Are you familiar with the concept of a ley lines? Well, these are apparently special magical lines that run between ancient archaeological sites or monuments. If like me, you grew up devouring all the mystical books doing the rounds such as “Chariot of the Gods” by Erich Von Daniken, or “The Third Eye” by Lobsang T Rampa, then you will have no doubt come across these at some point, in fact, I’d be astonished if you had not heard of them, the concept has more or less embedded itself as a cultural meme these days.
So where did all this originally come from?
It was all started by a self-taught archaeologist, Alfred Watkins who in 1921 made the observation that ancient monuments appear to all line up and so he suggested that perhaps these had been setup like this in neolithic times as line-of-sight navigational markers. OK, that sounds a reasonable hypothesis, but of course the concept has been taken up and inflated into a far more groundless new-age belief.
As for the name “Ley” line, well apparently that was coined by Watkins when he observed that many of these lines passed through places that had names with “ley” in them. The word ley is a variant of lea, meaning grassland, clearing, or pasture, and as you might guess, towns and villages with that as part of the name are rather common in the UK.
The professionals dismissed his hypothesis at the time (and still do), for the following reasons
- In the UK there is a very high number of ancient sites, so the chances of finding straight lines that occur by chance is quite high
- Watkins used maps to identify his ancient markers, and so he did not go out and see if they could indeed have been utilized as navigational markers while trekking
Just using a map for such analysis does indeed have many problems. Its inaccurate due to problems of scale, a 1/4 mm line on a 1-inch to 1-mile map would in reality be a 50 foot wide path. As for the diversity of markers, well a fun illustration of that problem was the use of phone boxes, by archaeologist Richard Atkinson, to create a map of “telephone box leys”. In other words, the mere existence of such lines in a set of points is not evidence, given enough points you can create your own “meaningful” magical lines from almost anything.
Now lets be clear, it is not Wakins who introduced all the modern hocus-pocus, that all came later. Wakins simply made an observation and formed a natural hypothesis to explain it. Others then looked at the evidence and did not find it compelling. If so, and it was not found to be viable, then why is the idea still abound, and where did all the mystical additions that we appear to have with us today come from?
Well, the next step was taken by the author, John Michell, who not only revived Watkins Ley lines, but he also blended them in with some feng shui in a 1969 book called “The View Over Atlantis” (Yes indeed, the very existence of “Atlantis” in the title here is a red flag). It was a popular book, and so it succeeded in starting the ley line concept as we now know it. Throughout the 70’s other similar writers quickly embraced this basic idea, and refined it with suggestions that mixed in dowsing, new age beliefs, and also the idea that these ley lines were conductors for “spiritual” power.
Can anybody define with “Spiritual” power is? In fact, should there be a Spiritual Power company that needs to take responsibility for regulating the flow, should we also have spiritual power meters in our homes, and if so, who will bill us? – Yes OK, my point is that its a meaningless term, it does not describe anything that can be actually measured (but sounds impressive, and so helps to sell lots of books)
And so it was not really Watkins in 1921, but Michell who kick-started all these “Earth Mysteries” in 69.
Now for a bit of fun. The Mathematician, Matt Parker, wrote a nice take down of all this in the Guardian a few days ago that is entitled … “Did aliens establish a primitive postcode system in ancient Britain?“, so what is his article all about? Well how about this astonishing fact.
The house I live in is at the convergence of three ley lines between ancient monuments, and that includes one coming directly from Stonehenge, (Oh, I can feel the magic power flowing through my fingers right now. I’m truly special.
Don’t panic, I’ve not suddenly turned a pale shade of woo, in fact, the key Point is that there are enough ancient sites in the UK to enable you to place every single postcode at the convergence of three or more ley lines between ancient monuments, so I’m not the only special one, everybody is equally special. Dam, the secret is out now, those ancient aliens are obviously still with us, you and I know them as … “The Post Office”.
To illustrate all this, there is a website created by a smart chap called Tom Scott, and as a piece of satire that mocks all this, I love it. No matter where you are in the UK, you can key in your postcode and it will quickly tell you about the 3 or more ley lines the converge at that point, thus proving you are currently at a hub of “spiritual” power (no need to trek to Stonehenge)
You can find Tom’s website here.
So there you have it them, every single inch of the UK is a special magical place where ley lines just happen to converge. If you are you still a believer, then pause and remember, this was all the fallout from a desire to craft a popular book, is not in any way related to reality or measuring anything real. Pluck out enough points from a map, and you quickly find that easiest person to fool is perhaps yourself, for the true wonder here is that sitting between your ears is an amazingly powerful pattern recognition engine that will often throw up false positives, and yield meaning and patterns where none exist.