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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 Cambridge University.

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). 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 on the question of Shakespeare authorship, favouring Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford or William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, besides Christopher Marlowe. The "Richmond Review" said of this opus,

"Michell's text is witty, concise, elegantly written and brillantly constructed, 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". 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."

R.W. Bivens the Humanities Reference Librarian at Princeton University called this book "an entertaining if pluralistic survey of the authorship question..." The same book was judged a "lame study" and an "unconvincing piece of shaky scholarship" by Publisher's Weekly (1996).

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."

Reception

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Critics of Michell's work range from those who consider him eccentric, to those who express lavish praise, such as Joscelyn Godwin, who says, "It is not too much to say that John Michell is a prophet." Godwin wrote the introduction to Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist, a collection of essays culled from 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 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."

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." 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

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

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