This symposium celebrates the life and legacy of John Michell (1933-2009), an English artist and author who inspired many to explore the mysteries of landscape, symbolic geometry, and measure. His books The View Over Atlantis and City of Revelation were pivotal in the countercultural stream of the 1970s and beyond. Michell’s revival of the research of Alfred Watkins, who discovered ‘leys’ in the 1920s, motivated many to go out in search of alignments. Guided by the works of Plato and Charles Fort, he authored titles on unexplained phenomena, megalithomania, and ancient metrology. Qualified as a land surveyor and as a Russian interpreter, Michell dedicated his final book How the World is Made to Keith Critchlow, whom he called ‘our modern Pythagoras’.
SPEAKERS:
SCOTT OLSEN - ‘Plato and the Mystery of Phi’
JOHN MARTINEAU - ‘Five Coincidences’ (poetry performance)
ADAM TETLOW - ‘John Neal’s Restoration of Ancient Measure’
CHRISTINE RHONE - ‘Spirit of Place: Chris Street & Palden Jenkins’
ADAM HUNT - ‘Glastonbury: A Sacred Landscape’
JEFF SAWARD - ‘Caerdroia: The Journal of Mazes & Labyrinths’
Venue & Admission
Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 3AT
£50 or £35 Members of the Temenos Academy & full-time students with ID.
Scott Olsen, PhD: Professor Emeritus of philosophy and religion at College of Central Florida, Scott is the author of the award-winning Wooden Book, The Golden Section: Nature’s Greatest Secret (2006), and co-author of A Grand Unification of the Sciences, Arts & Consciousness: Rediscovering the Pythagorean Plato’s Golden Mean Number System, with Mohamed El Naschie. He has studied and collaborated with Keith Critchlow and John Michell and teaches internationally on the perennial philosophy, with special emphasis on Plato, the Divine Proportion, and transformative states of consciousness.
John Martineau: John earned his MA at the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts with a project on geometry and harmony in the solar system, culminating in his Book of Coincidence, which he published under a new imprint, Wooden Books. This serieson nature, pattern, cosmos, design and geometry currently lists more than one hundred award-winning titles, with three million printed copies in twenty languages. Now working as a poet, he will present “Five Coincidences” spoken entirely in verse.
Jeff Saward: Founded by Jeff in 1980, Caerdroia: The Journal of Mazesand Labyrinths has become an internationally respected forum for news, views, research, and archival material. Acting as a consultant and creating labyrinths for clients in the UK, Europe, America, and India, Jeff is the author of Magical Paths, and Labyrinths and Mazes, a comprehensive illustrated history of labyrinths and mazes worldwide. He is the co-founder and director of Labyrinthos - the Labyrinth Resource Centre, Photo Library and Archive.
Adam Tetlow: Artist, writer, and teacher, Adam earned his MA at the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts, where he now teaches, also offering many courses and workshops at Sacred Art of Geometry Studios and online. Adam has authored several Wooden Books, including The Diagram: Harmonic Geometry, and Ancient Metrology: Geometry and the Harmonic Canon. His talk will highlight how the late John Neal, who worked closely with John Michell for decades, has come to be considered the leading authority on ancient metrology.
Adam Hunt: Landscape architect, ecologist, and plant-lover, Adam runs award-winning landscape projects in the commercial, public, and private sectors, offering his services through Urquhart and Hunt in Somerset and basing his designs on sacred geometry. His talk aims to link landscape with the stories of place that have emerged over time and form our cultural link to nature, drawing from John Michell’s book on the visionary Isles of Avalon, New Light on the Ancient Mystery of Glastonbury.
Christine Rhone: Translator, writer, and teacher, Christine collaborated with John Michell on books about sacred geography and landscape symbolism, and on The Cereologist magazine about the crop circle phenomenon. She will give two short presentations on the work of Chris Street, author of Earthstars and other titles on the spirit of place and symbolic geometry of London, and Palden Jenkins, author of Shining Land and other books on the visionary landscapes of Glastonbury and West Penwith, Cornwall.