Welcome to the Sophia Centre Press
The Sophia Centre Press is a spinout company from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD), established in 2009. It publishes and promotes scholarly work, sponsors and organises conferences and courses related to the work of the University’s Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology and Culture, in partnership with the University.
Our work is based in the Humanities and crosses history, anthropology, philosophy and archaeology. We examine the role of cosmological, astronomical and astrological beliefs, models and ideas in human culture, including the theory and practice of myth, magic, divination, religion, spirituality, architecture, politics and the arts in any time period or culture.
We are concerned with how we live on our home planet, with questions of nature, ecology and harmony.
Recent Publications
Sophia Centre Master Monographs 4
Daughter of Saturn
An Auto-ethnographic Enquiry into Contemporary Astrological Practice
Liz Hathway
ISBN: 978-1-907767-43-2 (paperback); 978-1-907767-44-9 (ebook)
Daughter of Saturn offers a sustained, reflexive examination of Saturnian symbolism as lived experience, situating the author’s personal narrative within contemporary astrological practice and wider cultural discourse. Drawing on an auto-ethnographic Saturn diary, dream material, illness narratives, and an extended professional engagement with astrology, Liz Hathway mobilises her position as a ‘deep insider’ to illuminate how astrologers conceptualise Saturn and Capricorn in relation to mythological, historical, and theoretical frameworks. Through online and in‑person focus groups, close reading of classical and modern sources, and critical engagement with debates around stereotyping, archetypes and insider/outsider status, the book interrogates the construction and circulation of Saturnian and Capricornian types in both scholarly and popular contexts, and offers an important insider perspective on the cultural location of astrology in the modern West.