The Music of the Spheres

I am currently a lecturer in Religious Studies in the School of European Culture and Languages at theUniversity of Kent,where I am the Director of the MA in the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination.

I completed my first degree in Combined Arts at the University of Leicester, followed by a Diploma in Early Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. After working for several years as both a professional musician and administrator (for Anthony Rooley and the Consort of Musicke), I studied for an MA in Music Performance Studies at the City University, London. By this time I had been introduced to the writing of the Renaissance philosopher and astrologer, Marsilio Ficino, and had become immersed in the world of 15th century music and magic. I therefore decided to embark on a Ph.D. to explore the generally misunderstood astrological practice of Ficino. This was completed in 1992 as ‘Music, Astrology and Magic: the astrological music therapy of Marsilio Ficino and his role as a Renaissance Magus’.

As a practising astrologer and musician myself, I have always felt it is vital to understand the phenomenology of practice as a basis for study, and this has continued to inform my research and teaching. A highpoint of my career was the devising and making of a CD, Secrets of the Heavens, an imaginative reconstruction of Ficino’s magical Orphic Singing. The live performance in a medieval church in London, complete with the appropriate incense for each deity, was an event in which pagan and Christian spirituality merged in true Renaissance spirit and I regard it as the impetus for all my work on the relationship between the imagination and religious experience.