A card reading for the Devil’s daughter…
This is the story of how my voodoo mentor, Earl Marlowe, featured throughout my Voodoo Spellbook, came to settle in London.
Earl was a singer and conjure from Trinidad. But after leaving Trinidad to serve on merchant ships, he settled for some years in the American South.
Much of his work at that time involved dispensing voodoo medicines and doing card readings. People would come from miles around to get a reading from Earl.
He favored spirit cards over the “fancy tarot,” as he called it. ”You want answers that are related to your life you gotta use spirit cards,” he said. (Earl’s “spirit cards” were a handmade deck rooted in the swamp voodoo tradition).
Earl lived in a run-down shack in those days, but it was comfortable and cozy.
One time, a woman called Betty May came to him for a spirit card reading. It was very late at night and Earl had already drunk half a bottle of rye whiskey, but he agreed to do the reading anyway (he claimed alcohol never impaired is psychic abilities).
The main reason he agreed to do the reading was Betty May was the ugliest woman he’d ever seen, and he felt sorry for her.
Earl shuffled the cards, then spread them on the table, telling Betty May to choose three cards.
“No sooner had she picked out three cards,” he told me many years later, “and I knew she’d got a black soul and came from the very pit of hell. And she knew I knew. A horrible, evil smile cracked her face in two. I grabbed some witches salt and threw it at her, but she laughed in my face.”
Betty May said to Earl: “You cain’t stop me. I’ve killed mo’ people than you’ve drunk bottles of rye whiskey and that’s a lot cos you’re more fonder of the firewater than my daddy the devil is, and that’s a fact.”
Earl took exception to that. He wouldn’t tolerate disrespect, even if it was the Devil’s daughter dishing it out.
“Look,” he said. “You come here to insult me or you want a reading?”
“I want a reading,” she said, “but not from some old two-bit drunk.”
“Now, you watch your sharp lizard’s tongue,” Earl said. “The rye whiskey is fuel for my psychic abilities, just like it helps me to drive a car in a straight line. So what’s your question, Betty May? What do you want to know from the cards?”
“What I want to know cain’t be told to me by a drunken fool,” replied. “I want to know when I’m getting married and who I’m going to get married to…”
Earl surveyed the spirit cards for a minute or two, then took a slug of rye and said: “Betty May, the cards say you gonna be a spinster all your life. Even yo’ daddy, the Devil, knows there’s no way he can marry you off on account you as ugly as a deep river catfish. Ain’t no man coming into spittin’ distance of you, even if you got a bag over yo’ head.”
Before Betty May could say anything, Earl toppled off his chair on to the floor. He passed out having overdone it on the rye.
When he came round the next morning, he thought it must have been a bad dream. As he pulled himself upright, he muttered “the ugliest woman I ever seen…” Then he had the shock of his life. Sitting in an old armchair by the fire was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He stood open mouthed, then composed himself to ask, “Where’d you come from?”
“I’m Betty May,” she replied. “I came for a spirit card reading last night and you promised to marry me, but then yo’ passed out.”
Bad dream the night before or not, Earl wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Not when the gift was a beautiful young woman. Three days later he and Betty May were married.
But on their wedding night, Earl had the next biggest shock of his life… Betty May transformed herself back into the Devil’s daughter, which she had been all along – it was an enchantment made her look beautiful.
“I tell you man,” Earl told me in the 1980s, “I ran outa there buck naked. I didn’t stop till I got to a port and jumped on a ship that took me all the way to England. That’s how I came to leave the American South and settle in London. I was runnin’ from the Devil’s daughter.”
That’s the tale Earl used to tell, anyway…
