“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 beneath the rays of the moon, in the darker, more ancient parts of Florence and Rome, they slipped — witch-like — into the upper spheres of other worlds.
In these night-side realms, visible only to those who knew how — and where –to look, they practised alchemy, cast spells, wrestled with phantoms, and held (to use an apposite Shellyian phrase) “high talk with the departed dead”. Tirelessly curious, they laboured in the borderlands of sense and spirit. Experimentation — not theory — was their watchword.
Lister provided dozens of anecdotes about these occult experiments in her memoirs, Reminiscences: Social and Political (1926) and Further Reminiscences: Occult and Social (1927). One of these involved a mysterious red powder that, when inhaled, would give people unusually vivid dreams. Never afraid of new things, Lister decided to try it herself. Here’s what happened:
Many years ago there was a man who used to sell, and by no means expensively, a certain powder. It looked like fine red dust, and to use it the powder had to be scattered over burning charcoal in a brazier. A faint mist-like smoke used to rise and lasted perhaps ten minutes; the room was then kept closed, and the person who slept in the room would discover a new faculty in his power of dreaming. It all depended on the state of harmony in the mind of the experimenter. I tried the powder myself, and found it opened one of the gates of the etheric plane. Only a small portion of this powder was obtainable, and on my writing for a further supply, a printed slip came in answer saying that for the present no more was to be had. I had given most of the powder away, so I could not have it analysed. The only thing I was able to learn from the chemist to whom I gave a remnant was that he could find no trace of known drugs beyond very fine sandalwood dust.
What was this mysterious powder? To me it brings to mind the fabled “Powder of Projection” of medieval and early-modern alchemists. Perhaps it contained finely-ground acacia wood (which is known to contain the psychoactive substance DMT). Interestingly, author P.D. Newman has put forward the speculative idea that certain Freemasonic groups at the time knew this and incorporated acacia “brews” into rituals. While it’s true that Lister did associate with Freemasons and other groups influenced by Rosicrucianism, the identity of this powder is likely to remain a mystery unless additional documents surface. My forthcoming book, Aradia’s Hidden Hand: The Untold Life of Roma Lister, however, will uncover many more secrets about Lister’s interactions with the Unseen.
Watch this space for more!