John Michell RIP

[poliphilo]

John Michell died. I wouldn't say I was a disciple, but whenever I have pursued some particularly far-out line of speculative thought- anything to do with UFOs, ley lines, King Arthur, Glastonbury, standing stones and so on- it's a pretty sure thing that MIchell was loitering about somewhere in the vicinity.  I must have read some of his books- though I'm not sure which- because the New Age books that weren't written by him were mostly inspired by him- and you can't dip your ladle into that nutricious porridge without it coming out full of Michell. Earlier this year I found myself navigating round South West England with his book Sacred England as my guide and he led me to a very wonderful romanesque bas relief of St George in a  suburb of Dorchester that even the locals don't know is there. He was a man who knew a fabulous number of things- all of them fascinating, many of them nonsense. And the dear thing about him is that he was in on the joke.  He was a savant, a mystic, a trickster, a conjurer, a twiddler and tweeter on the Pipes of Pan. His scholarship was ludic, because- as he fully believed- the universe is too. He wasn't serious- or responsible- but he cared- and is in the line of those- which includes Shakespeare and William Blake and Kipling and Stukeley and Dion Fortune and so many other of my heroes and heroines- who have treated and written of England as holy ground.