![Malvern Hills in June 2005](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Malvern_Hills_in_June_2005.JPG)
Ley lines () are straight alignments drawn between various historic structures and prominent
landmark
A landmark is a recognizable natural or artificial feature used for navigation, a feature that stands out from its near environment and is often visible from long distances.
In modern use, the term can also be applied to smaller structures or f ...
s. The idea was developed in early 20th-century Europe, with ley line believers arguing that these alignments were recognised by ancient societies that deliberately erected structures along them. Since the 1960s, members of the
Earth Mysteries
Earth mysteries are a wide range of spiritual, quasi-religious and pseudoscientific ideas focusing on cultural and religious beliefs about the Earth, generally with regard to particular geographical locations of historical significance. Belie ...
movement and other
esoteric
Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to categorise a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas a ...
traditions have commonly believed that such ley lines demarcate "
earth energies" and serve as guides for alien spacecraft. Archaeologists and scientists regard ley lines as an example of
pseudoarchaeology
Pseudoarchaeology—also known as alternative archaeology, fringe archaeology, fantastic archaeology, cult archaeology, and spooky archaeology—is the interpretation of the past from outside the archaeological science community, which rejects ...
and
pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...
.
The idea of "leys" as straight tracks across the landscape was put forward by the English
antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary () is an fan (person), aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artifact (archaeology), artifac ...
Alfred Watkins
Alfred Watkins (27 January 1855 – 15 April 1935) was an English author, self-taught amateur archaeologist, antiquarian and businessman who, while standing on a hillside in Herefordshire, England, in 1921 experienced a revelation. He noticed ...
in the 1920s, particularly in his book ''The Old Straight Track''. He argued that straight lines could be drawn between various historic structures and that these represented trade routes created by ancient British societies. Although he gained a small following, Watkins' ideas were never accepted by the British archaeological establishment, a fact that frustrated him. His critics noted that his ideas relied on drawing lines between sites established at different periods of the past. They also argued that in prehistory, as in the present, it was impractical to travel in a straight line across hilly or mountainous areas of Britain, rendering his leys unlikely as trade routes. Independently of Watkins' ideas, a similar notion—that of ('holy lines')—was raised in 1920s Germany.
During the 1960s, Watkins' ideas were revived in altered form by British proponents of the
countercultural
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...
Earth Mysteries movement. In 1961, Tony Wedd put forward the belief that leys were established by prehistoric communities to guide alien spacecraft. This view was promoted to a wider audience in the books of
John Michell
John Michell (; 25 December 1724 – 21 April 1793) was an English people, English natural philosophy, natural philosopher and clergyman who provided pioneering insights into a wide range of scientific fields including astronomy, geology, opti ...
, particularly his 1969 work ''The View Over Atlantis''. Michell's publications were accompanied by the launch of the ''Ley Hunter'' magazine and the appearance of a ley hunter community keen to identify ley lines across the British landscape. Ley hunters often combined their search for ley lines with other esoteric practices like
dowsing
Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia),As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active dowsers in Ge ...
and
numerology
Numerology (also known as arithmancy) is the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events. It is also the study of the numerical value, via an alphanumeric system, of the letters in ...
and with a belief in a forthcoming
Age of Aquarius
The Age of Aquarius, in astrology, is either the current or forthcoming astrological age, depending on the method of calculation. Astrologers maintain that an astrological age is a product of the earth's slow precessional rotation and lasts for 2 ...
that would transform human society. Although often hostile to archaeologists, some ley hunters attempted to ascertain scientific evidence for their belief in earth energies at prehistoric sites, evidence they could not obtain. Following sustained archaeological criticism, the ley hunter community dissipated in the 1990s, with several of its key proponents abandoning the idea and moving into the study of
landscape archaeology
Landscape archaeology, a sub-discipline of archaeology and archaeological theory, is the study of the ways in which people in the past constructed and used the environment around them. It is also known as archaeogeography (from the Greek "ancient ...
and
folkloristics
Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...
. Belief in ley lines nevertheless remains common among some esoteric religious groups, such as forms of
modern Paganism
Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a term for a religion or family of religions influenced by the various historical pre-Christian beliefs of pre-modern peoples in Europe and adjacent areas of North Afric ...
, in both Europe and North America.
Archaeologists note that there is no evidence that ley lines were a recognised phenomenon among ancient European societies and that attempts to draw them typically rely on linking together structures that were built in different historical periods. Archaeologists and statisticians have demonstrated that a random distribution of a sufficient number of points on a plane will inevitably create
alignments of random points
Alignments of random points in a plane can be demonstrated by statistics to be counter-intuitively easy to find when a large number of random points are marked on a bounded flat surface. This has been put forward as a demonstration that ley lin ...
purely by chance.
Skeptics
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the pe ...
have also stressed that the esoteric idea of earth energies running through ley lines has not been scientifically verified, remaining an article of faith for its believers.
History
Early prototypes
The idea that ancient
sacred sites
Sacred space, sacred ground, sacred place, sacred temple, holy ground, or holy place refers to a location which is deemed to be sacred or hallowed. The sacredness of a natural feature may accrue through tradition or be granted through a bless ...
might have been constructed in alignment with one another was proposed in 1846 by the Reverend Edward Duke, who observed that some prehistoric monuments and medieval churches aligned with each other.
In 1909, the idea was advanced in Germany. There,
Wilhelm Teudt
Wilhelm Teudt (7 December 1860 in Bergkirchen – 5 January 1942 in Detmold) was a German cleric and völkisch lay archaeologist who believed in an ancient, highly developed Germanic civilization. His 1929 work ''Germanische Heiligtümer'' was ...
had argued for the presence of linear alignments connecting various sites but suggested that they had a religious and astronomical function.
In Germany, the idea was referred to as ('holy lines'), an idea adopted by some proponents of
Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
.
Alfred Watkins and ''The Old Straight Track''
![Alfred Watkins - Map of two leys](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Alfred_Watkins_-_Map_of_two_leys.jpg)
The idea of "leys" as paths traversing the British landscape was developed by
Alfred Watkins
Alfred Watkins (27 January 1855 – 15 April 1935) was an English author, self-taught amateur archaeologist, antiquarian and businessman who, while standing on a hillside in Herefordshire, England, in 1921 experienced a revelation. He noticed ...
, a wealthy businessman and
antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary () is an fan (person), aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artifact (archaeology), artifac ...
who lived in
Hereford
Hereford () is a cathedral city, civil parish and the county town of Herefordshire, England. It lies on the River Wye, approximately east of the border with Wales, south-west of Worcester and north-west of Gloucester. With a population ...
. According to his account, he was driving across the hills near
Blackwardine
Blackwardine is a village in Herefordshire, England (at ), in the parish of Ford and Stoke Prior.
It is the site of a Romano-British settlement known as Black Caer Dun. A golden bracelet and ring have been found here, as well as many human remai ...
,
Herefordshire
Herefordshire () is a county in the West Midlands of England, governed by Herefordshire Council. It is bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthshire ...
, when he looked across the landscape and observed the way that several features lined up together. He subsequently began drawing lines across his
Ordnance Survey
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maps, developing the view that ancient British people had tended to travel in straight lines, using "mark points" along the landscape to guide them.
He put forward his idea of ley lines in the 1922 book ''Early British Trackways'' and then again, in greater depth, in the 1925 book ''
The Old Straight Track
''The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones'' is a book by Alfred Watkins, first published in 1925, describing the existence of alleged ley lines in Great Britain.
Presentation
Watkins presents a methodical and th ...
''. He proposed the existence of a network of completely straight roads that cut through a range of prehistoric, Roman, and medieval structures. In his view, these straight tracks were ancient trade routes. Watkins had drawn upon earlier research; he cited the work of the English astronomer
Norman Lockyer
Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer (17 May 1836 – 16 August 1920) was an English scientist and astronomer. Along with the French scientist Pierre Janssen, he is credited with discovering the gas helium. Lockyer also is remembered for being the f ...
, who had argued that ancient alignments might be oriented to sunrise and sunset at
solstice
A solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21. In many countr ...
s.
His work referred to G.H. Piper's paper presented to the
Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club
The Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club (or simply the Woolhope Club) is a society devoted to the natural history, geology, archaeology, and history of Herefordshire, England. Founded in 1851, it has had many notable members and played an important ...
in 1882, which noted that: "A line drawn from the
Skirrid-fawr mountain northwards to
Arthur's Stone would pass over the camp and southernmost point of
Hatterall Hill,
Oldcastle,
Longtown Castle
Longtown Castle, also termed Ewias Lacey Castle in early accounts, is a ruined Norman motte-and-bailey fortification in Longtown, Herefordshire. It was established in the 11th century by Walter de Lacy, reusing former Roman earthworks. The ca ...
, and
Urishay and
Snodhill castles."
[Piper, G.H. (1888). Arthur's Stone, Dorstone. ''Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club'' 1881–82: 175–80.]
Watkins referred to these lines as "leys" although had reservations about doing so. The term ''ley'' derived from the
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
term for a cleared space, with Watkins adopting it for his lines because he found it to be part of the place-names of various settlements that were along the lines he traced. He also observed the recurrence of "cole" and "dod" in English place-names, thus suggesting that the individuals who established these lines were referred to as a "coleman" or "
dodman". He proposed that the
Long Man of Wilmington
The Long Man of Wilmington or Wilmington Giant is a hill figure on the steep slopes of Windover Hill near Wilmington, East Sussex, England. It is northwest of Eastbourne and south of Wilmington. Locally, the figure was once often called the ...
chalk
geoglyph
A geoglyph is a large design or motif (generally longer than 4 metres) produced on the ground by durable elements of the landscape, such as stones, stone fragments, gravel, or earth. A positive geoglyph is formed by the arrangement and alignmen ...
in
Sussex
Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...
was a depiction of such an individual with their measuring equipment.
![Long Man of Wilmington (8023873524)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Long_Man_of_Wilmington_%288023873524%29.jpg)
His ideas were rejected by most experts on British prehistory at the time, including both the small number of recognised archaeological scholars and local enthusiasts. His critics noted that the straight lines he proposed would have been highly impractical means of crossing hilly or mountainous terrain, and that many of the sites he selected as evidence for the leys were of disparate historical origins. Some of Watkins' other ideas, such as his belief that widespread forest clearance took place in prehistory rather than later, would nevertheless later be recognised by archaeologists. Part of archaeologists' objections was their belief that prehistoric Britons would not have been sophisticated enough to produce such accurate measurements across the landscape. British archaeologists were then overwhelmingly committed to ideas of
cultural diffusionism, and thus unwelcoming to ideas about ley lines being an independent British development.
In 1926, advocates of Watkins' beliefs established the Straight Track Club. To assist this growing body of enthusiasts who were looking for their own ley lines in the landscape, in 1927, Watkins published ''The Ley Hunter's Manual''.
Proponents of Watkins' ideas sent in letters to the archaeologist
O. G. S. Crawford
Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford (28 October 1886 – 28 November 1957) was a British archaeologist who specialised in the archaeology of prehistoric Britain and Sudan. A keen proponent of aerial archaeology, he spent most of his career as th ...
, then editor of the ''
Antiquity'' journal. Crawford filed these letters under a section of his archive titled "Crankeries" and was annoyed that educated people believed such ideas when they were demonstrably incorrect. He refused to publish an advert for ''The Old Straight Track'' in ''Antiquity'', at which Watkins became very bitter towards him.
Watkins' last book, ''Archaic Tracks Around Cambridge'', was published in 1932. Watkins died on 7 April 1935. The Club survived him, although it became largely inactive at the outbreak of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
in 1939 and formally disbanded in 1948. The
archaeoastronomer Clive Ruggles noted that after the 1920s, "ley lines soon faded into obscurity". The historian
Ronald Hutton
Ronald Edmund Hutton (born 19 December 1953) is an English historian who specialises in Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and Contemporary Paganism. He is a professor at the University of Bristol, has written 14 b ...
similarly noted that there had been a "virtual demise" in the idea by the 1950s, in part due to "a natural weariness with a spent enthusiasm".
Earth Mysteries movement
From the 1940s through to the 1960s, the archaeological establishment blossomed in Britain due to the formation of various university courses on the subject. This helped to professionalise the discipline, and meant that it was no longer an amateur-dominated field of research. It was in the latter decade of this period that a belief in ley lines was taken up by members of the
counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...
, where—in the words of the archaeologist
Matthew Johnson—they were attributed with "sacred significance or mystical power". Ruggles noted that in this period, ley lines came to be conceived as "lines of power, the paths of some form of spiritual force or energy accessible to our ancient ancestors but now lost to narrow-minded twentieth-century scientific thought".
In his 1961 book ''Skyways and Landmarks'',
Tony Wedd published his idea that Watkins' leys were both real and served as ancient markers to guide alien spacecraft that were visiting Earth. He came to this conclusion after comparing Watkins' ideas with those of the French
ufologist
Ufology ( ) is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins (most frequently of extraterrestrial alien visitors). While there are instances of government, private, and ...
Aimé Michel, who argued for the existence of "orthotenies", lines along which alien spacecraft travelled. Wedd suggested that either spacecraft were following the prehistoric landmarks for guidance or that both the leys and the spacecraft were following a "magnetic current" flowing across the Earth.
Wedd's ideas were taken up by the writer
John Michell
John Michell (; 25 December 1724 – 21 April 1793) was an English people, English natural philosophy, natural philosopher and clergyman who provided pioneering insights into a wide range of scientific fields including astronomy, geology, opti ...
, who promoted them to a wider audience in his 1967 book ''The Flying Saucer Vision''. In this book, Michell promoted the
ancient astronaut
Ancient astronauts (or ancient aliens) refers to a pseudoscientific hypothesis which holds that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. Proponents suggest that this ...
belief that extraterrestrials had assisted humanity during prehistory, when humans had worshipped these entities as gods, but that the aliens left when humanity became too materialistic and technology-focused. He also argued that humanity's materialism was driving it to self-destruction, but that this could be prevented by re-activating the ancient centres which would facilitate renewed contact with the aliens.
Michell repeated his beliefs in his 1969 book ''
The View Over Atlantis''. Hutton described it as "almost the founding document of the modern earth mysteries movement". Here he interpreted ley lines by reference to the Chinese concept of energy lines. He proposed that an advanced ancient society that had once covered much of the world had established ley lines across the landscape to harness this energy. Translating the term as "dragon paths", he reinterpreted tales from English mythology and folklore in which heroes killed dragons so that the dragon-slayers became the villains. Hutton later noted that Michell's ideas "embodied a fervent religious feeling, which though not Christian was heavily influenced by Christian models", adopting an "evangelical and apocalyptic tone" that announced the coming of an
Age of Aquarius
The Age of Aquarius, in astrology, is either the current or forthcoming astrological age, depending on the method of calculation. Astrologers maintain that an astrological age is a product of the earth's slow precessional rotation and lasts for 2 ...
in which ancient wisdom would be restored. Michell invented various claims about archaeological evidence to suit his purpose. He viewed archaeologists as antagonists, seeing them as the personification of the modern materialism he was railing against.
In the mid-1970s, Michell then published a detailed case study of the
West Penwith
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...
district of Cornwall, laying out what he believed to be the ley lines in the area. He presented this as a challenge to archaeologists, urging them to examine his ideas in detail and stating that he would donate a large sum of money to charity if they could disprove them. Hutton noted that it represented "the finest piece of surveying work" then undertaken by a pseudo-archaeologists in Britain; however, Michell had included natural rock outcrops as well as medieval crosses in his list of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments.
The ley hunting community
In 1962, a group of ufologists established the Ley Hunter's Club. Michell's publication was followed by an upsurge in ley hunting as enthusiasts travelled around the British landscape seeking to identify what they believed to be ley lines connecting various historic structures. Parish churches were particularly favoured by the ley hunters, who often worked on the assumption that such churches had almost always been built atop pre-Christian sacred sites. The 1970s and 1980s also saw the increase in publications on the topic of ley lines. One ley lines enthusiast,
Philip Heselton
Philip Heselton (born 1946) is a retired British conservation officer, a Wiccan initiate, and a writer on the subjects of Wicca, Paganism, and Earth mysteries. He is best known for two books, ''Wiccan Roots: Gerald Gardner and the Modern Witchc ...
, established the ''Ley Hunter'' magazine, which launched in 1965. It was later edited by
Paul Screeton
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
*Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
*Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chris ...
, who also wrote the book ''Quicksilver Heritage'', in which he argued that the Neolithic period had seen an idyllic society devoted to spirituality but that this was brought to an end through the introduction of metal technologies in the Bronze Age. He argued that this golden age could nevertheless be restored. Another key book produced among the ley hunting community was ''Mysterious Britain'', written by Janet and Colin Bord.
![Heselton](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Heselton.JPG)
Part of the popularity of ley hunting was that individuals without any form of professional training in archaeology could take part and feel that they could rediscover "the magical landscapes of the past". Ley hunting welcomed those who had "a strong interest in the past but feel excluded from the narrow confines of orthodox academia". The ley hunting movement often blended their activities with other esoteric practices, such as
numerology
Numerology (also known as arithmancy) is the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events. It is also the study of the numerical value, via an alphanumeric system, of the letters in ...
and
dowsing
Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia),As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active dowsers in Ge ...
. The movement had a diverse base, consisting of individuals from different classes and of different political opinions: it contained adherents of both radical left and radical right ideologies. Ley hunters often differed on how they understood the ley lines; some believed that leys only marked a pre-existing energy current, whereas others thought that the leys helped to control and direct this energy. They were nevertheless generally in agreement that the ley lines were laid out between 5000 BCE and 2600 BCE, after the introduction of agriculture but before the introduction of metal in Britain. For many ley hunters, this Neolithic period was seen as a
golden age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during ...
in which Britons lived in harmony with the natural environment.
Attitudes to the archaeological establishment varied among ley hunters, with some of the latter wanting to convert archaeologists to their beliefs and others believing that that was an impossible task. Ley hunters nevertheless often took an interest in the work of
archaeo-astronomers like
Alexander Thom
Alexander Thom (26 March 1894 – 7 November 1985) was a Scottish engineer most famous for his theory of the Megalithic yard, categorisation of stone circles and his studies of Stonehenge and other archaeological sites.
Life and work Early ...
and
Euan Mackie, being attracted to their arguments about the existence of sophisticated astronomer-priests in British prehistory. In suggesting that prehistoric Britons were far more advanced in mathematics and astronomy than archaeologists had previously accepted, Thom's work was seen as giving additional credibility to the beliefs of ley hunters. Thom lent the idea of leys some support; in 1971 he stated the view that Neolithic British engineers would have been capable of surveying a straight line between two points that were otherwise not visible from each other.
Paul Devereux
Paul Devereux (born 1945) is a British author, researcher, lecturer, broadcaster, artist and photographer based in the UK. Devereux is a co-founder and the managing editor of the academic publication ''Time & Mind – the Journal of Archaeology, C ...
succeeded Screeton as the editor of the ''Ley Hunter''. He was more concerned than many other ley hunters with finding objective evidence for the idea that unusual forms of energy could be measured at places where prehistoric communities had erected structures. He was one of the founding members of the Dragon Project, launched in London in 1977 with the purpose of conducting radioactivity and ultrasonic tests at prehistoric sites, particularly the
stone circles created in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. The Dragon Project continued its research throughout the 1980s, finding that certain prehistoric sites did show higher or lower than average rates of radiation but that others did not and that there was no consistent pattern. Professional archaeologists, whose view of the ley hunters was largely negative, took little interest in such research.
It was only in the 1980s that professional archaeologists in Britain began to engage with the ley hunting movement. In 1983, ''Ley Lines in Question'', a book written by the archaeologists Tom Williamson and Liz Bellamy, was published. In this work, Williamson and Bellamy considered and tackled the evidence that ley lines proponents had amassed in support of their beliefs. As part of their book, they examined the example of the West Penwith district that Michell had set out as a challenge to archaeologists during the previous decade. They highlighted that the British landscape was so highly covered in historic monuments that it was statistically unlikely that any straight line could be drawn across the landscape without passing through several such sites. They also demonstrated that ley hunters had often said that certain markers were Neolithic, and thus roughly contemporary with each other, when often they were of widely different dates, such as being Iron Age or medieval. The overall message of Williamson and Bellamy's book was that the idea of leys, as it was being presented by Earth Mysteries proponents, had no basis in empirical reality. Looking back on the book's reception in 2000, Williamson noted that "archaeologists weren't particularly interested, and ley-line people were hostile".
Schism in the community
Williamson and Bellamy's book brought two different responses from the ley hunter community. Some maintained that even if the presence of earth energies running through ley lines could not be demonstrated with empirical evidence and rational argumentation, this did not matter; for them, a belief in ley lines was an act of faith, and in their view archaeologists were too narrow-minded to comprehend this reality. The other approach was to further engage archaeologists by seeking out new data and arguments to bolster their beliefs in ley lines. Hutton noted that this pulled along "a potential fissure between rationalism and mysticism which had always been inherent in the movement".
In 1989, a book that Devereux had co-written with
Nigel Pennick
Nigel Campbell Pennick (born 1946 in Guildford, Surrey, England) is a marine biologist, who has also published on occultism, magic, natural magic, divination, subterranea, rural folk customs, traditional performance and Celtic art as well as ...
, ''Lines on the Landscape'', was published. It laid aside ideas of leys representing channels for earth energy, noting that this was beyond the realm of scientific verification, and instead focused on trying to build a case for ley lines that archaeologists could engage with. In particular, it drew attention to ethnographically recorded beliefs in the importance of lines running through the landscape in various communities around the world, proposing these as ethnographic comparisons for what might have occurred in prehistoric Britain. Hutton called the book "an important development", for it was "by far the most well-researched, intelligently written and beautifully produced work yet published on leys". Devereux pursued this approach in a series of further books.
Reflecting his move towards archaeology, in 1991, Devereux published an article on sightlines from the prehistoric site of
Silbury Hill
Silbury Hill is a prehistoric artificial chalk mound near Avebury in the English county of Wiltshire. It is part of the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites UNESCO World Heritage Site. At high, it is the tallest prehistoric man-made mound ...
,
Wiltshire
Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...
in ''Antiquity'', a respected journal of British archaeology. By the 1990s, British archaeology had become more open to ideas about language and cognition, topics that Earth Mysteries enthusiasts had long been interested in. A prominent example of this was the work of
Christopher Tilley
__NOTOC__
Chris Tilley is a British archaeologist known for his contributions to postprocessualist archaeological theory. He is currently a Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at University College London.
Tilley obtained his PhD in Anth ...
, who devised the idea of
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
, or using human senses to experience a landscape as a means of trying to ascertain how past societies would have done the same.
The ''Ley Hunter'' magazine ceased publication in 1999. Its last editor, Danny Sullivan, stated that the idea of leys was "dead". Hutton suggested that some of the enthusiasm formerly directed toward leys was instead directed toward archaeo-astronomy. He also noted that the ley hunting community had "functioned as an indispensable training ground for a small but important group of non-academic scholars who have made a genuine contribution to the study of folklore and mythology." Pennick for instance went on to write a range of short books and pamphlets on European folklore. Another prominent ley hunter, Bob Trubshaw, also wrote several books on these subjects and served as a publisher for others. Jeremy Harte, editor of ''Wessex Earth Mysteries'', subsequently produced several books on folklore; his book on British
fairy
A fairy (also fay, fae, fey, fair folk, or faerie) is a type of mythical being or legendary creature found in the folklore of multiple European cultures (including Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore), a form of spirit, ...
lore later won the
Folklore Society
The Folklore Society (FLS) is a national association in the United Kingdom for the study of folklore.
It was founded in London in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts an ...
's annual prize.
Continuing belief
![Part of Coldrum Long Barrow - geograph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Part_of_Coldrum_Long_Barrow_-_geograph.org.uk_-_482591.jpg)
In 2005, Ruggles noted that "for the most part, ley lines represent an unhappy episode now consigned to history". However, belief in ley lines persists among various esoteric groups, having become an "enduring feature of some brands of esotericism". As Hutton observed, a belief in "ancient earth energies have passed so far into the religious experience of the 'New Age' counter-culture of Europe and America that it is unlikely that any tests of evidence would bring about an end to belief in them." During the 1970s and 1980s, a belief in ley lines fed into the
modern Pagan
Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a term for a religion or family of religions influenced by the various historical pre-Christian beliefs of pre-modern peoples in Europe and adjacent areas of North Afric ...
community. Research that took place in 2014 for instance found that various modern
Druids
A druid was a member of the high-ranking class in ancient Celtic cultures. Druids were religious leaders as well as legal authorities, adjudicators, lorekeepers, medical professionals and political advisors. Druids left no written accounts. Whi ...
and other Pagans believed that there were ley lines focusing on the
Early Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...
site of
Coldrum Long Barrow
The Coldrum Long Barrow, also known as the Coldrum Stones and the Adscombe Stones, is a chambered long barrow located near the village of Trottiscliffe in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Probably constructed in the fourth millenni ...
in
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
, southeast England.
In the U.S. city of
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
, a dowsing organisation called the Geo Group plotted what they believed were the ley lines across the city. They stated that their "project made Seattle the first city on Earth to balance and tune its ley-line system". The Seattle Arts Commission contributed $5,000 to the project, bringing criticisms from members of the public who regarded it as a waste of money.
Criticism
![Pizzalines8](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Pizzalines8.png)
Ley lines have been characterised as a form of
pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...
. On ''
The Skeptic's Dictionary
''The Skeptic's Dictionary'' is a collection of cross-referenced skeptical essays by Robert Todd Carroll, published on his website skepdic.com and in a printed book. The skepdic.com site was launched in 1994 and the book was published in 2003 wi ...
'', the American philosopher and
skeptic
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the ...
Robert Todd Carroll
Robert Todd Carroll (May 18, 1945 – August 25, 2016) was an American author, philosopher and academic, best known for The Skeptic's Dictionary. He described himself as a naturalist, an atheist, a materialist, a metaphysical libertarian, and ...
noted that none of the statements about magnetic forces underpinning putative ley lines have been scientifically verified.
Williamson and Bellamy characterised ley lines as "one of the biggest
red herring
A red herring is a figurative expression referring to a logical fallacy in which a clue or piece of information is or is intended to be misleading, or distracting from the actual question.
Red herring may also refer to: Animals
* Red herring (fis ...
s in the history of popular thought". One criticism of Watkins' ley line theory states that given the high density of historic and prehistoric sites in
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
and other parts of Europe, finding straight lines that "connect" sites is trivial and ascribable to
coincidence
A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims, or it may lead t ...
. Johnson stated that "ley lines do not exist". He cited Williamson and Bellamy's work in demonstrating this, noting that their research showed how "the density of archaeological sites in the British landscape is so great that a line drawn through virtually anywhere will 'clip' a number of sites".
A study by
David George Kendall
David George Kendall FRS (15 January 1918 – 23 October 2007) was an English statistician and mathematician, known for his work on probability, statistical shape analysis, ley lines and queueing theory. He spent most of his academic li ...
used the techniques of
shape analysis to examine the triangles formed by standing stones to deduce if these were often arranged in straight lines. The shape of a triangle can be represented as a point on the sphere, and the distribution of all shapes can be thought of as a distribution over the sphere. The sample distribution from the standing stones was compared with the theoretical distribution to show that the occurrence of straight lines was no more than average.
The archaeologist
Richard Atkinson once demonstrated this by taking the positions of
telephone booth
A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box, telephone box or public call box is a tiny structure furnished with a payphone and designed for a telephone user's convenience; usually the user steps into the booth and closes the booth ...
s and pointing out the existence of "telephone box leys". This, he argued, showed that the mere existence of such lines in a set of points does not prove that the lines are deliberate artefacts, especially since it is known that telephone boxes were not laid out in any such manner or with any such intention.
In 2004, John Bruno Hare wrote:
See also
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References
Footnotes
Bibliography
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External links
Early British Trackwaysat
sacred-texts.com
The Internet Sacred Text Archive (ISTA) is a Santa Cruz, California-based website dedicated to the preservation of electronic public domain religious texts.
History
The website was first opened to the public on March 9, 1999 by John Bruno Hare ...
Ley-lines. article by Alex Whitaker*
ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/moonraking/meanings.shtml Moonraking: What does it all mean? Finding Places of Power: Dowsing Earth EnergiesThe Ley Hunter magazine 1969–1976;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)
a similar website with grid references for over 1,400 sites
including grid references for over 14,000 UK churches and register offices
The Gazetteer of British Place Nameswith over 50,000 entries
Ley Lines Research*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20100311072811/http://www.britishdowsers.org/EEG_site/kmz/LHCnetlink.kmz The Ley Hunter's CompanionGoogle Earth placemark (KMZ) file based on the 1979 book by
Paul Devereux
Paul Devereux (born 1945) is a British author, researcher, lecturer, broadcaster, artist and photographer based in the UK. Devereux is a co-founder and the managing editor of the academic publication ''Time & Mind – the Journal of Archaeology, C ...
(from th
British Society of Dowsers.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ley Line
Enochian magic
Pseudoscience
Psychogeography
UFO-related phenomena