John Michell

John Michell (1933 – 2009) wiki is an influential New Age author.

During the 1960s John Michell had famously hosted the influential London Free School in the basement of his house.

"Michell was born in London in 1933 and was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read modern languages. He served in the Royal Navy and later joined the civil service as a Russian interpreter. His writing career began in 1967 with the publication of The flying saucer vision: the Holy Grail restored. Emerging at the height of UFO interest, and a year before Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods, this work proposed the idea that flying saucers were not necessarily craft from other planets. Instead, they could be seen as emanations of the human psyche, archetypes in Jungian terms, which were being observed especially at sites with ancient religious significance. As Michell put it: "The strange lights and other phenomena of the post-war period were portents of a radical change in human consciousness coinciding with the dawn of the Aquarian Age."

"In 1969 he published the first of his works on sacred geometry, The View over Atlantis, where he examined the research of Alfred Watkins, reawakening and developing the ideas from Watkins's 1925 book The Old Straight Track. Michell showed how the rediscovery of ley lines and the patterns both within and between ancient monuments demonstrated traces of what he called "a gigantic work of prehistoric engineering". In May the same year, Michell established the Research into Lost Knowledge Organisation (Rilko), together with founder members Keith Critchlow and Mary Williams. The organisation was headed by Commander G.J. Mathys, with Janette Jackson as honorary secretary and Elizabeth Leader as archivist. Rilko, of which the present author is a member, continues its charitable activities to this day, in organising lecture series and republishing previously lost or ignored works of ancient wisdom.

"Alexander Thom's research into prehistoric monuments, espoused by Michell, showed that a measure known as the megalithic yard – close to the modern yard – was being used by the builders of old. Michell's desire to preserve traditional weights and measures led to his establishment, in 1970, of the Anti-Metrication Board. Speaking about this later on, Michell was proud to note that this "radical traditionalist" organisation had "outlived its bureaucratic adversary, the Metrication Board, by several years."... In 1990 Michell founded The Cereologist, a magazine on crop circles and related matters, which ran a total of 36 editions through to 2003."

"On 22 May 2010, a distinguished group of speakers came together in London to celebrate Michell’s life and works in all their paradoxical splendour. Organiser of the John Michell Day was the Temenos Academy, of which Michell had been a Fellow since its inception in 1990. Professor Grevel Lindop, as the Chairman of the Temenos Academic Board, had participated in many meetings with Michell. In his introduct­ory address to the symposium, he recalled “John’s presence at the Board meetings, that combined humour and great wisdom”. Very sensibly, Michell would periodically absent himself from these discussions to go outside and roll his own – sometimes tobacco, sometimes not... Critchlow was followed by Christ­ine Rhone, who also chaired the event. Rhone was the co-author of Twelve-Tribe Nations and the Science of Enchanting the Landscape (1991) with Michell, a revelatory book describing the foundations of a universal ideal social order. "

The View Over Atlantis (1969)
In this acknowledgements to his book The View Over Atlantis Michell thanks: "John F. Neal, John Williams, Chris Turner of Bristol, Jeanette Jackson, Elizabeth Leader, Thom Keyes, Ogilvie Crombie and Bruce MacManaway are among those whose suggestions and advice have been of great assistance."

Biography

 * Paul Screeton, John Michell: From Atlantis to Avalon (Alternative Albion, 2010). Review

Related Sourcewatch

 * Bob Rickard - coauthor
 * Robin Heath - coauthor
 * Fountain International
 * Allan Brown - coauthor
 * Inner Traditions
 * Synergetic Press