Ley Lines: The Greatest Landscape Mystery

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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. In his 1921 lecture, Watkins was at great pains to point out that he had no initial theory to explain his discovery; the book is as much a record of an intellectual as a physical journey, as he works out just such a theory at considerable length. The combination of architectural structures engineered to cross specific paths in geometric patterns and all of it linked to ancient customs and cultures. Very comprehensive book, easy to read, full of information, full coverage on all main aspects of the phenomena, best book for a full introduction on the subject who also displays plenty of examples on the subject.

People may have done it simply because they wanted to, or based on their beliefs or astronomical alignments or a combination of these. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. For me at least, the great thing about it is Watkins’ determination to really look at the landscape he covers and to try to make sense of what he sees. The two categories of people who won't benefit from either are the traditional archeologist who is sniffy about anything tainted by beliefs and the tribal mystic whose beliefs allow them to see whatever they want to.He does speculate that the ley-men, surveyors using twin poles to lay out their routes across the landscape, were seen as seers of some sort because of their near-magical powers (he imagined the famous chalk Long Man of Wilmington to be an image of a ley-man) and that superstitions built up around way markers as the paths themselves fell into decline. Intersections acquired local significance, becoming meeting places and markets, then later burial mounds and temples.

I've always been interested in the opposition between the natural and the artificial, the sacred and the un-sacred," explains tan jones. Whether your interest is simply to walk and enjoy the gloriou s countryside of the region, with its high sweeping skies, or whe ther you enjoy tracing its archaeology and history, this book wil l be both useful and enriching. Born in 1855 into a well-to-do farming family, Watkins was also an amateur archaeologist; it was while out riding in 1921 that he looked out over the landscape and noticed what he later described as a grid of straight lines that stood out like "glowing wires all over the surface of the county", in which churches and standing stones, crossroads and burial mounds, moats and beacon hills, holy wells and old stone crosses, appeared to fall into perfect alignment. 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.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. 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. Nowhere has this phenomenon been more thoroughly investigated than in the British Isles where they have become known as Ley Lines. First discovered in ancient times by the legendary Alfred Watkins, who first coined the term, they have been rigorously studied over the last fifty years.