ley lines

ley lines, theoretical, invisible lines that, according to pseudoscientific and New Age thought, join significant landmarks across the world. New Age believers in ley lines sometimes consider them to hold sacred powers. The concept was first proposed by English amateur archaeologist and photographer Alfred Watkins in the early 20th century. Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Giza, Machu Picchu, and Ayers Rock (Uluru) are some of the landmarks posited as connected by ley lines. While the validity of ley lines is not accepted by academic archaeologists, followers of the New Age religious movement and others with interest in various paranormal theories contend that ley lines connect important sites across the globe and possess sacred energies that are particularly potent at the lines’ intersections.

Original theory

Ley lines were first theorized in 1921 when amateur archaeologist Watkins, born into a wealthy farming family in rural Herefordshire, England, claimed to notice, in a sudden vision, a grid of straight lines crisscrossing the English countryside. He postulated that these lines connected prehistoric human-made and natural structures and that significant human constructions were located at the points where these lines intersected. He also theorized that the lines were created intentionally so that the prehistoric and pre-Roman Empire traders could follow a more direct route on their journeys. He named these lines “leys” or “ley lines” after the Anglo-Saxon word ley, meaning “a clearing in the woods.” Waktins theorized that some ley lines were aligned with the Sun, as in the case of Stonehenge. He further noted that many churches in England could be connected with straight lines and surmised that upon the introduction of Christianity to England these places of worship were constructed at the sites of stones that demarcated ley lines.

Waktins first proposed ley lines in 1921 in a lecture to the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club in Herefordshire, which he later self-published as Early British Trackways, Moats, Mounds, Camps, and Sites in 1922. In 1925 he published The Old Straight Track and followed that with The Ley Hunter’s Manual: A Guide to Early Tracks in 1927.

He gained a few followers, but critics noted that since Watkins used maps to illustrate his theorized ley lines, he overlooked the fact that the linked landmarks were often separated by hills, forests, and rivers such that a straight, beeline path would present travelers with obstacles rather than expedient routes. Furthermore, the vast number of landmarks in the English landscape that Watkins observed meant that almost any line drawn on a map would inevitably connect some of them, leading to a degree of arbitrariness.

Later interpretations

Despite archaeologists’ dismissal of Waktins’s ideas, the concept of ley lines experienced a resurgence in the 1960s when pseudoscientists and New Age movement spiritual seekers picked up the idea. These writers expanded Waktins’s idea of ley lines beyond England, applied them to the entire Earth, and gave them otherworldly significance. The shift began in the context of newly popular interest in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and extraterrestrials.

Aimé Michel’s 1958 book Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery posited that flying saucers flew in straight lines. Influenced by that book, former military pilot Tony Wedd posited in his booklet Skyways and Landmarks that flying saucers were following ley lines and that, rather than prehistoric tracks, these lines were extraterrestrial navigation tools, of which prehistoric peoples had knowledge. Enthusiasm soon developed around this idea. Philip Heselton and Jimmy Goddard established the Ley Hunters Club in 1965 and created The Ley Hunter magazine, which continued publication until the late 1990s.

In 1969 John Michell published The View Over Atlantis, in which he connected the ley-line theory to Plato’s story of Atlantis. He further linked ley lines with a notion of hidden mystical energies crisscrossing the globe along these lines. Soon New Age thinkers, psychics, UFO enthusiasts, modern Pagans, and paranormal researchers latched on to ley lines. Some believers in ley lines claim to feel their energies at important sites. As David Newnham wrote in The Guardian in 2000:

Throughout the 60s and 70s, ley-line theory was to mutate and bifurcate, to bend with every passing fad, so that it frequently seemed as though its only purpose was to highlight the failings of our own times. And with each twist and turn, it became ever more firmly enmeshed in a thicket of mysticism, neo-paganism and plain superstition.

While the theory has tended to remain closely associated with the English landscape and places such as Glastonbury and Stonehenge, some pseudoscientific researchers have expanded the theory around the globe to major points of interest. Some seekers of ley lines have posited that Hindu temples in India are organized according to ley lines. Other ley-line theorists have suggested a resonance in China with the idea of dragon lines, lines in the earth along which qi energy is said to flow, according to feng shui. Since the origin of ley-line theory in the 1920s it has been stretched beyond its initial formulation and has been drawn into numerous other realms of human contemplation.

Criticism and refutation

Academic archaeologists do not accept the theory of ley lines, and scientists have poked numerous holes in the idea. Beyond doubts about energies, extraterrestrials, and lost civilizations, critics note that the lines are created selectively and that a researcher can presumably create maps linking any sites they wish while passing over others, leaving ample room for subjectivity. The lines are, from a scientific perspective, akin to constellations or shapes in the clouds. One significant flaw noted by those who dispute the theory of ley lines is that the lines are drawn on maps that are flat, while Earth is decidedly not flat. Additionally, there is a question of how thick the supposed lines would be. If the Great Wall of China is deemed an important site for ley lines, a question then arises as to where in that structure’s 5,500-mile (8,850-km) expanse the ley lines would pass.

Ley-line enthusiasts tend to be inventive in their creations, taking the theory of straight lines in ever new directions. In 2010 amateur researcher Tom Brooks assembled a collection of 1,500 prehistoric sites in England that he connected with isosceles triangles that in turn point to other significant prehistoric sites. He argued that ancient Britons thus had highly developed mathematical abilities. In response, mathematician Matt Parker showed that he could construct a similar map of triangular connections among modern Woolworth department stores.