A celebration of John Michel's insights and far-reaching influence, revealing his pivotal role in alternative culture over the last five decades.

Looks at the development of astro-archaeology initially seen as somewhat wacky, but now more accepted, and what it can tell us about ancient sites from Cuzco to Stonehenge, and ancient ideas about astronomy and relgion.

Reprinted from 1st pbk. ed., published in 1999. Originally published in hardcover in 1996.

The powers of ancient rulers emanated from the ritual center of the tribal territory. This center was also regarded as the birthplace of the tribe and belonged to the people as a whole. Installed upon this sacred rock (the omphalos or "navel of the world"), at the polar axis around which all revolved, the king could survey his realm, ordered from the center according to the divisions of the cosmos itself, reflecting the harmony and balance of paradise. Akhenaten's city in Egypt, Megalopolis of Ancient Greece, the world-centers of Roman Gaul and Celtic Cornwall, all provide clues to lead John Michell to the geographical and sacred criteria for locating a center. From studies of symbolic geography, particularly that of Celtic and Norse territories, he has discovered the leading principle for the siting of the "Thing" places, the main centers of religious and state ritual in Shetland, Orkney, the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Man. He considers the possible locations of the most hallowed centers of ancient Druidry and of the High Kings of Ireland. Finally, the esoteric foundation plan for these ancient societies is disclosed: the sacred geometry, the symbolic numbers. Symbols of the center are among the most persistent elements of myth and belief between cultures widely separated in time and space. Now John Michell traces their genesis, and suggests that their reflection of the ideal Platonic order of the universe can be relevant to the modern world.

The aftershocks of the devastating Lisbon earthquake of 1755 were not only physical: the scientific investigations undertaken in its wake formed the basis of the science of seismology. Published in 1757, the present work is, in the words of its presumed editor, John Bevis (1695-1771), 'a repertory of all that has been written of earthquakes and their causes', and includes several recent papers published by the Royal Society. At the time, scientists suggested subterranean fires or electrical shocks in the atmosphere as possible causes of earthquakes. This reissue also incorporates a brief 1760 work by John Michell (1724/5-93), which uses Bevis' collection as a source and suggests that earthquakes were caused by seismic waves through the earth: it was one of the first to propose that tsunamis were the result of undersea earthquakes. Both these works rank as important steps in the developing understanding of one of nature's most destructive phenomena.