The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, in the ancient and elegant city of Bath, England, hosted the 14th Annual Conference of the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in on 25-26 June 2016. This year's programme was titled 'Worshipping the Stars: Celestial Themes in Observance and Practice of the Sacred' and featured 18 lectures that explored the relationship between celestial bodies and ideas of divinity and religious practice and observance. Read on...

The Sophia Centre has just held its first Student Photo Competition. The call for submissions went to students and alumni from the 2014 intake onwards with over eighteen entrants submitting thirty-three photos in all. Once the images were collected into an online exhibition, voting commenced with tutors, alumni and students alike choosing their top three photos. The overall consensus was that the photographs were so good it had been difficult to choose from amongst the many stunning images.

The winners were as follows: Read on...

This year's annual Sophia Centre Summer School was once again held in the beautiful and ancient city of Bath Spa in England's West Country, the 9th session since the MA took up residence at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The session began with the usual meet-up at All Bar One on Monday evening, allowing old friends a chance to renew ties and newcomers a warm welcome into the fold of multifarious scholars who comprise the Sophia Centre family. This year's programme of lectures, presentations, exhibitions and excursions highlighted the diverse and erudite work of students, tutors, lecturers and alumni. Read on...

The History of Astrology

Chris Mitchell

The MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology weaves together numerous strands of astrology, cosmology and culture. Previous articles in the Newsletter have discussed many of the modules taught on the MA. Some have covered how astrology is used as a tool, whether it is Western psychological astrology in the twenty-first century, or watching the sky for omens in ancient Babylon; some have investigated the intimate relationship between humanity and the sky, and how this relationship is portrayed in art and in sacred landscapes and buildings. The History module looks at where our astrology comes from, and how it has developed and changed over time. Read on...

Ancient Knowledge Modern Technology

Dr Frances Clynes

The MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology operates from the Sophia Centre at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David's Lampeter Campus, and is taught by distance learning, with Dr. Nicholas Campion as its Director. Our students and alumni, however, are based in all corners of the globe: from South America to Japan, from Russia to Australia and New Zealand, and many places in-between. While in the past, the distance learning student may have suffered a sense of isolation, with the use of technology the MA in Cultural Astronomy is, as stated on our website, 'a global community of students and scholars who connect on the web'.[1] Read on...

Alumni News

Alumni Association Prize and Alumni Events

Read on...

Cosmos and Character: Topics in Hellenistic Astrology

Andre Henriques MA reviews Dr Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum's lecture series.

Over three successive Wednesdays, from late March to mid-April 2016, Dorian Greenbaum offered to the Sophia Centre Alumni Association three online seminars covering topics of her specialist subject, Hellenistic astrology. With an audience of roughly half current students, half graduates, of the MA CAA, Dorian was a skilful guide through the multi-layered complexity of what we currently know about this key period in the history of Astrology, a period which defined the building blocks of the system that continued to be used for the next two thousand years. Read on...