John Michell (writer)

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For other persons named John Michell, see John Michell (disambiguation).

John Michell (born 6 February 1933, sometimes credited as John F. Michell) is an English philosopher and a prolific writer on subjects including sacred geometry, sacred sites (i.e "ritualized landscapes"), gematria, archaeoastronomy, Fortean phenomena, and the lives of noted eccentrics. He is also a columnist for an English publication called "The Oldie".

Michell was educated at Eton College and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He served in the Royal Navy and qualified as a Russian interpreter and Chartered Surveyor before publishing his first book in 1967.

1 Books
2 Paintings
3 Reception
4 Partial bibliography
5 External links

[edit] Books

His better known works include The Flying Saucer Vision (1967), The View Over Atlantis (1969, later revised as The New View Over Atlantis, 1986), which stimulated renewed interest in ley lines, City of Revelation (1972), which concerns sacred geometry, A Little History of Astro-Archaeology (1977) and Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions (1984). He has also produced a series of "Radical Traditionalist" pamphlets urging a return to the principles of Platonism. In one of these, A Defence of Sacred Measures, he questions the use of the metric system.

In 1996, he also published his longest book to date on the question of Shakespeare authorship, favouring no candidate but providing information on all and inviting the reader to make up their own mind. The "Richmond Review" said of this book,

"Michell's text is witty, concise, elegantly written and brilliantly constructed, equally suitable for a serious student of Shakespeare or a reader with a general interest in unsolved mysteries."

The Shakespeare Oxford Library gave Who Wrote Shakespeare a good review along with the Shakespeare Fellowship who reprinted a review of this book in 2005 by a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of MA at Amherst, a professor of English at Coppin State University, Roger Stritmatter, in the Winter 1997 (33:1) issue of the "Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter". Stritmatter said of this book

"...a metaphor for the book might be that of a sumptuous tour guide for visitors to the strange but wonderful country of authorship studies. Like a good tour guide, Michell's book is clearly written, elegantly illustrated, and surveys the relevant landscape with a perceptive eye for significant detail."

R.W. Bivens the Humanities Reference Librarian at Princeton University called this book "an entertaining if pluralistic survey of the authorship question..."

[edit] Paintings

Michell is also a painter whose works have been displayed at prestigious venues such as his 2003 show at the Christopher Gibbs Gallery in London. Christopher Gibbs called his later geometric watercolours based on Platonic mathematics and other archetypal forms "rainbow fragments of eternity, echoes of the divine."

[edit] Reception

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Critics of Michell's work range from a churchman who considers him "... obsessed with numbers" (Ioan P. Culianu, review of The Dimensions of Paradise: The Proportions and Symbolic Numbers in Ancient Cosmology, Church History, 1991), to academics such as Joscelyn Godwin who wrote: "It is not too much to say that John Michell is a prophet...a rarer gift, which is the seeing of form in what Plato called the World of Ideas..." (Introduction to Michell's Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist, Waterbury Center, VT: Dominion, 2005, p. ix). Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist is a collection of essays culled from ten years of Michell's monthly "An Orthodox Voice" column in "The Oldie", which provides a convenient introduction to Michell's ideas for those unfamiliar with his work.

Paul Broadhurst, in the Introduction to The Measure of Albion, wrote of John Michell and his co-author Robin Heath, that "two of the most experienced and respected researchers into the wisdom of the ancients each present their own perspective on a discovery, one which reveals how ancient wisdom was preserved within the landscape...". A recurring theme, seen in his books from Living Wonders to Twelve Tribe Nations to The Measure of Albion, is of universal truths codified in nature and discovered by humankind over and over again, a path leading from ancient societies to today.

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, the publisher of his Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions, wrote that "his The View Over Atlantis (1969) helped to change the attitudes of a whole generation to the culture, wisdom, and science of ancient and traditional societies."

In the words of Patrick Harpur, the noted author of Daimonic Reality (from the flyleaf of Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist), "If Socrates were to write a column, this would be it." Michell has shared his discoveries of the sacred mysteries of the ancient world and the living wonders of the present world through a steady steam of books, articles and pamphlets from The View Over Atlantis to the Old Stones at Lands End. His manifestos include the rediscovery of the Temple at Jerusalem and the sacred geometry of its design.

[edit] Partial bibliography

1969 The View Over Atlantis
1972 City of Revelation: On the Proportions and Symbolic Numbers of the Cosmic Temple
1974 Flying Saucer Vision
1974 The Old Stones of Land's End
1977 with R. J. M. Rickard, Phenomena: A Book of Wonders
1979 Natural Likeness: Faces and Figures in Nature Thames and Hudson Ltd, ISBN 0-525-47584-2
1982 Megalithomania: Artists, Antiquarians & Archaeologists at the Old Stone Monuments
1983 The New View Over Atlantis
1984 Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions Thames and Hudson Ltd, reissued Harcourt Brace Jovanovich ISBN 0-15-127358-8
1985 Stonehenge - Its Druids, Custodians, Festival and Future , Radical Traditionalist Papers
1989 The Traveller's Key to Sacred England
1989 Secrets of the Stones: New Revelations of Astro-Archaeology and the Mystical Sciences of Antiquity
1989 Rushdie's insult, a pamphlet, Radical Traditionalist Papers
1989 Earth Spirit: Its Ways, Shrines and Mysteries
1991 Twelve Tribe Nations and the Science of Enchanting the Landscape, with Christine Rhone
1994 At the Center of the World: Polar Symbolism Discovered in Celtic, Norse and Other Ritualized Landscapes
1996 Who Wrote Shakespeare?, Thames and Hudson Ltd, ISBN 0-500-01700-X
1997 New Light on the Ancient Mystery of Glastonbury
2000, with Bob Rickard, Unexplained Phenomena: Mysteries and Curiosities of Science, Folklore and Superstition, Rough Guides, ISBN 1858285895
2000 The Temple at Jerusalem
2001 The Dimensions of Paradise: The Proportions and Symbolic Numbers of Ancient Cosmology Adventures Unlimited, ISBN 0-932813-89-5
2001 A Little History of Astro-Archaeology
2003 "Traveler's Guide to Sacred England, The: A Guide to the Legends, Lore and Landscapes of England's Sacred Places", Gothic Image Publications, ISBN 978090636263
2005 Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist (collected essays, ed. Michael Moynihan) Dominion Press, ISBN 0-9712044-4-6
2006 "Euphonics: A Poet's Dictionary of Sounds", Wooden Books, ISBN 978190426343
2006 The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth: Discovering the Sacred Geometry of the Ancients, with Robin Heath, , Adventures Unlimited Press, ISBN 1931882509
2008 "Dimensions of Paradise, The: Sacred Geometry, Ancient Science and the Heavenly Order on Earth", forthcoming from Inner Traditions - Bear & Company