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),…
“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…
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.
“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 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…
“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…
“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…