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Roma Lister

Ghosts of Florence: Roma Lister and the Haunted Villa

Posted on May 5, 2025May 5, 2025 by TheCustodian

“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),…

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Roma Lister and the Mysterious Dream Powder

Posted on April 2, 2025April 3, 2025 by TheCustodian

“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…

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Contract signed: new book on Roma Lister

Posted on January 24, 2025January 24, 2025 by TheCustodian

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.

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The Lost Treasures of Cottenghe

Posted on April 9, 2022April 10, 2022 by TheCustodian

“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…

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Psychic Investigators: An Interview with Dr Efram Sera-Shriar

Posted on March 17, 2022March 17, 2022 by TheCustodian

“I was at first very incredulous and never sought the spirits….I am still very suspicious, and seek only for facts and avoid opinions. If I have good witnesses I escape hallucination, and I look sharp and avoid imposture; with those precautions I pursue this new science.” – Baron Seymour Kirkup The “Night-side of Nature”–the occult…

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Bolsas de Mandinga and their Makers: An Interview with Professor Cécile Fromont

Posted on October 16, 2020February 8, 2023 by TheCustodian

“We have in the Inquisition trials and elsewhere numerous testimonies of Africans and Europeans alike that describe how knives, swords, or even bullets from firearms have literally bounced off the skin of bolsa de mandinga wearers.” -Professor Cécile Fromont In 1730 an African slave and Vodun devotee named José Francisco Pereira was arrested in Lisbon…

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Baron Kirkup: The Forgotten Mage of Florence

Posted on April 10, 2020January 17, 2025 by TheCustodian

“Happy were the hours I spent in the society of Baron Kirkup…the manifestations he has witnessed are absolutely astounding.” -from Around the World Around the World: Or, Travels in Polynesia, China, India, Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Other Heathen Countries (1875)  by James Martin Peebles Long before the the rise of Theosophy, which took the world…

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From Spirit to Social Bot: The Familiar Shapes Documentary

Posted on March 2, 2018October 8, 2020 by TheCustodian

“They can assume all manner of shapes at their pleasure, appear in what likeness they will themselves…they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant…”  -from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621) Almost four hundred years ago, a young Oxford graduate named Joseph Glanvill published The Vanity of Dogmatizing, a…

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Sorcery, Trade Secrets, and Enterpise: the Case of William Wheeler

Posted on November 13, 2017October 8, 2020 by TheCustodian

“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…

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Doctor Torralva, The Arch-Magician of Castile

Posted on April 5, 2017October 8, 2020 by TheCustodian

“Remember the true story of the licentiate Torralva, whom the devils carried through the air, riding on a cane…”  -from The life and exploits of the ingenious gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, vol. II, by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Charles Jarvis (1749). According to tradition, the first person on the Iberian Peninsula to make…

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Categories

  • Art (60)
  • Crime (7)
  • History (87)
  • Occultism (48)
  • Politics (15)
  • Religion (29)

Recent Posts

  • Ghosts of Florence: Roma Lister and the Haunted Villa
  • Roma Lister and the Mysterious Dream Powder
  • Roma Lister: A Haunting Vision in Florence
  • Contract signed: new book on Roma Lister
  • Alien Encounters: An Interview with Professor Diana Pasulka
  • Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World: An Interview with Dr Holly Fletcher
  • Bookish Maledictions: An Interview with Dr Eleanor Baker
  • Italian Witchcraft and Shamanism: An Interview with Dr Angela Puca
  • Dream Mysteries: An Interview with Sarah Janes
  • The Dark Arts Research Group
  • The Astra Project: An Interview with Dr Luís Ribeiro
  • Underground Mathematics: An Interview with Dr Thomas Morel
  • Skyscape Archaeology: An Interview with Dr Fabio Silva
  • Shamans and Kabbalah: An Interview with Dr Yosef Rosen
  • Modern Occultism: An Interview with Mitch Horowitz
  • Lady Paget and the Enchanted Villa of Bellosguardo
  • The Lost Treasures of Cottenghe
  • Psychic Investigators: An Interview with Dr Efram Sera-Shriar
  • Los Angeles Noah: Reverend J. E. Lewis and the Liberian Arks
  • Dark Destinations: An Interview with Peter Hohenhaus
  • Storytelling and London Dreamtime: An Interview with Vanessa Woolf
  • Rosicrucians, Drugs, and Angelic Transformations: An Interview with Dr Hereward Tilton
  • Sigils and Spirits: An Interview with Darragh Mason
  • Sacred Worship in Ancient Nubia: An Interview with Professor Solange Ashby
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  • Evelyn De Morgan and the Art of the Imponderable: An Interview with Emma Merkling
  • The Many Faces of Pico della Mirandola: An Interview with Professor Brian Copenhaver
  • A 17th-Century Conspiracy Tale: Johann Cambilhon and the “Magick” College
  • Occult Egypt in the Victorian Popular Imagination: An Interview with Dr Eleanor Dobson

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