“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…
“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…
“In Trizac, in the wood of Marlhiou, where mounds of earth are found, rests Cottenghe, a Gaulish city of invisible treasures, left in the custody of serpents.” -Paul Sébillot Professional treasure-hunting has never been for the faint of heart. In Mamluk and Ottoman Egypt, those fortunate enough to own kutub al-mutālibīn (treasure-hunting manuals) needed to…
“I had heard versions of merpeople stories—primarily those about mermaids—in many highland villages while doing research in the Andes…I didn’t yet understand how these stories tied into the larger sociopolitical context of Spanish rule.” -from “The Revolutionary Power of Andean Folk Tales” by Dr Di Hu Mermaids and sirens have long played a prominent role…
“My aim is to move beyond the perception that Lithuanian paganism is a matter of interest only to Lithuanians, and to show that this extraordinary pagan faith matters to the religious history of Europe as a whole.” – Dr Francis Young Every age has had its relic-hunters, those who, propelled forward into untracked territory by…
“Praetorius’s world and his work were constructed of wonderment at the magical universe and of the speculations of the new science.” -from Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to His Time (2006) by Gerhild Scholz Williams Among Germany’s many legendary sites, the Brocken (formerly known as the Blocksberg) is…
“The idea that drives the subgenre is the survival of ancient cults, usually in remote rural areas, a mere step away from our ‘civilised’ surroundings…in folk horror the past always returns to haunt us.” -from “Archaeology and Folk Horror in Hellebore” (2020) by Maria J. Pérez Cuervo In 2019, Maria J. Pérez Cuervo launched Hellebore,…
“They hang people for poisoning your body, but no law can touch them when they inject poison in your mind.” -from Witchcraft: its Power in the World Today by William Seabrook (1941). Sorcery, it’s been argued, is both a composite art and an acquired taste. In all ages, the prototypical sorcerer or witch has been…
“A thousand fathoms down our home; Daughters we of the pathless deep, sprung from the ever dancing foam.” –from The Mermaids by Edith M. David (1873). Mermaids, it would seem, have been shoaling around the sunless depths of the human psyche since the time of the ancient Mesopotamians. From the very beginning, marine humanoids were associated…