John Frederick Carden Michell (9 February 1933 – 24 April 2009) was an English author and esotericist who was a prominent figure in the development of the Earth mysteries movement. Over the course of his life he published over forty books on an array of different subjects, being a proponent of the Traditionalist school of esoteric thought.
Born in London to a wealthy family, Michell was educated at Cheam School and Eton College before serving as a Russian translator in the Royal Navy for two years. After failing a degree in Russian and German at Trinity College, Cambridge, he qualified as a chartered surveyor then returned to London and worked for his father's property business, there developing his interest in Ufology. Embracing the counter-cultural ideas of the Earth mysteries movement during the 1960s, in The Flying Saucer Vision he built on Alfred Watkins' ideas of ley lines by arguing that they represented linear marks created in prehistory to guide extraterrestrial spacecraft. He followed this with his most influential work, The View Over Atlantis, in 1969. His ideas were at odds with those of academic archaeologists, for whom he expressed contempt. Michell believed in the existence of an ancient spiritual tradition that connected humanity to divinity, but which had been lost as a result of modernity. He believed however that this tradition would be revived and that humanity would enter a Golden Age, with Britain as the centre of this transformation.
Michell's other publications covered an eclectic range of topics, and included an overview on the Shakespeare authorship question, a tract condemning Salman Rushdie during The Satanic Verses controversy, and a book of Adolf Hitler's quotations. Keenly interested in the crop circle phenomenon, he co-founded a magazine devoted to the subject, The Cereologist, in 1990, and served as its initial editor. From 1992 until his death he wrote a column for The Oldie magazine, which was largely devoted to his anti-modernist opinions. He accompanied this with a column on esoteric topics for the Daily Mirror tabloid. A lifelong marijuana smoker, Michell died of lung cancer in 2009.
Michell's impact in the Earth mysteries movement was considerable, and through it he also influenced the British Pagan movement. During the 2000s, his ideas also influenced the "Radical Traditionalist" sector of the far right, epitomized by the journal Tyr.
Biography Early life
John Frederick Carden Michell was born in London on 9 February 1933. His father, Alfred Henry Michell, was of Cornish & Welsh descent and worked as a property dealer in the capital, while his mother Enid Evelyn (née Carden) was the daughter of Major Sir Frederick Carden, 3rd Baronet, great-granddaughter of Sir Robert Carden, 1st Baronet, who served as Lord Mayor of London in 1857, and 3x great-granddaughter of John Walter, founder of The Times. The eldest of three children, Michell's siblings were named Charles and Clare. Michell was raised at Stargroves, his maternal grandfather's Victorian-era estate on the Berkshire Downs near to Newbury, and it was here that he developed a love of the countryside, learning about the local flora and fauna from a neighbouring naturalist. He was raised into the Anglican denomination of Christianity, although in later life rejected the religion. Michell was initially educated as a boarder at the preparatory Cheam School, where he was Head Boy and excelled at the high jump. From there he went to study at Eton College, where he was a contemporary of Lord Moyne and Ian Cameron, the father of future Prime Minister David Cameron.
He spent his two years of national service in the Royal Navy, during which time he qualified as a Russian translator at the School of Slavonic Studies. He then went on to study Russian and German at Trinity College, Cambridge, although was unable to secure a third-class degree. He then qualified as a chartered surveyor at a firm in Gloucestershire, before moving back to London to work for his father's property business. Commenting on this job, he later stated that it was "quite amusing, but of course I wasn't any good at it", with property speculators eroding much of his fortune.
In 1966 one of his properties, the basement of his own residence, became the base of the London Free School. The Black Power activist Michael X, having previously run a gambling club in the basement, had now become active in the organisation of the LFS and brought Michell into counter-culture activities. Michell began to offer courses in UFOs and ley lines.
In 1964, with Jocasta Innes, Michell fathered a son, Jason Goodwin,Obituary: Jocasta Innes, telegraph.co.uk, 23 April 2013 who also became a writer. The relationship with Innes did not last. Jason Goodwin did not meet his natural father until 1992, at the age of 28, at which point they became quite close.
Embracing the Earth Mysteries movement
Michell developed an interest in Ufology and Earth mysteries after attending a talk given by Jimmy Goddard at Kensington Central Library on the subject of "Leys and Orthonies" in November 1965. Michell's first publication on the subject of Ufology was the article "Flying Saucers", which appeared in the 30 January 1967 edition of the counter-cultural newspaper International Times. He proceeded to write a book on the subject, but lost the original manuscript after accidentally leaving it in a North London café, at which he had to rewrite it. The book eventually saw publication as The Flying Saucer Vision, published in 1967, when Michell was 35 years old.
The Flying Saucer Vision took the idea of Tony Wedd that ley lines – alleged trackways across the landscape whose existence was first argued by Alfred Watkins – represented markers for the flight of extraterrestrial spacecraft and built on it, arguing that early human society was aided by alien entities who were understood as gods, but that these extraterrestrials had abandoned humanity because of the latter's greed for material and technological development. According to Lachman, at this time Michell took the view that "an imminent revelation of literally inconceivable scope" was at hand, and that the appearance of UFOs was linked to "the start of a new phase in our history".Lachman, p 370 Many fans of Michell's work consider it to be "by far his most impressive book". In their social history of Ufology, David Clarke and Andy Roberts stated that Michell's work was "the catalyst and helmsman" for the growing interest in UFOs among the hippie sector of the counter-culture.
Subsequently, there was a shift in Michell's emphasis as he became increasingly interested in the landscapes in which he believed that ley lines could be found rather than the UFOs themselves. He wrote an article on "Lung Mei and the Dragon Paths of England" for a September 1967 issue of Image magazine, in which he compared British ley-lines to the Chinese mythological idea of lung mei lines, arguing that this was evidence of a widespread pre-Christian dragon cult in ancient Britain. He built on these ideas for The View Over Atlantis, a book which he privately published in 1969, with a republication following three years later. Believing this earth energy to be a real magnetic phenomenon arising naturally from the ground, Michell argued that an ancient religious-scientific elite had traveled the world constructing the lines and various megalithic monuments in order to channel this energy and direct it for the good of humanity. The tone of his work reflected "a fervent religious feeling", describing the existence of an ancient, universal, and true system of belief that was once spread across the ancient world but which had been lost through the degeneracy of subsequent generations. He added however that this ancient knowledge would be revived with the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, allowing for what Michell described as the "rediscovery of access to the divine will".
The Pagan studies scholar Amy Hale stated that The View Over Atlantis was "a smash countercultural success", while the historian Ronald Hutton described it as "almost the founding document of the modern earth mysteries movement". Fellow ley-hunter and later biographer Paul Screeton considered it to be a "groundbreaking" work which "re-enchanted the British landscape and empowered a generation to seek out and appreciate the spiritual dimension of the countryside, not least attracting them to reawaken the sleepy town of Glastonbury". The book inspired an array of Earth Mysteries publications in the 1970s and 1980s, accompanied by growth in the ley-hunting movement. Among the most prominent works to build on Michell's ideas during this period were Janet and Colin Bord's Mysterious Britain, which used them in its presentation of a gazetteer of ancient sites, and Paul Screeton's Quicksilver Heritage, which argued that the Neolithic had been a time devoted to spiritual endeavours which had been corrupted by the emergence of metal technologies. Michell associated with many individuals active in this ley-hunting community, and in July 1971 was one of many attendees at a ley-hunters picnic held at Risbury Camp, the largest outdoor gathering of the movement since 1939.
In May 1969 Michell established a group known as the Research Into Lost Knowledge Organisation (RILKO) with his friends Keith Critchlow and Mary Williams. In conjunction with the Garnstone Press, RILKO founded the Prehistory and Ancient Science Library, a book series that brought out reprints of older works, such as Watkins' The Old Straight Track and William Stirling's The Canon, both of which contained forewords by Michell. Michell also founded a small publishing company of his own, West Country Editions, through which he brought out his own A Little History of Bladud in 1973 as well as a reprint of Howard C. Levis's 1919 book Bladud of Bath. With his friend John "Peewee" Michael, who lived in Bristol, Michell also established a second small press, Pentacle Books, although it failed to become a commercial success and was short lived.
Michell was involved in the summer 1971 Glastonbury Fayre music festival near Pilton, Somerset, where the pyramid stage was built to Michell's specifications and situated at what he claimed were the apex of two ley lines. Through Michael Rainey, Michell was introduced to the members of rock band The Rolling Stones at the Courtfield Road home of band member Brian Jones. Michell befriended the band's lead singer, Mick Jagger, and he accompanied the band on a visit to Stonehenge. Michell then went on a visit to Woolhope in Herefordshire with Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg, Christopher Gibbs, and the filmmaker Kenneth Anger, where they hunted for ley lines and UFOs. Marianne Faithfull later recounted that band member Jones was particularly interested in Michell's ideas. He would later meet with the members of The Grateful Dead on their 1972 European tour; band members Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia expressed an interest in Michell's Earth Mysteries ideas.
Michell's impact on the hippie subculture was recognised by mainstream media, and he was invited to submit an article titled "Flying saucers" to The Listener in May 1968, which was accompanied by a critical piece by editor Karl Miller, in which Michell was described as "less a hippy, perhaps, than a hippy's counsellor, one of their junior Merlins." Hale noted that Michell promoted the idea of "England as a site of spiritual redemption in the New Age", bringing together "popular ideas about sacred geometry, Druids, sacred landscapes, earth energies, Atlantis, and UFOs".