In the Apocryphal Acts of John Jesus commands the disciples to form a circle around him and leads them in a circle dance while singing a call-and response hymn. In addition, Jesus refers to the Ogdoad (the Eight) and the ‘Twelve dancing above’ – astronomical references the contemporary audience would have recognized. In Paradiso X, Dante and Beatrice emerge into the sphere of the Sun at the spring equinoctial point, when twelve spirits encircle them like a crown of dancing stars. This ‘zodiacal dance’ of twelve distinguished philosopher/theologians, like ‘young maidens’, swaying and dancing and spinning around Dante and Beatrice to heavenly music, is striking. It has been argued that the circle dance in the Acts of John is in fact an early Christian ritual from a time of considerable plurality in liturgy and church practice, and that the dance was ecstatic in character while being informed by Greek Neoplatonic ideas. This paper examines the role of astronomy in the ‘cosmic dance’. Complex astronomical references in Dante combine with the dance, the call-and-response hymn, music which is heavenly, not earthly, and stars which are souls that dance in the houses of the Zodiac.