La Voisin

Catherine Monvoisin, or Montvoisin, née Deshayes, known as "La Voisin" (c. 1640 – February 22, 1680), was a French fortune teller, poisoner, and an alleged sorceress, one of the chief personages in the affaire des poisons, during the reign of Louis XIV. Her purported cult (Affair of the Poisons) was suspected to have killed anywhere between 1000-2500 people in Black Masses.

Catherine Deshayes was married to Antoine Monvoisin, a jeweller with a shop at Pont-Marie in Paris. After her husband was ruined, La Voisin started her career by practising chiromancy and face-reading to support her family. She practiced medicine, especially midwifery, and performed abortions.

As for her practice in fortune telling, she was to say that she developed the talent God had given her. She was taught the art of fortune telling at the age of nine, and after her husband became ruined, she decided to profit by it. She studied the modern methods of physiology and reading the client's future by reading their faces and hands. She also spent a lot of money to provide an atmosphere which could make the clients more inclined to believe in the prophecies. For example, she acquired a special robe of crimson red velvet embroidered with eagles in gold for a price of 1,500 livres to perform in.

In 1665/66, her fortune telling was questioned by the priests of Saint Vincent de Paul's order, the Congregation of the Mission, but La Voisin defended herself successfully before the professors at Sorbonne university.

Unlike La Voisin, her husband Antoine Monvoisin did not possess a head for business, eventually losing all financial means. During this trying time, La Voisin took over the finances of the company by utilizing her knowledge of the occult to read the fates of the aristocracy. She supported a family of six, including kids, her elderly mother, and her husband (whom she hated). In fact, she found him to be so disagreeable, she had taken to greeting him with the phrase “have you dropped dead yet?” And she had lovers—many lovers—on whom she also spent considerable money, always making sure they were comfortable. Her husband never seemed to be particularly jealous but, instead, bent easily to her will and that of her sometimes confrontational lovers. In fact, he was whacked five times in a public area by one of her lovers who found him disagreeable. But for whatever reason, La Voisin never saw fit to dispose of him, and they never parted ways.

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