appreciate her for her vast depth of old knowledge of the Vodou, her trustworthiness, discretion, and especially, her effectiveness. Her reputation as a healer and priestess have led to her constant travel to provide treatments all over the USA, Canada, the Caribbean, and South America. The services held in her Long Island home attract hundreds who pack her basement temple to hear her stellar singing, as well as, the superior playing of her good friend, the master drummer Frisner Augustine of Troupe Makandal. When Marie holds service for the Vodou, the lwa. Themselves rush to appear in great numbers (a sure sign of a properly made fete), joyously entering the service to receive their salutations according to proper regleman (rule/order/protocol). Mambo Marie is a full-time priestess of
Vodou. She owns and operates Mt. Carmel
Botanica,
located in Freeport, NY. |
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The
Vodou has been Marie's life since the age of 7. It was at the age of 18 that the Spirit
called her to become a mambo asogwe. From her father's blood line she received the
traditions of the ason (though she was initiated into the house of Mambo Jacqueline
Anne-Marie Lubin). However, her mother's blood line, which originates high in the
mountains above Kenscoff, Haiti, is not an ason lineage, but rather is strong in the
traditions of both the Kongo/Ibo and the Tayino Indian. It is from here that
Mambo Marie
received the old, old knowledge of the Vodou, knowledge that now has been largely lost in
the "new" Port-au-Prince houses who often forget that the ason lineage by kanzo
asogwe is not so old a lineage at all and that there are far older traditions kept in
the countryside of Haiti.