Twelve-Tribe Nations: Sacred Number and the Golden Age [Paperback]

John Michell (Author), Christine Rhone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2008

The symbolism and use of the number twelve in organizing ancient societies

• Connects the zodiac, the twelve months of the year, and the political divisions of ancient nations

• Explores the sacred geography of ancient landscapes in Europe and Israel

Throughout the world--in countries as far apart as China, Ireland, Iceland, and Madagascar--there survive records and traditions of whole nations being divided into twelve tribes and twelve regions, each corresponding to one of the twelve signs of the zodiac and to one of the twelve months of the year. Best known are the twelve tribes of Israel under King Solomon, but there have been many others. Wherever they occur, they are associated with an ideal social order and a golden age of humanity.

Exploring examples of these twelve-tribe societies, John Michell and Christine Rhone explain the blueprint for this organizational structure and look at the musical, mythological, and astronomical enchantments that kept these societies in harmony with the cosmos. They also examine the astrological landscapes of classical Greece, the aligned St. Michael sanctuaries of Europe, and the true site and function of the Temple in Jerusalem. They show that the sacred geography of these sites was part of an ancient code of knowledge that produced harmony between nature and humanity and is as relevant to our present and future as it was to our past.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“John Michell and Christine Rhone’s book combines vision and tradition to produce a comprehensive guide to what they term ‘the science of enchanting the landscape,’ as practiced across the ancient world. Their book is indispensable to anyone seeking an understanding of the way in which the threads of astrology, cosmology, number, and music were combined, in many countries and at many different periods, to provide a design for the fabric of society.”
(Pete Stewart, author of The Spiritual Science of the Stars )

“In this fascinating book, John Michell and Christine Rhone have assembled overwhelming evidence for the existence of a vast, ancient, mystical science of number and astrological geometry that once encompassed the entire earth.”
(Herbert Bangs, author of The Return of Sacred Architecture )

“This is a key text on how sacred number once shaped human societies before the onset of modernity. Twelve-Tribe Nations reveals numerical and geometrical recipes underlying the ancient practice of the ‘enchantment’ of landscapes and cultures, which stands in contrast to the exploitation of modern landscapes and citizens.”
(Richard Heath, author of Sacred Number and the Origins of Civilization and Matrix of Creation )

“. . . an enjoyable romp through the collective memory of tribe, myth, sacred landscapes and the deep memories of a past golden age.” (EarthRites.org, May 2011 )

From the Back Cover

ANCIENT MYSTERIES / SACRED GEOMETRY

“John Michell and Christine Rhone’s book combines vision and tradition to produce a comprehensive guide to what they term ‘the science of enchanting the landscape,’ as practiced across the ancient world. Their book is indispensable to anyone seeking an understanding of the way in which the threads of astrology, cosmology, number, and music were combined, in many countries and at many different periods, to provide a design for the fabric of society.”
--Pete Stewart, author of The Spiritual Science of the Stars

Throughout the world--in countries as far apart as China, Ireland, Iceland, and Madagascar--there survive records and traditions of whole nations being divided into twelve tribes and twelve regions, each corresponding to one of the twelve signs of the zodiac and to one of the twelve months of the year. Best known are the twelve tribes of Israel under King Solomon, but there have been many others. Wherever they occur, they are associated with an ideal social order and a golden age of humanity.

Exploring examples of these twelve-tribe societies, John Michell and Christine Rhone explain the blueprint for this organizational structure and look at the musical, mythological, and astronomical enchantments that kept these societies in harmony with the cosmos. They also examine the astrological landscapes of classical Greece, the aligned St. Michael sanctuaries of Europe, and the true site and function of the Temple in Jerusalem. They show that the sacred geography of these sites was part of an ancient code of knowledge that produced harmony between nature and humanity and is as relevant to our present and future as it was to our past.

JOHN MICHELL, educated at Eton and Cambridge, is the pioneer researcher and specialist in the field of ancient, traditional science. He is the author of more than 25 books that have profoundly influenced modern thinking, including The Dimensions of Paradise, The New View over Atlantis, and Secrets of the Stones. He lives in London. CHRISTINE RHONE is an artist and writer with a special interest in landscape symbolism. The translator of several important works, including Jacques Le Goff’s Saint Francis of Assisi, Antoine Faivre’s Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, and Jean Richer’s Sacred Geography of the Ancient Greeks, she lives in London.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Inner Traditions (November 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594772371
• ISBN-13: 978-1594772375
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #565,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Five stars for a Twelve star book, April 22, 2009

By 

Mark Gibbs (Singapore) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Twelve-Tribe Nations: Sacred Number and the Golden Age (Paperback)

A gem of a book. Lucidly written, it provides excellent and comprehensive evidence for the existence of an ancient global culture that was based on the number twelve. This was a harmoniously structured society that for some reason naturally resonated with its inhabitants. Modern civilization, having lost, forgotten, or destroyed this knowledge, is constantly mired in chaos and turmoil. This edition is a reprint from the early 1990's, so I wonder if the authors have by now come up with a better explanation than conventional scholarship (which regards our ancestors as merely primitive stargazers) as to why the number twelve should have held such a universal authority. That is the great secret.

7 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Well-written but serious deficits in research and logic, May 15, 2010

By 

Laura Knight-Jadczyk (France) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Twelve-Tribe Nations: Sacred Number and the Golden Age (Paperback)

As far as alternative history/research goes, this is an interesting addition, but, based on my own researchers into the topic, seriously flawed.

As I read through it, it became painfully obvious that the authors would have benefitted greatly by studying the actual archaeology and reading the works of mainstream - but maverick - scientists such as Clube, Firestone and Baillie. The Cosmic SerpentThe Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture

Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets

The Celtic Gods: Comets in Irish Mythology

The Diluvian Impact: The Great Flood Catastrophe 10,000 Years Ago As The Consequence Of A Comet's Impact

Man and Impact in the Americas.

With the information easily available in the above mentioned books to hand, they would have had a much wider field of ideas upon which to speculate and wouldn't have made so many truly embarrassing assumptions.

There are so many things that they just state as fact - along with the rest of the "esoteric crowd" - that are embarrassingly dumb when you have all the info about former cataclysms, cometary bombardments, giant comets, and so on.

It seems to me that some of these sites that became so holy are places of impact and the objective was to "contain" the demon that came from the sky - or, conversely - to tap into the power of the "god" that came from the sky.
This "straight track" business strikes me as a line where a series of impacts occurred a la Shoemaker-Levy-on-Jupiter in our distant past with the same consequences: shrines, churches, stones set up, or whatever to either contain or tap into the assumed power of the celestial being.

Then, of course, there is no reason why there could not be energetic anomalies for a very long time after impacts whether they are atmospheric explosions or direct hits.

The authors are also not including easily available information about genetic mutation that occurs in conjunction with cosmic catastrophe, which can include psychopathology in human beings. What I see is that, during a period of great stress, pathological types saw their moment and seized it and instituted a system that was supposed to reflect the cosmic system that had existed before, but with some important twists that worked to their advantage. And we've been stuck with it ever since. Then, of course, it would make sense that a traumatized people would want to be protected by such a draconian system as they describe. They would have been told by the psychopaths taking advantage of the situation: "hey, you people sinned, that's what brought on this disaster, now if you want to avoid more of the same, you have to do what we say because the god talks to us and not you."

The authors just gloss over the problems and assumes that everyone had good intentions when they did what he proposes they were doing. The clues to the more ancient system that was displaced by the new pathological "enchantment", he just mentions and brushes aside rather cavalierly, IMO. The authors think it was a good idea for the truly ancient model to have been wiped out by the Asiatic model - the 12 tribe model - and assumes rather naively that this was the "good" one even though he openly says that there was an older one and even talks about it and mentions that the 12 tribe one came into being along with the suppression of the feminine, the institution of agriculture, etc. He hasn't cast his net wide enough to grasp those implications. It's a certainty that we have lived under the control of an "evil magician" (see Gurdjieff) for lo, these past 13K years, since the diluvian impact and the rise of psychopathology to power and the dystopia we experience today is the consequence - and part of that spell-casting.

So much foolishness could be eliminated if people would only read the fact based stuff alongside the inspirational stuff and try to make real sense out of it.

I wanted to give it a three because it is decently written in spite of the wild leaps of assumption, but just can't due to all the data/interpretation flaws. I wouldn't recommend it.