“It was in one of these periods of strange happenings that I accepted my friend’s invitation, having little fear of ghosts.” – Roma Lister As I’ve written previously, late nineteenth-century Florence was a bona fide ghostland. Following the rise to international stardom of the Fox sisters (who are generally acknowledged as the “mothers” of spiritualism),…
“During my life, I have had occasion to make my own little theories, and, what is perhaps more interesting, I have been able to test them.” – Roma Lister Roma Lister, like many of those in her circle (doctors, bohemians, dressmakers, diplomats, countesses, magistrates) were many-sided. They all had their working-day-world fixations and obligations. But…
Long ignored by scholarship, Lister was a writer, folklore collector, and occultist who served as an inspiration and adviser to the American man of letters Charles Godfrey Leland. Throughout her life, Lister, like her friend Lady Walburga Paget and others, often had strange, visionary experiences.
Aradia’s Hidden Hand: The Untold Life of Roma Lister will be the first-ever monograph on Roma Lister, a British-Italian folklore collector, occultist, and friend of the American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland.
“At some future day—I cannot say when and where—it will be proved that the human soul is…already in an uninterrupted communication with those living in another world; that the human soul can act upon those beings, and receive, in return, impressions of them…” – Immanuel Kant Humanity’s first attempts to contact otherworldly intelligences date back…
Sleep’s importance to early modern life and culture can hardly be overstated and yet the history of this vital and ubiquitous human experience has barely been told. -Professor Sasha Handley How has climate impacted historical sleeping patterns? How did early peoples interpret and customise their own sleep environments? These are some of the questions that…
“I had previously stumbled across book curses when leafing through manuscripts and, as an avid fan of folk horror literature, was interested in the intersection of the macabre and book history.” -Dr Eleanor Baker Modern libraries do not suffer fools gladly. To protect their collections from ambitious thieves, they frequently rely on a multipronged strategy,…
“The primary focus of the book is to shed light on the concepts of indigenous and trans-cultural shamanism within the Italian context, while also delving into the fascinating realm of Italian folk magic tradition that I systematised as the Tradition of Segnature.” -Dr Angela Puca In the late 1890s, Eustace Neville-Rolfe–an acquaintance of Charles Godfrey…
“My entire life has been guided by an enthusiasm for dreaming and the dream aesthetic…As a child, my intuition told me that lucid dreaming offered an opportunity to expand the human experience and transcend the mortal realm.” -from Initiation into Dream Mysteries: Drinking from the Pool of Mnemosyne (2023) by Sarah Janes For the ancients,…
In January 2023, the University of Copenhagen launched the Dark Arts Research Group (DARG). Covering the period from 1750 to the present, the project will take an in-depth look at the global public’s “fascination with otherworldly entities and the macabre”. The DARG is specifically interested in exploring the varied ways horror, gothic, and other esoteric…