In November 2025, Hexen Press published my first book, Aradia’s Hidden Hand: The Untold Life of Roma Lister. Part monograph, part folklore anthology, the book presents new evidence that Roma Lister — a hitherto ignored folklore collector, writer, and spiritualist medium — had a hand in the crafting of Aradia, one of the most important texts in the rise of modern witchcraft. Here’s what some readers have said about the book:
Professor Ronald Hutton CBE (University of Bristol):
“This book provides important new information concerning the milieu from which one of the foundational texts of modern Paganism emerged. It also gives generously to those who simply like folk tales and beliefs.”
Marco Visconti (author of The Aleister Crowley Manual):
“Manns…restores Roma Lister to the story not as an accessory, but as a woman whose proximity to folklore, magic, scholarship, and spiritualist practice makes her historically consequential…If you care about Aradia, if you care about how modern witchcraft assembled its mythic DNA, or if you simply want to watch a skilled historian pull a forgotten figure back into focus and make you wonder how you ever missed her, this book is precisely what you have been waiting for.”
Dr Massimo Biondi (Journal of the Society for Psychical Research):
“I was pleasantly struck by the amount of ‘new’ material contained in this book…Manns deserves recognition for having brought back to our attention much data and intellectual stimuli that may prove further inspiring.”