Born in 1640, France, as Catherine Deshayes. Later Catherine would claim she learned fortune-telling at the age of 9, and her ability to divine the future was a God given gift. Her early years remain a mystery, her story beginning when she was married to Antonine Monvoisin, a silk merchant and jeweler in Paris. She would go on to have three children with him, bringing the household up to six, including her mother.
When Antonine’s business began to fail, falling into bankruptcy, Catherine stepped up to do what she could to provide for her family, using her previous skills and interests to offer services to the public: midwifing, including prenatal care, birthing, and abortions (illegal at the time, but even still in high demand), and fortune telling via chiromancy (palmistry) and physiognomy (face-reading).
In the late 1660’s, now going by just La Voisin, she had become a wealthy and famous fortune teller, serving the highest aristocracy of France, with divination, magical trinkets and potions, and black masses. Receiving her clients at her residence in Villeneuve-sur-Gravois, her personal life outside of work was filled with social parties, being Godmother to noblewomen’s babies, and having numerous love affairs, including an executioner Andre Guillaume, and a magician Adam Lesage. She was also highly fascinated by alchemy and science (which would later serve her well), and played violin.
While the fortune telling business was doing well (she was even called into question by the Congregation of the Mission at the Saint Vincent de Paul’s order, and was able to successfully defend herself), La Voisin took matters into her own hands when she saw an opportunity. As many of her clients were requesting their futures be read in hopes of family members or spouses passing away, the magical potions she would often sell for beauty and love turned to poison so some could make their darker wishes come true.
La Voisin was not alone in this, there was a considerable amount of fortune-tellers and mystics in Paris doing much the same, perfected years before by Giulia Tofana with her ‘Aqua Tofana’ in Italy. In fact she had a rival fortune-telling poisoner within Paris, Marie Bosse, who would later contribute to each other's demises.
The client that would eventually force La Voisin’s career down a path to its early end was Madame de Montespan, the official royal mistress to King Louis XIV. It is said she hired La Voisin before this official title to earn the affection of the King, and after, Montespan continued to turn to La Voisin whenever she needed her. She would often get further divination and aphrodisiacs to support the King’s interests in her. Though eventually his focus switched to a new mistress, Angélique de Fontanges. Montespan once again turned to her trusted mystic, this time for poison to kill the King and his new lover.
While the attempt to do so failed, and the evidence of it burned, it would seem La Voisin was in the clear. But the current atmosphere of Paris was one of fear and shock. Later known as *The Affair of the Poisons* (an ordinance spurred by Madame de Brinvilliers’ recent trial, which uncovered a web of poisonous scandals), King Louis XIV had put together a tribunal known as Chambre Ardente to root out the underground poisoning ring.
Other arrests of psychics and fortune tellers during the time, including Magdelaine d La Grange, Marie Bosse, and Marie Vigoreaux led to confessions outing the network that had been created, and La Voisin’s many second-handed murders within it.
La Voisin was arrested on March 12 1679, and later so was her daughter Marguerite Monvoisin, both being imprisoned at Vincennes, and subjected to questioning. While the formal order of permitting torture was issued, it was never used, for fear of names among the aristocracy and royalty would be among her clientele. While many of her clientele remained either unnamed or unconfirmed (until after her death), she did admit to selling magical services and poisons to members of the royal court.
On February 22 1680, at age 39, La Voisin was burned at the stake for witchcraft in public on the Place de Grève, in Paris.