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),…
In January 2023, the University of Copenhagen launched the Dark Arts Research Group (DARG). Covering the period from 1750 to the present, the project will take an in-depth look at the global public’s “fascination with otherworldly entities and the macabre”. The DARG is specifically interested in exploring the varied ways horror, gothic, and other esoteric…
“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…
“De Morgan was a spiritualist, meaning she believed that after the death of an individual’s body, their soul or spirit continued to live and operate in the world, and that individuals beyond the grave could thus be contacted. Such…ideas dominate her mature oeuvre.” -Emma Merkling In an article published in the New York Tribune about…
“Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century occultism was…heavily influenced by popular fiction, which often benefited from the generic fluidity that flourished at the chiasma of literary and Egyptological culture.” -Dr Eleanor Dobson For ages Egypt was regarded as a land of occult wisdom. In his Timaeus, Plato suggested that the Egyptians–the only people with knowledge of…
“You will remember that Albertus Magnus…adds emphatically, that the process will instruct and avail only to the few— that a man must be born a magician!” -from The Haunters and the Haunted by Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1859). In 1870, Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton hosted a quirky American man of letters named Charles Godfrey Leland at his manor house in Knebworth, Hertfordshire. The two thinkers were…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: NISI SHAWL Nisi Shawl is a writer and anthologist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. In 2008, her short story collection Filter House won the prestigious James Tiptree Jr award. Nisi’s other stories and articles have appeared in places like Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Aeon Magazine and Tor.com. Her highly anticipated debut novel Everfair (which…