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From one perspective, the tale of ley-hunting is one of a classic modern religious movement, arising with an apocalyptic language which appropriated some of the tropes of evangelical Christianity, flourished for a brief time, and then subsided into a set of motifs and assumptions retained by a particular subculture of believers. From another, it is a frustrating tale of missed opportunities. The neglect of landscape and sensory experience by mainstream archaeology in the mid twentieth century was indeed a serious omission, which earth mysteries researchers could well have remedied to the lasting benefit of knowledge [...] Misled by a fixed and dogmatic set of ideas, however, they passed this by to focus on an attempted proof of beliefs which were ultimately based on faith alone. The setting in England was familiar but foreign, I’m sure for someone reading this and coming from or really knowing the areas mentioned (i.e. Herefordshire), it would be even more magical to read. This book, sadly, contains many archeological, historical, and philological points which are either now proven false or were completely surmised to begin with. Take as only one example the assumption, simply put, that because ley men carried staffs, and priests and other figures of power also carry staffs, they are therefore linked. The links to druids also fall flat, though more disappointingly due to the fact that Watkins, as so many still do, took Victorian fabrications as true. In many cases Watkins cannot be held entirely at fault, as he often relied on information gathered from sources which are now outdated or were incomplete, but he did however, as can be seen in examples throughout the book, fall into conjecture and what can only be described as confirmation bias. Alfred Watkins was the first researcher to really understand the significance of what we now call 'ley lines' in this country. Through what must have been hundreds of hours of research, he collected tonnes of information and put it all together for this lucid and engaging work that seeks to explain and explore the subject in undeniable depth. Not that Watkins’ theories were greeted with widespread acclaim – far from it, in fact. Few people took his ideas seriously, and he became the subject of ridicule. This was an age that wouldn’t tolerate alternative interpretations of history, and the horrified reaction of many traditional historians probably masked an underlying instinct of fear.
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. [21] He came to this conclusion after comparing Watkins' ideas with those of the French ufologist Aimé Michel, who argued for the existence of "orthotenies", lines along which alien spacecraft travelled. [22] 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. [22] But let’s not dwell on them! Watkins might have been a little hazy about time periods, as modern archaeologists have pointed out, but he was writing long before the advent of radiocarbon dating. In his descriptions, it’s easy to hear the voice of a man so in tune with the countryside, so observant and appreciative of the heritage that he was exploring.
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Originally published in 1925, this book by Alfred Watkins bought the concept of ley lines to the public. The concept came to him after visiting a Roman excavation and looking at the map to get a perspective on the wider landscape, he saw that a number of features seemed to line up. When he had the opportunity to get to higher ground he had the opportunity to look at the landscape and see that these features had straight paths running between them. He came to believe that the people of this country had made a series of straight paths through the forests with the prominent features being used for guide and navigation. Gary, Lachman (2003), Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius, The Disinformation Company, p.295 Richard Long, In Conversation Part Two, Holland 1986, p.125. I am grateful to Joy Sleeman for this reference and the one following. A study by David George Kendall 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. [54]
The sight of a snail out for a walk one warm moist morning solved the problem. He carries on his head the dod-man’s implements, the two sighting staves.” On photographic survey see Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Commemorating a National Past: The National Photographic Record Association, 1897–1910’, Journal of Victorian Culture vol.10, no.1, 2005, pp.123–31. On survey and educated access more generally see David Matless, Landscape and Englishness, London 1998. How early it was that the beginnings of the ley system came must be a surmise but if it came as soon as man began to import flint or flint implements, it could not well be less than 25,000 B.C., that is, long before the Neolithic period commenced in Britain.” Well, this certainly corrected my completely inaccurate knowledge that humans had only been around for a couple thousand years!! Michell repeated his beliefs in his 1969 book The View Over Atlantis. [24] Hutton described it as "almost the founding document of the modern earth mysteries movement". [1] Here he interpreted ley lines by reference to the Chinese concept of lung mei 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 lung mei energy. [25] Translating the term lung mei as "dragon paths", he reinterpreted tales from English mythology and folklore in which heroes killed dragons so that the dragon-slayers became the villains. [26] 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 in which ancient wisdom would be restored. [23] Michell invented various claims about archaeological evidence to suit his purpose. [27] He viewed archaeologists as antagonists, seeing them as the personification of the modern materialism he was railing against. [23]Hutton, Ronald (2009). "Modern Druidry and Earth Mysteries". Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture. 2 (3): 313–331. doi: 10.2752/175169609X12464529903137. S2CID 143506407.
Crawford founded Antiquity in 1927as a new kind of publication between a learned journal and the popular press to publicise serious research and scholarship, with high production values, classy typography, accessible writing and high quality illustrations, especially aerial photography. Antiquity particularly appealed to a literary and artistic audience, inspiring modern-minded artists with a taste for the primordial Britain, notably John Piper and Paul Nash. 36 The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/55540. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Watkins became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1910 and was awarded the society’s 11th Progress Medal for his research work. The following year he completed his all-embracing reference work Photography; its Principles and Applications — the ‘bible’ for amateur photographers for a couple of generations. In later life he experimented in colour photography and had a hand-turned cine camera. Watkins was active in the Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom and served as its president when it was held in Hereford in 1907. In 1910 he was awarded the Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS). [3] Instituted in 1878, the medal honours any invention, research, publication or other contribution resulting in an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging in the widest sense. It also carries with it Honorary Fellowship of the society. [4] Over 3,000 photographs, taken from Alfred's original glass negative plates are held by Hereford Library. 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 purely by chance. Skeptics 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.The review in The Church Times was the longest and most approving. The book might appeal to antiquarian vicars pleased to locate their churches in an ancient rural landscape, and Watkins had devoted a whole chapter to alignment thinking in the Old and New Testaments; in its emphasis on public access to enchanted landscape, the review bears the imprimatur of the paper’s first lay editor, the socialist Anglo-Catholic Sidney Dark. 32 Out from the soil we wrench a new knowledge, of old, old human skill and effort, that came to the making of this England of ours.” Watkins’s influence on the visual arts was confined to the work of illustrator and devoted Churchman Donald Maxwell RA, author of A Painter in Palestine: Being an Impromptu Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1921), and converted to the ley-line system by Watkins’s field manual The Ley Hunter’s Companion. 33 I was prompted to return to it by the appearance of some photographs by Alfred Watkins in the 2005 A Picture of Britainexhibition at Tate Britain and by current academic interests, in a number of disciplines, in visual representations of antiquity. 7 Piper, G. H. (1888). "Arthur's Stone, Dorstone". Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club 1881–82: 175–80.
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