Ley line

Ley lines are alleged alignments of a number of places of geographical interest, such as ancient monuments and megaliths that are thought by certain adherents to dowsing and New Age beliefs to have spiritual power. Their existence was suggested in 1921 by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins, in his book The Old Straight Track. The believers in ley lines think that the lines and their intersection points resonate a special psychic or mystical energy. Ascribing such characteristics to ley lines has led to the term being classified as pseudoscience.

Ley lines can be the product of ancient surveying, property markings, or commonly traveled pathways. Many cultures use straight lines across the landscape. In South America, such lines often are directed towards mountain peaks; the Nazca lines are a famous example of lengthy lines made by ancient cultures. Straight lines connect ancient pyramids in Mexico; today, modern roads built on the ancient roads deviate around the huge pyramids. The Chaco culture of Northwestern New Mexico cut stairs into sandstone cliffs to facilitate keeping roads straight. Additionally, chance alignments and coincidence are often cited as explanations that cannot be ruled out.

Alfred Watkins and The Old Straight Track

The concept of ley lines was first proposed by Alfred Watkins. On 30 June 1921, Watkins visited Blackwardine in Herefordshire, and went riding a horse near some hills in the vicinity of Bredwardine, when he noted that many of the footpaths there seemed to connect one hilltop to another in a straight line. He was studying a map when he noticed places in alignment. "The whole thing came to me in a flash", he later told his son. It has been suggested that Watkin's experience stemmed from faint memories of an account in September 1870 by William Henry Black given to the British Archaeological Association in Hereford titled Boundaries and Landmarks, in which he speculated that "Monuments exist marking grand geometrical lines which cover the whole of Western Europe".

Watkins believed that, in ancient times, when Britain was far more densely forested, the country was crisscrossed by a network of straight-line travel routes, with prominent features of the landscape being used as navigation points. This observation was made public at a meeting of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club of Hereford in September 1921. His work referred to G. H. Piper's paper presented to the Woolhope Club in 1882, which noted that: "A line drawn from the Skirrid-fawr mountain northwards to Arthur's Stone would pass over the camp and southern most point of Hatterall Hill, Oldcastle, Longtown Castle, and Urishay and Snodhill castles." The ancient surveyors who supposedly made the lines were given the name "dodmen".

Watkins published his ideas in the books Early British Trackways and The Old Straight Track. They generally met with skepticism from archaeologists, one of whom, O. G. S. Crawford, refused to accept advertisements for the latter book in the journal Antiquity. Most archaeologists since then have continued to reject Watkins's ideas.

In 2004, John Bruno Hare wrote:

Watkins never attributed any supernatural significance to leys; he believed that they were simply pathways that had been used for trade or ceremonial purposes, very ancient in origin, possibly dating back to the Neolithic, certainly pre-Roman. His obsession with leys was a natural outgrowth of his interest in landscape photography and love of the British countryside. He was an intensely rational person with an active intellect, and I think he would be a bit disappointed with some of the fringe aspects of ley lines today".

Despite the mostly negative reception to his ideas, some writers have made observations similar to Watkins's. Megalithic researcher Alexander Thom offered a detailed analysis of megalithic alignments, proposing a standardization of measure by those who built megaliths, but avoided the term ley line. The discovery by Europeans of the Nazca lines, man-made lines on desert pavement in southern Peru, prompted study of their astronomical alignments.

Spiritual significance of ley lines

Watkins's theories have been adapted by later writers. Some of his ideas were taken up by the occultist Dion Fortune who featured them in her 1936 novel The Goat-footed God. Since then, ley lines have become the subject of a few magical and mystical theories.

Two British dowsers, Captain Robert Boothby and Reginald A. Smith, Keeper of the British and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum, have linked the appearance of prehistoric sites such as earthworks, barrows and prehistoric temples, with underground streams and magnetic currents. (Capt Robert Boothby, R.N.: "The Religion of the Stone Age", Journal of the British Society of Dowsers, Vol 2, p135).

Guy Underwood conducted various investigations and claimed that crossings of 'negative' water lines and positive aquastats explain why certain sites were chosen as holy. He found so many of these 'double lines' on sacred sites that he named them 'holy lines.' Citation: More accurately, Underwood does not refer to the actual crossings of water lines and aquastats as "holy lines", but as instances in which the two "run together on approximately the same course".(Guy Underwood "The Pattern of the Past" Page 37, Abacus Books, ISBN 349134138).

One of Underwood's major observations obtained through his study of dowsing was that both the siting and entire layout of ancient monuments in Europe, from Stonehenge up to the medieval cathedrals and churches, all appear to be predicated entirely by the geodetic topology, noting that all the major spiritual centers and sites he had studied were built over 'blind springs'; major confluences of lines at specific places, which take a spiral course (blind springs, also referred to as 'knots' by traditional water dowsers, are also where water-wells are typically drilled).

Underwood credits Reginald Allender Smith with both the original discovery of this phenomenon in prehistoric temples and earthworks such as barrows, and also for coining the term "blind spring", in a paper Smith read to the British Society of Dowsers in 1939, which he concluded with the statement: "The constant presence of underground water at the exact centres of these circles and earthworks is a significant feature easily verified by others.If this is allowed to be intentional, then the selection of sites for consecration by the Druids and their predecessors no longer appears arbitrary, but dictated largely by geological conditions" (Journal of the British Society of Dowsers, volume 3, 1939).

Underwood also wrote of the old churches he had dowsed, that 'certain blind springs and water lines determine the exact position of the altar'(Ibid, P165), and that animals typically give birth, create nests, or rest over blind springs, indicating to him that these spots emanated some form of "restorative property" (Ibid, P61-62).

Separate from other spiritual theories of ley lines (and likely used for propaganda purposes), two German Nazi researchers Wilhelm Teudt and Josef Heinsch have claimed that ancient Teutonic peoples contributed to the construction of a network of astronomical lines, called “Holy lines” (Heilige Linien), which could be mapped onto the geographical layout of ancient or sacred sites. Teudt located the Teutoburger Wald district in Lower Saxony, centered around the dramatic rock formation called Die Externsteine as the centre of Germany. Nazism often employed ideation of superiority and associated Aryan descent with ancient higher cultures, often without regard for archaeological or historic fact. See religious aspects of Nazism.

Chance alignments

Watkins's discovery happened at a time when Ordnance Survey maps were being marketed for the leisure market, making them reasonably easy and cheap to obtain; this may have been a contributing factor to the popularity of ley line theories.

Given the high density of historic and prehistoric sites in Britain and other parts of Europe, finding straight lines that "connect" sites (usually selected to make them "fit") is trivial, and ascribable to coincidence. The diagram to the right shows an example of lines that pass very near to a set of random points: for all practical purposes, they can be regarded as nearly "exact" alignments. For a mathematical treatment of this topic, see alignments of random points.

Since the existence of alignments themselves are not controversial, analysis can proceed by an attempted rejection of the null hypothesis that ley-line-like alignments are due to random chance. Statistical analysis by skeptics of this hypothesis shows that random chance is consistent with the evidence.

Archaeologist Richard Atkinson once demonstrated this by taking the positions of telephone boxes and pointing out the existence of "telephone box leys". This, he thus argued, showed that the mere existence of such lines in a set of points does not prove that the lines are deliberate artifacts, especially since it is known that telephone boxes were not laid out in any such manner, and without any such intention.

Straight lines also do not make ideal roads in many circumstances, particularly where they ignore topography and require users to march up and down hills or mountains, or to cross rivers at points where there is no portage or bridge.

Characterizing alignments

One precise definition that expresses the generally accepted meaning of Watkins's ley lines defines an alignment as: :a set of points, chosen from a given set of landmark points, all of which lie within at least an arc of 1/4 degree.

Watkins remarked that if this is accepted as the degree of error, then:

:"if only three accidentally placed points are on the sheet, the chance of a three point alignment is 1 in 720."

:"But this chance by accidental coincidence increases so rapidly in geometric progression with each point added that if ten mark-points are distributed haphazard on a sheet of paper, there is an average probability that there will be one three-point alignment, while if only two more points are added to make twelve points, there is a probability of two three-point alignments."

:"It is clear that a three-point alignment must not be accepted as proof of a ley by itself, as a fair number of other eligible points are usually present."

:"A ley should not be taken as proved with less than four good mark-points. Three good points with several others of less value like cross roads and coinciding tracks may be sufficient."

:The Leyhunter's Manual (page 88), 1927

Lines and points on a map cover wide areas on the ground. With 1:63360 (1-inch-to-the-mile) maps a 1/100-inch (1/4 mm) wide line represents a path over 50 feet (15 m) across. And in travelling across a sheet, an angle of 1/4 degree encompasses something like an additional 600 feet (200 m).

Examples

Alfred Watkins identified St. Ann's Well in Worcestershire as what he believed to be the start of a ley line that passes along the ridge of the Malvern Hills through several springs including the Holy Well, Walms Well and St. Pewtress Well.

In the late 1970s Paul Devereux stated he had discovered the “Malvern Ley” which began at St Ann's Well and ended at Whiteleaved Oak. The alignment passes through St. Ann's Well, the Wyche Cutting, a section of the Shire Ditch, Midsummer hillfort and Whiteleaved Oak.

Ley lines in fiction

In the Thomas Pynchon novel Mason & Dixon, the historical-fictional character Dixon claims to have "flown" along ley-lines in his youth, though he may well have only been putting Mason on. In the Darkness series by Harry Turtledove, leylines are used for transportation by ships and trains that harness the planet's magical force. They also allow mages to cast more powerful magic. In the Vampire Diaries book series by L.J. Smith, a large number of leylines converge under the graveyard and the Old Wood of Fell's Church. In these books, they allow supernatural forces to become more powerful, and also attract magic.

* In Kim Harrison's Hollows series, ley lines contain the energy that is used for a particular branch of magic that can be manipulated by humans, demons, witches and elves. According to the storyline they were created by the passage of demons as they were pulled from Earth back to the ever after.

* In The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, ley lines are powerful sources of magical energy.

* The island Demonreach and the Mayan religious sites at Chichen Itza are revealed to be located at confluences of particularly powerful ley lines.

*In "World of Warcraft" and other related Warcraft series books and games, Ley Lines are the sources of a powerful, strange magic.

*In the RPGs by Palladium books Ley Lines are also sources of Magic, but where Ley Lines cross the energies create rifts in space/time to other dimensions. In the game Rifts by Palladium, a nuclear holocaust charges the Ley lines with souls of those killed and bring about a world changing cataclysm of natural disasters.

*In the RPG game, "Dungeon Siege II: Broken World" Ley lines are the line of magical energy that run beneath the Earths surface. These lines have special points of exposure known as "nodes". These nodes occur in areas where unusual vegetation grows. In the game the only crossing point of the Ley lines, known as the Kalrathian Nexus, is sealed by dark magic and can only be broken by embuing a staff with the power that erupts from each of the nodes.

*In the anime Outlaw Star the main characters are searching for the Galactic Leyline. It is rumored that infinite treasure and unlimited power is hidden there waiting to be found. However, the Galactic Leyline is actually a "god machine" built by an unknown highly advanced alien race. It has the power to manipulating the Chi lines of the universe and easily alter time, reality and causality, or fate, as if it were a physical law.

*In the comic stories of Sláine ley lines are heavily featured as sources of power and guidance for various characters.

*In The Midnighters by Scott Westerfield time freezes at midnight and mythological creatures emerge for only an hour due to their location on the ley lines. A few teenager have the ability to see this midnight hour and have special powers (mind reading, flying, algebraic problem solving, etc.) They ponder the thought various times that the same may be true wherever ley lines cross.

*In The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, leylines and leygates, and groups of leylines, are used for instantaneous travel around the world.

*The ley lines of London play an important roll in Silvertongue, the last book of the Stoneheart trilogy, by Charlie Fletcher.

*Ley lines become significant starting in the third and fourth books of the Cassandra Palmer series written by Karen Chance.

*Ley lines are introduced in Deadly Desire, the seventh book in the Riley Jenson Guardian series by Keri Arthur.

See also

Pattern recognition

Confirmation bias

Geoglyphs

Archaeoastronomy

Cursus monument

Glastonbury

Telluric currents

Songlines

Psychogeography

Earth mysteries

Ley tunnel

References

Further reading

Alfred Watkins, The Ley Hunter's Manual (1927)

Tom Graves, Needles of Stone (1978) -- mixes ley lines and acupuncture; online edition at

Paul Broadhurst & Hamish Miller The Sun And The Serpent (1989, 1990 (paperback), 1991, 1994, 2003 (paperback)), Pendragon Press, Launceston, Cornwall

Bruce L. Cathie, "The Energy Grid"

Lucy R Lippard: Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory. New York 1983 ISBN 0-394-54812-8

John Michell, A Little History of Astro-archeology, rev. ed. 1989, Thames & Hudson, New York.

External links

Early British Trackways at sacred-texts.com

The Society of Ley Hunters

Ley Lines at the Skeptic's Dictionary

An excerpt from The New Ley Hunter's Guide by Paul Devereux

Moonraking: What does it all mean?

Ley Lines and Vortices of the American West

Finding Places of Power: Dowsing Earth Energies

;Data sources

The Megalithic Map (which does not take a position on this issue, but does illustrate the distribution of major megaliths in the UK)

Megalithia, a similar website with grid references for over 1,400 sites

GENUKI Parish Database, including grid references for over 14,000 UK churches and register offices

The Gazetteer of British Place Names with over 50,000 entries

Aliens with a taste for pick 'n' mix: Woolworths stores follow uncanny geometrical patterns

The Ley Hunter's Companion Google Earth placemark (KMZ) file based on the 1979 book by Paul Devereux (from the British Society of Dowsers).

Category:Earth mysteries Category:UFO-related phenomena Category:Psychogeography