THE STARRY RUBRIC: SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC.

Seventeenth-century England was a turbulent place to live. It was a century of civil wars, regicide, food riots and plague - a time of millenarian prophets and threatening witches, of radical sects and experiments in Commonwealth. It was also a revolutionary period. The lifting of printing press censorships created a veritable explosion of printed materials: from popular almanacs and calendars to handbooks of do-it yourself medicine, from vulgate Bibles to tomes of new, investigative natural philosophy and grimoires of occult science and ritual magic.

In the midst of all this, the astrologer-magicians of seventeenth-century England drew their charts of the heavens, divining answers and prescribing magical medicines.

In The Starry Rubric, Alexander Cummins shows how astrology and magic offered analysis, interpretation, and solutions - locating humanity in a shifting web of interrelation with the stars and, indeed, the cosmos as a whole. Through analysis and example, Cummins demonstrates the ways in which astrology and magic were crucial to early modern perspectives on human life, time, and meaning.

Dr Alexander Cummins is a consultant, diviner, writer, magician, and historian. He approaches ritual, divination, and sorcery both as a long-term practitioner and a historian of early modern magic. Dr Cummins has worked as a professional diviner for over a decade, and published several works on astrological magic, grimoires, and folk necromancy. He also provides training, workshops, and coaching in many aspects of magical theory and practice. His doctoral thesis from the University of Bristol explored the history of magical approaches to the emotions: from mapping personality with astrology, to managing emotionality with herbs and amulets, to the manipulations of aphrodisiacs, the evil eye, and the conjuration of spirits. His areas of research span topics such as folklore and sorcery, ghost stories and ancestor veneration, and handbooks of demonology and ritual magic.