Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SageMab (talk | contribs) at 21:02, 24 November 2007 (Semi-protect this page from vandalis by Dbachmann). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

John Michell , sometimes credited as "'John F. Michell"', (born 06 February 1933 in London) is an English philosopher and a prolific writer on subjects including archaeoastronomy, sacred geometry, sacred sites, Fortean phenomena, the lives of notable eccentrics, geometry and the study of number, also called gematria.

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

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 "Who Wrote Shakespeare?'"(1996), an investigation of the many claims and counter-claims about the identity of the bard. 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.

The Folger Library in Washington, D.C. said of Michell's "Who Wrote Shakespeare" "This provocative book puts forth the question of whether Shakespeare was the real author of his plays." The "Richmond Review" wrote "Michell's text is witty, concise, elegantly written and brillantly contructed, equally suitable for a serious student of Shakespeare or a reader with a general interest in unsolved mysteries." The Shakespeare Oxford Library gave it a good review along with the Shakespeare Fellowship who reprinted a review of this book in 2005 by Roger Stritmatter in the Winter 1997 (33:1) issue of the "Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter". The reviewer holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of MA at Amhearst and is an Assistant Professor of English at Coppin State university. 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 revelant landscape with a perceptive eye for significant detail." Despite a poor review in "Publisher's Weekly" serious academic scholars agreed with R.W. Bivens the Humanities Reference Librarian at Princeton University who called this book "an entertaining if pluralistic survey of the authorship question..."

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. His oils from the 1960s are in major collections. Michell's vast "Execution of the Emperor Maximillian" in the Jane Ormsby Gore Collection is a case in point. Christopher Gibbs called his later geometric water colours, "rainbow fragments of eternity, echoes of the divine."

Overview

Commentary on Michell's work include praise from academics such as fellow author Joscelyn Godwin, who says, "It is not too much to say that John Michell is a prophet." Godwin, a professor at Colgate College in Hamilton, N.Y., wrote the introduction to Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist, a collection of essays culled from Michell's long-running monthly "An Orthodox Voice" column in "The Oldie", which provides a convenient introduction to Michell's ideas for those unfamiliar with his work. In the words of Patrick Harpur (from the flyleaf of "Confessions of a Radical Traditionlist") the noted author of "Daimonic Reality", "If Socrates were to write a column, this would be it."

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 Janovich, 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."

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 pamplets 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.

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, 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, 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
• 2005 Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist (collected essays, ed. Michael Moynihan) Dominion Press, ISBN 0-9712044-4-6.
• 2006 The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth: Discovering the Sacred Geometry of the Ancients, with Robin Heath, , Adventures Unlimited Press, ISBN 1931882509

External Links

• The HOPE - John Michell Includes a link to some of Michell's geometric art work
• [http://www.JohnMichell.com includes a more complete bibliography
• International Fortean Organisation, FortFest Conference Lectures
• [http://www.aboutus.org/JohnMichell.com

• Fortean writers
• Old Etonians
• 1933 births
• Living people
• Esotericists
• British authors