#john michell

The square, the most solid and material of geometric shapes, was used by Socrates to demonstrate the most highly ineffable of his philosophical doctrines, the immortality of the soul. We have, he observed, certain innate forms of knowledge which can be drawn out (educated) into our conscious minds. Knowledge, said Socrates, is recollection. The truths of number and geometry, for example, are within us, and we can either discover them for ourselves or, once they have been pointed out to us, we recognize them as old friends. If we have not been instructed in these things in this life, we must have learnt them in some other existence. In that case there is an immortal element in our beings—the soul.

Certain old stones have the local reputation of travelling on their own accord along certain routes on particular days of the year, some of those at Rollright in Oxfordshire, for example, being supposed to go down to a nearby stream on Christmas Eve. Others are said to return mysteriously to their sites if they are removed. Such legends occur wherever there are megalithic structures, testifying to a very old belief in the ability of rocks to levitate in certain circumstances. Behind this belief is the evidence of 'poltergeist' hauntings, where stones fly about apparently self-propelled and have even been observed to move slowly as if floating. In many such cases it has been suspected that there was an unconscious human medium, commonly an emotionally disturbed adolescent, at the root of the manifestations. If these effects can be produced unconsciously, it is reasonable to suppose that people can learn to produce them by will. Indeed, in traditional societies young people who have evident talents for promoting outbreaks of psychical phenomena are marked out as future shamans and encouraged to develop those talents for levitation and other magical purposes.