University of Exeter

Faculty Member, EXESESO (MA in Western Esotericism)

Other Affiliations: University of Kent, SECL
Phoenix Rising Academy, E Learning Tutor

About

I am currently a faculty member for EXESESO at the University of Exeter, Associate Lecturer in RS at the University of Kent, and a tutor for the Phoenix Rising Academy for Esoteric studies and creative arts. I was the Director of the MA in the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination at Kent,which ended in 2010. 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, musician and astrologer, Marsilio
Ficino, and had become thoroughly immersed in the world of 15th century music and philosophy. I therefore decided to embark on a Ph.D. to explore Ficino’s astrological music therapy -  this was completed in 1992 as 'Music, Astrology and Magic: the astrological music therapy of Marsilio Ficino and his role as a Renaissance Magus'. From 1978 until 1993 I maintained a part-time freelance musical career, playing viols and baroque violin with many ensembles, organising concerts and touring.
In 2000 the opportunity arose to devise and record a CD, ‘Secrets of the Heavens’,an imaginative reconstruction of Ficino's Orphic Singing, with the singers Mark Tucker and Catherine King, and the actor Mark Rylance. I also recorded the consort music of Thomas Lupo for ASV, and John Dowland’s Lachrimae for Riverrun Records ,both with the English Fantasy Consort of viols.

Since moving to Kent in 1998 I have been teaching at the University of Kent, at first for the MA in the Study of Mysticism and Religious Experience, out of which emerged the MA in the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination in 2006. The MA was established due to the generous sponsorship of the Sophia Trust, and has focussed on divinatory theory and practice, symbolic interpretation, the function of the imagination as a mode of knowledge and traditional cosmology. I have published numerous papers on Ficino, as well as an edited collection of his astrological writings for North Atlantic Books, Western Esoteric Masters series. I am now moving into the territory of symbolism and the imaginal, exploring statue-magic, the spiritual dimensions of music, LBL and past-life therapy, ancient Greek mysteries and the metaphysics of divination.
I live with my two teenage sons and when not occupied with my work I am learning to be a jazz
and rock drummer.

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