"Forget trepanning. John Michell opened my third eye years ago... the mysteries he touches upon are in my head forever." -- Candida Lycett Green, author of Over the Hills and Far Away
"Refreshingly original, yet genuinely grounded in tradition. John Michell is wise, mischievous and amusing." -- Rupert Sheldrake, author of A New Science of Life
ÒForget trepanning. John Michell opened my third eye years ago.Ó --Candida Lycett Green, author Candida Lycett Green Candida Lycett Green
ÒRefreshingly original, yet genuinely grounded in tradition. He enriches the lives of those who know him and his works.Ó --Rupert Sheldrake, author
Product Description
Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist is a wide-ranging collection of colourful essays by English author and philosopher John Michell. For those readers only familiar with his better-known writings on Earth Mysteries, unusual phenomena and eccentric figures, much of the material here will be a pleasant surprise. Since its inception, Michell has regularly contributed to the monthly magazine The Oldie, one of BritainÕs best-kept publishing secrets. MichellÕs column, ÒAn Orthodox Voice,Ó is a perpetual font of erudite insights, charming commentaries, wittily scathing pronouncements, and divine revelations. Writing in clear, exquisite language, he deftly applies traditional wisdom to various aspects of the modern conundrum. In author Patrick HarpurÕs words, ÒIf Socrates had ever written a column, this would be it.Ó Divided into nine sections, Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist presents MichellÕs thoughts on a wealth of heretical topics, from ancient echoes of a Golden Age to the madness of modernity and the unfolding apocalypse. Undergirding these ruminations is the rarely heard perspective of an enlightened, idealistic Platonist. Even when slaying sacred cows or lancing contemporary buffoons, he never forgets that the elusive Òparadise of the philosophersÓ is within reach for those with the strength of vision to see it. In our inverted modern world, these disarming orthodox writings have the delicious flavor of forbidden fruit. The 108 essays in this volume have been carefully selected and introduced by Joscelyn Godwin, a long-time admirer of John MichellÕs work and himself an acknowledged authority in matters esoteric and metaphysical.
From the Author
"Look behind the chaos of our existence and you see order. It is not utopian, fascistical or like any kind of man-made order, but divine and perfect, and it existed before time. Socrates called it the ïheavenly patternÍ which anyone can discover, and once they have found it they can establish it in themselves." John Michell
About the Author
John Michell was born in London in 1933 and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. His early books, The Flying Saucer Vision (1967) and The View Over Atlantis (1969), exposed new generations to the lost wisdom and sacred sciences of the ancient world. His voluminous subsequent writings have chronicled forgotten eccentrics and illuminated the mysterious worlds of crop circles, ley lines, simulacra in nature, Stonehenge, and sacred geometry. Some of his recent works include At the Center of the World (1994), The Temple at Jerusalem: A Revelation (2000), and The Measure of Albion (with Robin Heath, 2004). An exhibit of his geometrical and other watercolour paintings was held in London in 2003 at the Christopher Gibbs Gallery. He lives in Notting Hill, London.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Fireside Wisdom
Pondering, as I often do, the question of how and when the world went mad, I recently made an important breakthrough. It was to do with the displacement of the hearth or fireplace.
The oldest and most satisfactory form of dwelling is the "primitive hut." Made simply of sticks, stones, mud or whatever is to hand, it has a circular wall and a conical thatched roof with an opening at the top to let out smoke from the central fire. Its inhabitants sit round a square hearthstone where the fire warms a cooking pot suspended from a chain.
Anthropologists have found that this practical arrangement is everywhere seen as a cosmological scheme. Within the circumference of the wall, representing a limited universe, the hearthstone is the body of the earth, with four corners and four directions, and it is the seat of Hestia the (h)earth goddess, whose energies are concentrated in the central fire. The chain is the world-pole, the link between heaven and earth and the means of intercourse with gods and spirits. Conversation is directed into the fire while dreams and images are drawn out of it. It is too smoky to read or look at pictures. Eyes and minds are concentrated upon the focal point. In that situation, sitting in friendly company around a fire on which a pot is simmering, one is likely to feel "centred" and at ease.
We still speak of sitting "around" a fire, even though the modern fireplace is on one side of rectangular room and we actually sit in front of it. With this new arrangement the influence of the old cosmological imagery became inactive, and minds became less centred. Now even the wall-fire has been abolished from many homes, and the main focus is provided by the electric cooker or flickering television set.
Thus the traditional cosmology is no longer represented by its domestic symbols, and a new, secular, restless, uncentred world-view has taken its place.
Focus, meaning a centre which receives and emits rays of light, is the Latin name for the central fireplace. The fire not only warms but, as a symbol, illuminates the corresponding images of a centre to each of our own beings and of a world-centre which is divine, eternal and unchanging.
For calming the mind and restoring it to its proper order there is no substitute for a centrally placed hearth. There is much comfort in our modern domestic machinery -- gramophone, television, central heating -- but with these accessories we are not exactly focussed. We are distracted, torn from the realities of dreams and imaginings centred upon our own hearths and minds, and aimlessly drifting in a sea of alien fantasies.
Modern house-builders have given us high levels of convenience and hygiene, while ignoring the psychological necessity of a focus; and through the absence of a cosmologically significant centre our minds have become unbalanced.
It is ironic that so many places are called art centres, culture centres and so on, when they have no centre at all but slop around on erratic tides of fashion and faddery.
They should put a pole up the middle, light a fire at its base, make that a symbol of eternal beauty and truth and concentrate the minds of their inmates upon it, thus uplifting the standard of their artworks.
Now I know how the world went mad. We knocked the centre out of it, and ever since we have been fumbling around looking for it, mistaking our own or other people's obsessions for the real thing.
