A.D. Manns is a historian and writer.
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In 1899, Charles Godfrey Leland published Aradia, a “gospel of the witches” that drew on Italian folklore—but new research suggests the writer and medium Roma Lister may have played a hidden role in shaping the text and, ultimately, the modern revival of witchcraft.
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A. D. Manns is an oral storyteller, cultural historian, and writer. He holds a PhD from the Warburg Institute and has long maintained a deep interest in comparative religion, folklore, and mystical literature.
Dr. Manns wrote his doctoral thesis on propagandistic reinterpretations of the Italian Renaissance magus Tommaso Campanella in Civil War-era England. He has long maintained a deep interest in overlooked history and mystical literature and has written for a variety of folklore and art-centric publications, including Hellebore, Atlas Obscura, Folklore Thursday, and Abraxas Journal.
Following a brief stint as an architecture reporter—during which he had the pleasure of interviewing the Italian “philosopher-designer” Brunello Cucinelli—Dr. Manns pursued work as a strategic communications adviser. He has advised and helped lead influence campaigns on behalf of a Maghrebi prime ministerial candidate, Central and East African governments, and various financiers and ministries across Europe, North America, and Asia. In 2014, he launched the Thinker’s Garden, a blog specializing in overlooked history.External
Life After the Warburg
Andrew Manns
Co-authors: A.D. Manns | June | 2023
Warburg alumnus, Dr. Andrew Manns, has built a multifaceted career encompassing journalism, public relations, and academia. With a diverse range of experiences, including his recent role as an Associate Director at Highgate, Andrew has a keen interest in the power of narratives and their impact on society.
We caught up with Andrew to find out more about his career, his blog The Thinker's Garden, how his time studying at the Institute helped shape his research interests and what his plans for the future are.
Publications by this author
The Untold Life of Roma Lister
Hexen Press | December | 2025
Aradia’s Hidden Hand: The Untold Life of Roma Lister uses never-before-analysed archival and epistolary materials to argue that Roma Lister, a hitherto unstudied British-Italian witch, folklorist and close friend of Charles Godfrey Leland, played a key role in the crafting of Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches—one of the most important texts in the modern revival of witchcraft.
Although Lister has largely been forgotten, Manns unearths new information about her intimate connections to magical practitioners across Tuscany and the Roman countryside, as well as her secret activities as a medium during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Featuring a foreword by Maria J. P. Cuervo (Founder of Hellebore) Aradia’s Hidden Hand also includes an array of unpublished Italian legends and folk tales collected by Lister in addition to her essays on magic and religion. Overall, the book unpacks Lister’s Odyssean life and reveals her important role as one of the hidden women who helped pave the way for a new religion of witches.
‘This book provides important new information concerning the milieu from which one of the foundational texts of modern Paganism emerged. It also gives generously to those who simply like folk tales and beliefs.’ - Ronald Hutton
‘Challenges our ideas about a foundational text of modern witchcraft.’ - Christina Oakley-Harrington (Treadwell’s Books)
> Aradia's Hidden Hand is available in a limited edition of 250 copies with cover illustration by Sabina Felidae.Media by this author
Feature | January | 2026
Who really shaped one of the foundational texts of modern witchcraft? In this lecture from Occulture Conference 2025, A.D. Manns uncovers the hidden life and influence of Roma Lister behind Aradia. Recorded at Occulture Conference 2025, this talk re-examines the origins of Aradia, first published in 1899 by Charles Godfrey Leland and long regarded as a cornerstone in the development of modern witchcraft. While the book is traditionally understood as the result of collaboration between Leland and the Italian fortune teller Maddalena, this lecture presents compelling evidence for the involvement of a third, largely forgotten figure: Roma Lister. Raised, as she described it, “among witches and wizards” in the Roman countryside, Roma Lister emerged in the late nineteenth century as a dedicated folklore collector and one of Leland’s closest confidantes. Beyond her scholarly interests, she was also reputed to be a powerful occult practitioner—capable of spirit communication, spellcraft, healing, and prophecy—operating at the blurred boundary between lived magical practice and written tradition. Drawing on new research from Aradia’s Hidden Hand: The Untold Life of Roma Lister (Hexen Press, 2025), this lecture reconstructs Lister’s life, her occult reputation, and her likely contribution to Aradia. In doing so, it challenges long-standing assumptions about authorship, authority, and gender in the history of modern witchcraft, while opening new perspectives on how esoteric knowledge was transmitted, edited, and concealed at the turn of the twentieth century. About the speaker: A. D. Manns is an oral storyteller and historian and a graduate of the Warburg Institute. His doctoral research examined propagandistic reinterpretations of the Renaissance magus Tommaso Campanella in Civil War–era England. He writes widely on overlooked histories and mystical literature and has contributed to publications including Atlas Obscura, Hellebore, Abraxas Journal, Folklore Thursday, and The Thinker’s Garden. About Occulture Conference: Occulture Conference brings together artists, researchers, and practitioners to explore the intersections of culture, esotericism, politics, and contemporary spiritual practice. Learn more at: 👉 https://www.occultureconference.com
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