“I don’t think anything in his life absorbed, enthralled him as did the witches of Florence.” -Elizabeth Robins Pennell Charles Godfrey Leland had never been a stranger to the odd and the out-of-the-way, but when he settled in Florence in the late 1880s, his life took on a distinctly magical bent. Like any newcomer he…
Aradia’s Hidden Hand: The Untold Life of Roma Lister is now available from Hexen Press! Described by Professor Ronald Hutton as providing “important new information concerning the milieu from which one of the foundational texts of modern Paganism emerged”, Aradia’s Hidden Hand presents new evidence that the British-Italian folklorist Roma Lister played a key role in…
“The power of an invocation comes from the force of the soul who invokes it.” – Roma Lister Roma Lister was no stranger to séances. Over the course of her life, she attended dozens of sittings and had multiple occasions to converse with and study other psychics, such as the famed — but controversial —…
“It is a curious place — the wood in Villa Doria. I made my first acquaintance with poltergeists there.” -Roma Lister Although — in later life — Roma Lister was described by some as having an “easy familiarity with ghosts”, her earliest experiences with the Unseen were anything but agreeable. During her youth, Lister often…
“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),…
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.
“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…