Cosmologies
Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Sophia Centre Conference, 2009
Edited by Nicholas Campion
In the Greek world, the cosmos was imagined as a unified living organism, eminently ordered and perfectly beautiful. In modern science, the cosmos is ‘out there’, but in traditional societies it is not only all around, but also ‘in here’, permeating everything from objects to thoughts and feelings. The ‘Cosmologies’ conference, given in 2009 in Bath, UK, is the seventh in a series of annual conferences hosted by the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, based in the School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. The papers published in this volume, which represent the breadth and depth of the Centre’s work, include a variety of approaches to understanding the many ways in which human beings relate their lives to the cosmos from the ancient world to the modern, using perspectives informed by history and anthropology.
The contributors include Pauline Bambrey, Glenford Bishop, Frances Clynes, Martin Gansten, Ronald Hutton, Helen R. Jacobus, Jane Ridder-Patrick, Lionel Sims, and Mark Williams.
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Acknowledgements
Introduction: ‘Cosmologies’
~ Nicholas Campion
Coves, Cosmology and Cultural Astronomy
~ Lionel Sims
Calendars and Divination in the Dead Sea Scrolls: the Case of 4Q318:
4QZodiac Calendar and Brontologion
~ Helen R. Jacobus
Reshaping Karma: an Indic Metaphysical Paradigm in Traditional and Modern Astrology
~ Martin Gansten
Néladóracht: Druidic Cloud-Divination in Medieval Irish Literature
~ Mark Williams
Astrology in the Seventeenth-Century Scottish Universities
~ Jane Ridder-Patrick
Decoding the Inter-Textual Literary Strata of the Mummers’ Play:
Some Unexpected Astronomical Themes and a Pagan ‘Fingerprint’
–Continuity or Reconstruction?
~ Glenford Bishop
The Beltane Fire Festival: its Place in a Contemporary World
~ Pauline Bambrey
The Traditional Festivals of Northern Europe
~ Ronald Hutton
Cyberspace and the Sacred Sky
~ Frances Clynes
Contributors
The Sophia Centre
Index
About the Editor
Dr Nicholas Campion is Principal Lecturer, Institute of Education and Humanities, and Associate Professor in Cosmology and Culture. He is the director of the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, the only academic Centre in the world to deal with cultural relationships with the sky and the cosmos. He is responsible for taking forward the Centre’s research and teaching activities, through supervising PhD students, sponsoring research projects, organising conferences and other events, and publishing research via the peer-reviewed journal Culture and Cosmos. He also serves as Programme Director of the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology.