Marsilio Ficino

Marsilio Ficino was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. Though an ordained priest, he was also a practicing astrologer and magician whose daunting life’s work was to reconcile religious faith with philosophical reason — which included integrating pagan magical practice with Christianity. In a lengthy introduction, editor Angela Voss puts Ficino’s achievement in context as a complete re-visioning of traditional astrological practice and the beginning of a humanistic and psychological approach that prefigured contemporary holistic approaches to astrology as therapy.Angela Voss has a PhD from City University, London, where her work was on Ficino’s astrological music therapy. Voss is a lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where she convenes a Masters program in the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination.