Forgotten Ages Research

The Broken Web of Power—Memories of Earth Energy Lines in Europe, Africa and Asia

Product ID: EEE4

Report Topics:

• The modern re-discovery of “leys” that criss-cross the British countryside and interconnect ancient monuments in a series of straight-line configurations
• Ancient traditions of leys being the pathways of mysterious earth energies that flow through the ground and were once utilized for various purposes—fertilizing crops, controlling weather and earthquakes, energizing water with the life force, healing, levitating and moving stone blocks, communicating psychically over long distances, and traveling by levitated flight
• Leys in Britain paralleled by fairy paths in Ireland, holy lines in Germany, Alesian lines in France, Hermes lines in Italy and Greece, as well as alignments among sacred sites still seen in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia
• An overview of the ancient Chinese principles of feng-shui, geomancy and the existence of “dragon currents”

Full Report:

The story of the modern rediscovery of the ancient energy system of the world had its beginnings on a warm summer day, June 30, 1921. On that day, Alfred Watkins—a magistrate, school governor, brewing expert, and photographic equipment inventor, interested in prehistory as a hobby—was traveling through the hills near Blackwardine in the area of his birth, Herdfordshire, England.

Reaching the summit of a hilltop, Watkins paused to rest, and as he looked out across the English landscape, as well as at a map of the region he had with him, he saw something that perhaps no one else had noticed for thousands of years. As he later described it, in a “flood of ancestral memory” it suddenly came to him that many of the ancient ruins and sites he was familiar with in the local area seemed to fall in straight lines.

In particular, several church steeples in the surrounding countryside, Watkins noticed, lined up perfectly along linear patterns extending off into the distance for many miles. These churches, he knew, had originally been built on the sites of prehistoric sanctuaries.

Were these holy places once linked together by an invisible web of lines? Returning home, he carefully marked out all the ancient sites and monuments he was aware of from his studies onto a one-inch scale Ordnance Survey Map. The plottings confirmed the alignments.

Later, as he began to walk along these mysterious lines to explore them, he found more remains still. Watkins called the lines “leys,” and he believed that they all had been laid out by a group of enigmatic surveyors called “dodmen.”

The term “dod” still sees its roots in the old term dodi, which means, “to lay, to set, to plant,” and in northern England dod has the connotation, “a rounded hill;” also “a staff or club.”

Indeed, the dodman was always portrayed as holding two staves or poles—one which was set in the ground and sited with a distant landmark, and then the second fixed in the ground several hundred yards away and aligned with the first, thus determining a straight line. As Watkins pointed out, surveying is the only ancient craft which required two poles for the work.

What is particularly noteworthy is that the image of the dodman—a human figure holding a long pole or rod in each hand on either side—is not only seen in England—such as in the “Long Man of Wilmington,” a 226-foot tall chalk etching on Windover Hill—but is in fact found all over the world, not surprisingly appearing in places where other ancient monument alignments have come to light.

In his many subsequent journeys along the English “old straight tracks,” as he also called the lines, Watkins noted several features which showed aspects of ingenuity—and mystery—surrounding how the leys had been set out.

Many of the place names and sites along the lines, for example, suggest that they were aligned to reflect the light of the Sun and Moon falling across them.

Barrows, or long mounds, received their name from the Saxon beorh, which means “bright” and specifically refers to the halo burr or ring of light around the Moon.

Small ponds, aligned with nearby mounds in such a manner that the Sun is seen reflected off of them at certain times of the year from the mound vantage point, are today still called “flashes.” In the middle of these ponds are small sighting islands called leyes, from an obsolete word meaning “flame.”

Ley place names include Shirley (from the Anglo-Saxon “clear shining”), Shenley (“bright”), Gladley and Glades (from glaed or “bright”).

There are, too, Beacon Hills and other similar locations suggesting light sightings.

Along with these are a series of places with the root “cole” (Cole Hill, Colebrook, Colebury, Cole Cross, Colwich, etc.) from the Welsh coel or “light splendor.” A variation of this name, Coldharbour—of which there are nearly five hundred examples scattered across the English countryside—is derived from the old Celtic meaning, “the springing up of the Sun.”

The root “black,” contrary to its modern connotation of darkness of lack of light, comes from the Anglo-Saxon meaning “pale, shining, blessed, light-giving,” and is found in such ley places as Blackwell, Blackborough, Blackhill and others.

All mark-points along the leys, whether mounds, standing stones, ponds, wells, trees, stone circles, etc., were made of natural materials—stone, earth, water, living plants.

No metal was ever employed, and in the case of Megalithic monuments located on the lines, only certain types of stone were placed—usually of high crystalline content—sometimes transported from long distances, even when a different type yet more local stone was more easily accessible.

Everything was designed to fit within a natural landscape, which strongly suggests the purpose of the lines was closely associated with nature and the environment.

In particular, mounds were constructed not only as sighting instruments, but they were shaped in many different ways, as if to conform to some unseen predetermined order, the alteration of which would have caused a disturbance of something within the earth.

Some of the most conspicuous of these sculpted mounds include Totnes Castle, Silbury Hill, Merlin’s Mount, Glastonbury Tor, Castle Mound, and Hill of the Faeries.

As Watkins noted, some mounds, such as famed Silbury Hill, which rises 130 feet—the tallest man-made mound in Europe—was made that high and no higher so that it could be seen over an adjacent bank.

Many barrows were never larger than necessary for them to be seen from another more distant mound or barrow, toward which their sighting line pointed.

Yet other earthworks reveal they were not designed for height or sighting, but were nevertheless meticulously shaped, deliberately constructed to be flat-topped, pear-shaped, rounded, pointed, truncated, etc., in accordance with some natural law known only to the surveying dodmen and the builders.

Some alignments point directly to peculiar notches or gaps on the horizon, many of which show signs of having been purposely made, pointing back to the expenditure of tremendous amounts of labor in the active re-engineering and re-design of the landscape.

Many of the notches are toward the east and west, and marked Sun and Moon risings and settings at particular times of the year. Other alignments have their beginnings or terminations at a high hill or sacred mountain which, again, was used as an initial survey focus or as a natural marker for solar-lunar events taking place on the horizon.

In not a few cases present-day English roads, footpaths, road junctions and crossroads are located along the leys. Crossroads were considered sacred at one time as being special places, even holy ground. Like churchyards, also on leys, crossroads were sites for the burial of the dead, where souls were released with greater ease from their physical bondage.

One specific prehistoric formation, called a cursus, as the one found near Stonehenge, appears to join two burial mounds in an “avenue of the dead” or processional way, stretching two miles “dead” straight across the Salisbury Plains countryside. A total of fifty such structures have been photographed from the air, long eroded but still preserved in the soil disturbance shadings to be seen in various locations throughout Britain.

Not only do leys extend from horizon to horizon over local areas, but they can also cover much longer routes, from one end of the country to the other. One notable example is the Saint Michael Line, stretching from the western tip of Cornwall at Land’s End all the way to the North Sea coast of East Anglia, following the sighting line that interconnects the May Day sunrise and November 1 sunset points.

The line is named after St. Michael, because so many of the major sanctuaries on the axis are dedicated to his worship. These include: At Michael’s, Carn Brea; St. Michael’s Mount; St Michael’s Chapel, Roche Rock; The Cheesering Stones; St. Michael’s Brentor; St Michael’s Trull; St. Michael’s Burrowbridge Mump; St. Michael’s Church, Othery; St. Michael’s Glastonbury Tor; Stoke St. Michael Church; Avebury; St. George’s; Ogbourne, St. George; St. Michael’s Church, Clifton Hampden; Royston Cave; Abbey, St. Edmunds; and St. Margaret’s Church, Hopton.

Most significantly, in medieval iconography, the figure of St. Michael was shown as piercing the head of a dragon with a spear, just as was St. George, and the two were understood to be mythic counterparts of each other, both derived from older “pagan” symbology involving the staking and controlling of earth forces.

Going a step beyond, the English Saint Michael Line is connected through Michael’s Mount with another major ley which runs through the length of Europe, the Aegean islands to Israel, and inter-links both continental St. Michael sanctuaries as well as Apollo temple sites along its length.

While Watkins spent years in his investigation of following the ancient lines and noting their characteristics, his search for the purpose behind the lines eluded him.

He first believed that they had been laid out and used for travel from one point to another. But his theory fell through time and time again in the face of the “tracks” climbing straight up steep hills, fording fast-moving streams, and shooting over deep gullies and bogs, where far better pathways across or around these obstacles could be found elsewhere, often only a short distance away.

Yet the lines were made straight, unerringly true, with no regard to ease of travel.

After considering the alternatives, Watkins, before his death in 1935, finally accepted the possibility that the lines had been marked out not with a purpose unto themselves, but were representations of something else, something far more subtle and mysterious.

The scenario which emerged was that the lines delineated the pathway and direction of unknown energies within the Earth’s surface. Somehow, these energies were linked with the times of the rising of the Sun or Moon at certain times of the year.

As their light stretched across the country, stones cast shadows in a line, ponds and moats reflected the brilliance, and artificially shaped hills emphasized the passage of the rays—a visible indication that invisible forces were also triggered and flowing along the same lines.

These forces the ancient builders were not only aware of, but in some magical way were able to control and utilize for their own purposes.

Part of the puzzle as to the nature and use of the earth energies can be gleaned from English traditions and folklore. Some recurring themes various investigators have successfully detected in the old legends are these:

Churches, standing stones, stone circles, sacred trees, and certain mounds were visited at special times of the year by gatherings of local people, to celebrate fairs or festivals, and to perform age-old rituals.

The most common ritual involved the joining of hands by the celebrants in a great circle, and dancing or walking around the central figure (church, stone, tree, etc.) in one direction only. In the case of stone circles, the celebrants weaved in and out among the individual stones. The number of turns performed around the sacred site was significantly 9, 7 or 3 times.

These, many researchers believe, are memories marking specific days when energies flowing through the stones were most active, and the ancient dance was the means by which life energies of the human participants interacted by both receiving and aiding in the build-ups of earth currents within the stones. A modern analogy would be an electrical current generated by a coil of wire moved around a magnet.

Many standing stones along the ancient leys were noted for their special curative powers, or for inducing fertility. Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing in 1136, noted concerning Stonehenge:

“In these stones is a mystery and a healing virtue against many ailments.”

At Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire is an eight-foot menhir which prevents rickets.

The Men-an-Tol in Cornwall relieved rheumatism.

At the Long Stone at Gloucester children with measles, whooping cough and other infant diseases that in olden times were often fatal, became well.

The Cloch-Nave-Deglane megalith cured its pilgrims of backache.

And in Britanny women gathered about certain stones at Carnac immediately after their wedding ceremonies, to insure fertility.

It could be argued these claims were mere superstition, but the fact that such claims persisted for thousands of years without interruption indicates that definite curative and child-bearing results were obtained, giving credence to the phenomena.

Again, as in the cases of other rituals performed at the stones, the supplicants usually walked about the central object in one direction, and a specific number of times.

These legends are explained in modern terms as another example of energy interaction between people and the stones. Like a battery, the crystalline rock structure held a health-giving charge, either from energies in the earth, or by having been infused with healing energies by ancient healers and holy people who meditated and vitalized the stones over many centuries.

When patients came in contact, they took upon themselves the curative powers locked within the stones, and their own energy fields were re-aligned into a healthy pattern, which in turn manifested in the relief of the malady, or aided in fertilization.

Sometimes the ancient stones also had a malevolent side according to the legends, especially if their powers were ignored, misused, or the stones themselves were disturbed.

Fair warning was made to anyone sleeping at the stone cromlech in Dyffryn Woods on the night of May Day, St. John’s Eve or Midsummer Eve, that they would either die, go mad, or become a poet. The same fate awaited those who slept atop Cadar Idris in Merionethsire and Bedd Taliesin in Wales.

One could also place within this category stories of the Irish Blarny Stone which, when kissed, gave its supplicants unusual powers of speech.

This may be seen as a memory that the stone energies not only affected the physical body, but also the mind, either heightening the mental powers into altered states of consciousness—whence came flashes of creativity such as poetry, speech and psychic abilities—or when too strong and with no adequate preparation, caused madness and even death.

Other stones were said to move or dance on certain days or nights at specific hours, fatal to those individuals who were caught among them or in the way of their movements, for they were invariably found afterwards mangled or crushed to death.

Again, the stories of “traveling” or “dancing”—or vibrating—stones may depict the times the earth energies were flowing, or even the manifestations of the stones reacting to the currents passing through them. If these energies reached too extreme a frequency, say into the ultra-high or infra-low ranges, anyone near the stones would have been literally shaken to death.

Likewise, the attempt to alter a stone’s position was most hazardous, for the dislocation ultimately upset the natural balance of energies in the earth, in local plant and animal life, and in the weather, for which the stone’s purpose was to harmonize all these together.

Many stories are told of farmers hauling off stones to clear fields, only to replace them a short time later. Immediately after the stones have been removed, the farmers suffer from multiple deaths of animals, sickness within their families, destruction of buildings by small tremors, or sudden and continuous squalls and torrential downpours which destroyed their crops. No sooner were the stones replaced, when Nature is once again put aright, and all things return to normal.

One such incident took place in 1944 when stationed American servicemen removed an ancient stone while building an airbase near Great Leigh in Essex. Immediately throughout the district cows refused to give milk, hens would not roost, animals in a confused state wandered from their pastures, haystacks collapsed and church bells rang by themselves, disturbed by vibrations in the earth. After strong protests were raised by the locals, the stone was finally placed back, and the disturbances promptly ceased.

One of the noteworthy and persistent elements among the legends is the association of ancient sacred sites, stones and mounds with dragons and giant serpents. In many locations the dragons are said to have traveled to and fro between certain fixed points, always in a linear fashion, or serpents were supposed to have curled about great mounds—usually 9, 7 or 3 times—about their circumferences.

Many investigators are convinced these dragons or serpents are symbols of the ancient earth energies linking points along the leys by their paths, and spiraling about ley centers in energy fields. This symbolism is clearly revealed in the best known of the English traditions, that of Saint George lancing the head of the terrible dragon-monster to the ground.

This story has been traced back and the imagery was borrowed by the early Christians from an older prehistoric legend. Saint George is derived from the pagan deity Ge, the Earth Spirit. Originally, this being was not the slayer but rather was the tamer of the dragon—the earth currents—and thus represented the memory of a lost age when the earth energies were known and controlled.

There are other recurrent themes running through English folklore which we can only briefly mention here for now, but which also have important associations with the leys and their monuments. These include the description of wizards and cole-prophets who once floated or levitated the multi-ton standing stones and circles into their present positions. They used special rods, crystals and hand-held stone for healing, or for detecting the location and intensity of earth energy fields. And instances exist where people have heard voices of others, or have teleported objects over long distances, by means of the ancient stones.

Not only have the earth energies been remembered in legend, but their existence even today has been detected by numerous individuals who practice the ancient art of dowsing. These encounters give us further clues as to the characteristics of the energies, the leys and their usage in the forgotten past.

One of the major early contributors to the study of ley energies was Guy Underwood, an electrical engineer who was also a professional dowser.

Dowsing is an ancient practice little understood by modern science. The practitioner, holding one or more rods or other simple apparati in his or her hands, is able to detect the presence of underground water or other natural forces by being sensitive to the reaction of the body and mind signals to what lies below.

There have been a myriad of scientifically-monitored and well-documented cases showing that dowsers do deal with a very real phenomenon, and have successfully located thousands of subterranean wells, springs and rivers. Other dowsers specialize in finding lost artifacts, and have even worked in archaeological sites.

Before Underwood’s own studies began, several dowsers before him had noted the curious fact that they had discovered time and time again the presence of underground streams crossing one another or springs upwelling precisely beneath many prehistoric standing stones and stone circles.

Stonehenge in particular appears to be a place where numerous streams crisscross and interact with one another. The design and layout of the great stone monoliths on the surface were placed so as to tap these streams, not for water, but for something else they seemed to be carrying and transmitting.

That “something else” Underwood called the Earth Force. He described it this way:

“Its main characteristics are that it appears to be generated within the Earth, and to cause wave motion perpendicular to the Earth’s surface; that it has great penetrative powers; that it effects the nerve cells of animals; that it forms spiral patterns; and is controlled by mathematical laws involving principally the numbers 3 and 7.

“It could be an unknown principle, but it seems more likely that it is an unrecognized effect of some already established force, such as magnetism or gravity.

“The Earth Force itself manifests in lines of discontinuity which I call geodetic lines, and which form a network on the surface of the Earth.

“The lower animals instinctively perceive and use the lines, and their behavior is considerably affected by them. Man is similarly affected by them, but less strongly, and usually cannot perceive the lines without artificial assistance.

“The philosophers and priests of the old religion seemed to have believed that—particularly when manifested in spiral forms—it was involved not only as a catalyst with the construction of matter but with the generative powers of Nature; that it was part of the mechanism by which what we call Life comes into being; and to have been the ’Great arranger’—that balancing principle which keeps all Nature in equilibrium, and for which biologists still seek.”

According to Underwood, he was able to detect three forms of the Earth Force—what he called water lines, track lines and aqua stats—the first being “negative” and the other two “positive,” though not in an electrical sense.

The three forms interweave and interact with one another as they flow along roughly linear paths, every so often forming spirals 7, 5 or 3 lines in size, which Underwood noted tend to expand and contract in area with the seasons and the movements of the Sun and Moon. Where several line series come together, there are major spiraling patterns—and it is in these locations that one invariably finds standing stones, circles, mounds, sacred trees and other ley markers.

The Earth Force lines in many places create complex patterns such as parallel lines, nodes, branch spirals, geo-spirals, haloes, feathers and arcs. And wherever Underwood discovered these energy patterns, someone long ago had mapped them out before him, and had erected various monuments and earthworks to tap into them.

Striking, too, is that the patterns Underwood delineated bear a remarkable resemblance to cup-rings, spiral and undulating line designs still found on several prehistoric standing stones, and in mound chambers, particularly at Newgrange and the Boyne Valley in Ireland, in the mother temples of Malta, and at other locations around the world.

Underwood’s pioneering studies are today being followed up by other dowsers who are further confirming the existence of hidden energy patterns along the leys.

These practitioners of the ancient dowsing arts recognize, however, that they are only literally scratching the surface—they are retracing the steps of the unknown dodmen who were more advanced, and who understood the secret powers of the planet far better than modern humanity.

Though the original Megalith builders and the dodmen of old remain a mystery to us, much of their prehistoric wisdom concerning the Earth’s secret energies appears to have been handed down to their successors in Britain, the Celtic Druids.

Writing in the third century B.C.E., Apollonius of Rhodes states that megaliths were “living stones, possessed of such sensibility that they could be moved by mental force.” William Borlase, a Cornish antiquarian, voiced is opinion that the ancient Druids, “had skill enough and the powers to lift vast weights, of which we have no idea.”

Professor Frederick Hoyle suspected that the old stone monuments such as Stonehenge and others, were not only built by principles of levitation, but also were laid out in a linear system that aided in the process of directional levitated flight.

Megalith researcher John Michell observed from Druidic legend that the stones were once lifted, “with drums, songs and the clash of cymbals. A stone levitated by sound could thus become a flying chariot, moving along a line of certain magnetic intensity, whose course was marked out on the ground by alignments of stones and earthworks. With the earth’s magnetic field regulated and the streams that run through it diverted to conform to straight lines, the stone craft and its navigator could float from center to center, through a canal of alternating currents, and choosing the level of intensity to which their vibrations attuned.”

Michell also believes that the ancient Druidic pilots first entered into a chambered mound on an energy line on the eve before the line would be activated by the rising Sun or Moon.

By spending this period of time within the energy-accumulating mound, the Druids then raised the energies of their own bodies to a frequency which conformed with that of their craft, and the line they intended to travel down.

Upon the rising of the heavenly orb, the person, their craft, the Earth energies and the cosmos were all attuned to a single harmonic pitch. The lesser Druid priests and priestesses added more energy to the system by surrounding the craft and, chanting together and beating drums and cymbals at the same frequency, helped lift the vehicle and its pilot into the air. Then, by projecting their attuned thoughts and speaking the sacred words into the energy, the pilot directed his craft to its intended destination.

There are many celebrated instances of such flights having taken place, recorded in Druid legend. Most such flights were successful, but at times they were not, ending in disaster.

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, one hero named Bladud—the ninth ruler of ancient Britain, and the father of King Lear—was said to know the secret of generating “unquenchable fires from stones which never turned to ash,” by which he heated the pools of Minerva at Kaerladon, now modern Bath. By the same powers, he often flew across the countryside upon a “great stone shield” or disk.

One day, however, in the midst of his flight, an eclipse of the Sun took place, the energies supporting Bladud’s craft suddenly vanished, and he and his flying craft fatally crashed at Ludgate Hill in Trinovantum, the modern London, where St. Paul’s Cathedral is located today.

Significantly, there is a scientific fact underlying this story, for during an eclipse of the Sun the surface magnetism of the Earth does indeed drop near zero in strength for a fraction of a second, due to the major disruption by the Moon of the solar wind.

We today recognize the fact that many of the Megalithic observatories, such as Stonehenge and others, show that their builders—and those who used them afterwards such as the Druids—were almost to the point of obsession in their desire to predict the coming of eclipses.

Was this merely due to superstitious fear as some conservative historians claim, or was it for the very real and practical purpose of knowing ahead what days flights using earth energies were not to be made?

Bladud was eventually succeeded by other notable navigators of the earth currents, some having performed their feats into relatively late periods of history. In Ireland, the standing stone of Cnamchoill, near Tipperary, and a massive rock at Rath Coole at Dublin, are said to be all that is left of the “flying wheel” of Mog Ruith, Arch-Druid of Erin.

The “wheel” was called Roth Fail or Rath Ramhach, and had been made by the combined knowledge of the Druid and Simon Magus, the famed magician of the first century A.D. Mog Ruith had successfully traveled in the craft in flights over Ireland, but when used with a negative consciousness, as Simon Magus did in Rome against the apostle Paul, the energies of the craft failed, and the magician was killed.

Irish legend has it that the pieces of the broken flying wheel were returned to Erin by Mog Ruith’s daughter, Tlachtga, who set them up in the way they are found today, in order to dissipate and re-balance their disharmonious energies. Even so, it is recounted that on certain days it is not wise for the pious to touch or even gaze upon the pieces of the craft, for they are still potent enough to paralyze or blind those who do.

A more successful contact between the old Druids and classical minds was recorded by the writers Diodorus Siculus, Himerius and Iamblichus. They told the story of an ancient Briton named Abaris who in the sixth century B.C.E. traveled from his native Shetland Isles to Greece to consult and share his knowledge with the great philosopher, Pythagoras.

Abaris was described as a magician, an “elderly priest of Apollo,” whose intent was to “renew the goodwill and kinship of his people to the Delians,” the Greek followers of Apollo. What is interesting is the manner of his coming, and his power over Nature.

Abaris was said to have journeyed over “rivers, lakes, marshes and mountains” riding upon a “golden dart” which traveled “straight as an arrow.” By the same forces which propelled the dart, the priest also expelled winds, stopped plagues, and brought forth streams of water from the earth.

To Pythagoras, Abaris imparted many secrets of ancient geometry his forefathers in the Golden Age had used in the construction of the Megalithic monuments. This is the reason why we find so many Pythagorean triangles incorporated into the design among the prehistoric Megaliths in Britain and in Europe. They were not the invention of Pythagoras himself, as so often thought, but rather the Greek mathematician, as a student of Abaris, simply preserved and perpetuated an esoteric geometric knowledge which was already thousands of years old in his day.

Many more references to ancient British flight are contained in the body of folklore surrounding legendary Arthur and the last Druidic priest, Merlyn.

Algernon Herbert noted an old Welsh poem that described King Arthur as once traveling about on a “swiftly moving lamp.”

Medieval historians Geoffrey of Monmouth and Giraldus Cambrensis preserved from older sources the story that Merlyn used unheard-of magic “engines” that “carried through the air” the great blocks of Stonehenge to their present location on Salisbury Plain, and that these had formerly been erected in Ireland at Mount Killarus or Kildare, by an extinct race of giants who had transported the blocks by similar means from North Africa.

It is not without significance that the old Saxon name for Stonehenge means the “hanging” or “floating stones.” The famous blue stones of the monument, which have usually been claimed by conservative scholars as coming from the Prescelly Mountains of Wales, have also been found in deposits in Ireland, and also in North Africa.

W. Y. Evans-Wentz, a collector of ancient folklore, once journeyed throughout Ireland, Britain and France. In Ireland he discovered oft-repeated legends regarding what the locals called fairy paths. At special times and seasons of the year, according to the Gaels, the fairies and other spiritual forces traveled along certain routes, today still delineated in places by old roads and footpaths. The seasonal times appear to have been regulated by positions of the Sun and Moon.

As one example, a particular fairy path followed down the main road of Maxen which was illuminated its full length by the rising Sun only one day out of the year—the day the spirit forces chose for their procession. Likewise, at nights of special lunar events other fairy paths were said to be lit up by hundreds of lights which began at one fixed point and traveled in a straight line until they arrived at another point, always identified as locations of “high energy.”

Along several of the Irish fairy routes there are prehistoric stone heaps and towers, “fairy forts,” and mounds regarded by the locals as sacred and the habitations of fairies, from which no stone dare be removed lest calamities strike the land. Neither was it wise, as recorded by folklore scholar Dermot Macmanus for one to build any modern structure upon a fairy path, for it might block the “flow” and its owner suffer the consequences.

One Catholic priest from western Ireland recounted to Evans-Wentz the belief in his district that:

“If a house happens to be built on a fairy-preserve or a fairy-track, the occupants will have no luck. Everything will go wrong. Their animals will die, their children fall sick, and no end of trouble will come to them. When the house happens to have been built in a fairy-track, the doors on the front and back, or the windows if they are in line of the track, cannot be kept closed at night, for the fairies will march through.”

When Evans-Wentz asked an Irish elder what the true significance behind the fairy paths was, the elder responded:

“They are lines of some kind of magnetic current, whose exact nature has lately been forgotten.”

The author himself, after reviewing all the folklore on the subject, came to the same conclusion:

“There seem to be certain favored places on the earth where its magnetic and even more subtle forces are most powerful and most easily felt by persons susceptible to such things.”

About the same time that Alfred Watkins was tracking leys across the English countryside in the 1920’s and 1930’s, several German researchers were finding similar alignments among the prehistoric monuments of their nation and beyond, remembered as holy lines and ghost roads. Two men in particular, Wilhelm Teudt and Josef Heinsch, were the most energetic and outspoken students of these ancient tracks.

Before his death in 1937, Teudt had engaged in a ten-year research demonstrating the solar, lunar and stellar alignments of ancient and prehistoric stones, earthworks, churches, etc. in the Lower Saxony and Westphalian regions. In 1932 he listed over forty holy lines and the numerous monuments associated with them.

The work Teudt began was paralleled and then surpassed by Dr. Josef Heinsch, a landscape engineer who in 1938 presented his own findings at an international congress in Amsterdam on what he called the principles of prehistoric cult-geography.

Heinsch’s investigations led him to recognize that the evidence for the old lines extended far beyond ancient Germany. His comments on his discoveries in these regards are worth noting:

“In all German provinces are the old sacred sites and meeting places, the boundaries and road networks, that from ancient times have been linked geometrically in a uniform system and precisely surveyed with true measure and angle. The origin- and center-point to this ancient cosmic sacred landscape division and system of orientation appears always to be the former ‘world mountain’ or ‘holy hill,’ both in small districts and in the wider and national provinces.

“The canonical angles for the holy lines radiating from these holy hills were generally indicated in the surrounding landscape by old sacred sites, often occupied by churches and chapels on the imposition of Christianity. With the universal angular value the times of sunrise and sunset throughout the year were indelibly stamped onto the landscape, through sacred and festival places; and they remain recognizable to this day, for those who know the true meaning of the measure.

“The units of measurement used in this terrestrial design are based on fraction of the earth’s proportions. There are examples of these ancient structures throughout Europe and the Middle East. In fact, a number of practical experiences have left me no doubt that with the recognition of the basic ‘holy angles’ and the growing understanding of the ‘holy measures’ associated with them, it is possible everywhere to rediscover the prehistoric land survey.”

As to what purpose lay behind these linear systems, Heinsch wrote:

“The works are so vast that we have been unable, until now, to see them. Their existence indicates the possibility of an ancient civilization with advanced scientific knowledge. There is a network of these works throughout the world and there is evidence of an advanced universal culture devoted to transforming the earth.

“Building these astronomical and geometric patterns must have benefited our ancestors in some unknown manner. They certainly would not have gone to such effort without some practical benefits. However, the reason behind their construction or what magical power was generated, is open to speculation.

“Our rational science, prodding at things from the outside, is inevitably returning (on changed levels of consciousness) to the oldest wisdom of mankind, built up from an intuitive viewpoint and a feeling of natural affinity with cosmic forces.”

Situated between the leys of Britain and the holy lines of Germany, the countryside of prehistoric Gaul also hides many examples of linear patterns. Heinsch, in a study of French sites, noted more than thirty-six alignments among the churches and chapels in a twenty-five kilometer radius of Chartres Cathedral which acted as their focus. Again, these Christian structures had been built on sites of former pagan sanctuaries.

Similar line patterns, these often following astronomical sights, have been detected in and around the Megalithic stones of France’s best known prehistoric attraction, Carnac in Brittany. Another notable alignment exists in eastern France, where eight standing stones and a mound were set out at intervals along a dead-straight pathway extending for fifty kilometers beginning near Nyon in Switzerland, passing through the heart of Geneva, and ending on the shores of French Lac d’Annecy.

Perhaps the most important study of France’s line systems was conducted by philologist Xavier Guichard, who in 1936 published his work on his research. Guichard not only detected a vast network of linked ancient sites throughout France, Spain, Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, but found an unusual inter-association among the names of the various sites.

For example, on a prehistoric line from Calais to Eze in France are the towns of Olizny, Alaise, Eyzine and Aussois, extending beyond to Also in Corsica.

On another line from Elsenburg in Germany to Alis in France are Aisey, Lisey, Alaise, Monalay, le Calais, Montelat, Les Alis, Ales, Alyes and Eauz-Ayzieu, terminating at La Aliseda in western Spain.

Still other “Alesian geodetic lines” as Guichard called them included such far-flung places as Alessandro in the Italian heel, Alyzia, Alysos, Mount Alisius and Alesius in Greece, Eleusis in the Aegean, Haleisum in Turkey and Eleusis in the Nile Delta of Egypt.

Guichard discovered further that all these similarly named sites—which include four hundred in France alone—were also distinguished by one of several features. They were surrounded by streams which isolated them into peninsulas, they had artificially-shaped hills overlooking a river, or they possessed wells or springs of usually salt or mineral waters.

After twenty-five years of searching and plotting out all these Alesian connections, Guichard could only conclude that someone long ago had undertaken a survey of an extensive area of the Earth’s surface in an endeavor to locate and identify sources of water both above and below ground, and the healing powers associated with them.

The ancient survey work could still be seen in how some major lines were perfectly oriented to the meridians of the equinoxes and to the winter and summer solstices. These were accomplishments, Guichard observed, which could only have been done with knowledge of accurately measuring longitude and latitude, and understanding the positions of the Equator and the Poles.

The Alesian sites, Guichard stated:

“Were established in very ancient times according to immutable, astronomical lines determined first in the sky, then transferred to the earth at regular intervals, each equal to a 360th part of the globe.”

The early Romans, in their conquest of the Etruscans in Italy, found standing stones set in linear patterns over the entire countryside of Tuscany.

Later, during the Latin invasions of Greece, they again recounted that they discovered “stone pillars” along roads running straight and true through the hilly Hellene landscape.

It appears, however, that the Romans were not particularly surprised to find these straight tracks, for they discovered them in practically every country they subjected—all across Europe, North Africa, in Crete, and as far east as their conquests went, in the region of Babylon and Nineveh.

Both the Romans and the Greeks recognized the power over individual’s minds of underground currents of water. Plutarch in the first century A.D. wrote:

“Men are affected by streams of varying potency issuing from the earth. Some of these drive people crazy or cause disease and death; the effect of others is good, soothing and beneficial.”

These, as Plutarch further pointed out, were subject to heavenly forces:

“The sun creates in the earth the right conditions and the right temperament for it to be able to produce the exhalations that inspire prophecy.”

Ovid observed that the sacred properties of springs, lakes and rivers change with the seasons, and in order to take advantage of their full energies one must properly commemorate the annual fair, feast, market or assembly of worship peculiar to each site.

Setting festival days for regenerating land, according to Plato, was important to Greek colonists settling a new region. The philosopher advised his compatriots to first seek out the sacred places of local deities, establish temples to these, and formulate a calendar to keep track of the special days of consecration associated with them.

Not only the sites themselves but the paths and roads leading to and between them were also held sacred. On the auspicious days worshippers, pilgrims, priests and priestesses walked the paths at sunrise in solemn religious procession, in imitation of the gods and goddesses, as the deities at that moment journeyed to their respective sanctuaries to energize and give renewed life to them for the coming year.

Sacred sites’ researcher Vincent Scully discovered that many features of Greek and Roman architecture were based upon the influence of certain deities over the surrounding topography.

He found that all classical temples were oriented toward one or more land forms, usually seen on the horizon—a sacred mountain, a holy hill or a notch or horn (V-shaped indentation), oftentimes coupled with the rising points of the Sun, Moon or a bright star. This was associated with each deity ruling over and manipulating specific energy patterns.

Thus sites dedicated to such earth goddess figures as Hera or Demeter rested in low womb-like valleys enclosed by hills and contained, as at Akragas, rings of stone over which libations to appease the earth spirit were poured.

The temples of Aphrodite the sea-born goddess of love were enthroned over precipices above the sea as seen at Cnidus and Cyprian Paphos, harmonizing land and sea forces.

Apollo’s sites as at Delphi and Delos reflected his ability to fix and control the more unruly energies of the earth by exhibiting defined lines of form and power in rocky, barren and disordered environments. Apollo too dominated over and helped vitalize caverns and springs known for their oracular nature.

The holy sanctuaries of Zeus invariably capped high, conical or pyramidal mountains, exemplified at Mount Lykaion and Mount Oros. Or they sat in arc-like bowl depressions like Dodona, where the deity brought balance between earth and the dome of heaven.

Poseidon as king of the ocean had his temples at Colonus and Mantinela placed upon running ridges or waves of land benefiting from and directing the flow of energies along these forms.

Athena as at Athens and Sparta placed herself upon valley dominating flat-topped hills that inevitably became the acropolis for a major metropolis, and was thus the site where cosmic and human forces were reconciled with each other.

And finally in flat, circular valleys as at Epidaurus, Corinth and Pergamum the god Asclepius took advantage of the curative energies of this particular landform to construct his temples of healing.

Besides earth-oriented sanctuaries, many sacred locations throughout the eastern Mediterranean were marked by prehistoric standing stones that were worshipped from early times on as phallic symbols. Iamblichus in the fourth century A.D. observed the reason for this association and recognized—as did also the Celtic Druids of Europe—the stones’ powers of fertility:

“The phalli stones are a certain sign of prolific power, which, through this, is called forth the generative energy of the world. Many phalli are consecrated in the spring, because then the whole world receives from the gods the power that is productive of all generation.”

In Greece the sacred standing stones were called Hermes’ Stones, and in several locations stood at the center of market places out from which radiated roads n all directions. It is noteworthy that the device of the god Hermes—the Roman Mercury—was the Caduceus, a straight pole or rod entwined by two serpents--positive and negative currents—and topped with a globe and the wings of a bird. In Greek mythology this wondrous rod because of its healing power was given to Asclepius the god of medicine—and it is used today as the trademark of the American Medical Association.

The symbol of stones, serpents and birds are interwoven together in the legends and remains of the places of mystery and sanctity in the ancient Mediterranean, the oracle centers.

At the most famous oracle shrine of Delphi was the temple of Apollo and at its founding the god was said to have pierced the serpent Python, servant to the earth goddess Gaia. Its rotting body for long after gave off fumes and waters by which the Delphic priestesses and prophetesses, descending into a cavern where the corpse was said to lay, became intoxicated with the powers of “divine madness” to make their pronouncements.

The slaying of the Python serpent reminds us of the English Saint George who lanced or staked the dragon-monster to the ground, representing the prehistoric taming of the earth energies.

In classical mythology, this mastery was also portrayed in Zeus’ battle with the serpent Typhon, the Babylonian Marduk’s slaying the dragon Tiamat and his creation or shaping of the earth and sky from its body, and in the war between the Egyptian Sun god Ra and the subterranean serpent Apophis.

At the center of the Apollo temple at Delphi was the sacred Omphalos or single egg-shaped stone carved with a grid or network pattern over its surface which marked the site as a sacred center or navel of the earth. The position of this stone according to myth had been determined by two birds flying in straight lines from opposite ends of the world, measuring it and meeting over the holy place.

Two birds figure in the legend of the founding of two other famous oracular centers, those dedicated to Zeus-Amun in the Libyan desert of Egypt, and at Dodona in northwest Greece. On the command of the god, two black doves flew unerringly straight paths from Thebes in Egypt to the two sites respectively, urging the population there to build temples upon their landing. In all three locations—at Thebes, the temple of Zeus-Amun at Siwa, and Dodona—archaeologists have unearthed Omphali which were often depicted as egg-shaped with birds resting atop them or serpents entwined about them. In Persia the opposing forces of Ormuzd and Ahriman were represented as two serpents contending for the Omphali-egg.

The various oracular centers and sacred places in the known ancient world were linked not only by common energy symbols but in the design of their locations.

Researcher Maurice Chatelain, for example, observed that the thirteen major shrines in Greece and the Aegean area form a perfect Maltese Cross 540 kilometers wide in all directions from Delos—the birthplace of Apollo—situated in the center. Robert Temple also pointed out that many of the leading early sacred sites in the eastern Mediterranean were all evenly spaced on lines of parallel, each exactly one degree apart.

More than half a century ago, W. L. Harding-King discovered a linear pattern during his travels across the Sahara desert. The Bedouin nomads use this system, marked out by standing stones and cairns or stone heaps for navigating across the desert wastes. The nomads claim they can remember no time in the past when these monuments did not exist.

Farther to the west, stone circles and astronomical alignments connected by lines of single standing stones are scattered throughout Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, often found in uninhabitable regions of the Sahara, demonstrating these monuments must have been built during an age long before the desert existed.

In other portions of the African continent—in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Gambia, Nigeria, Senegal, Zimbabwe and Zaire—monuments, towers, earthen lines, stone circles, mounds and sacred mountains dot the jungles and savannas. Many of the more prominent of these have tell-tale alignments with the summer solstice, like so many other Megalithic power centers of the world.

Douglas Frazer, in his research on Indigenous village planning, observed that many Central and West African settlements such as the Yoruban town of Keta in Dahomey are still carefully designed and laid out in accordance with strict geomantic engineering. Such sites reflect a prescribed scheme in which the tribal soul is expressed as two opposing forces revolving about a central axis penetrating through a cosmic egg-stone. Incorporated within the designs are often found alignments with local heights, solar-lunar horizon rising points, sacred trees and holy springs and wells.

Along the Nile, the ancient Egyptians built their many holy sanctuaries on important energy centers in the earth. In fact, the Egyptians regarded the Nile’s centers as a mirror of those energy points which exist in the human body, parallel to the spinal column—what the Hinduas call the chakras, and the Egyptians identified with the arits, or gateways into the soul-heart of the planet.

In the Initiation journey taken by the Mystery School adepts along the length of the Nile, the outer temples were designed to mirror the inner energies of the adepts themselves, so that the outer and inner experiences went hand in hand in the learning process within the sacred landscape.

At many of the temple precincts, such as the largest in size at Karnak, in ancient Thebes, the energy line is marked by the central sanctuary axis, along which are located the main pylon archways, the obelisks of Thutmose III and Queen Hatshepsut, and the Holy of Holies of the god Amun-Ra. The line extends beyond Karnak across the river to the West Bank, where it ends in the pyramidal-shaped mountain overlooking the entrance to Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple.

In similar configuration, the main shrines of the ancient Hebrews, as well as the more historically recent holy places for Moslems and Christians, are closely located along a major axis energy line which extends the length of the land of Israel, paralleling the valleys of the Sea of Galilee, the River Jordan and the Dead Sea.

In the Israel countryside itself, old stones are still discovered, though most have been destroyed or removed through the ages, since the later Hebrews and Moslems took a dim view of what they saw as the “worship of stone gods.” The pre-Abrahamic Canaanites erected menhirs or upright stone pillars as symbols of the earth deity Baal.

Modern excavations at Shechem have revealed a large temple dedicated to Baal-berith, which possessed several standing stones in alignments, before being supplanted with an altar to Yaweh at the coming of the Hebrews.

Fortunately, much in the same manner as the Christians changed pagan shrines throughout Europe into churches and cathedrals, both the Hebrews and the Arabs likewise tried to destroy the vestiges of former religions by building their tabernacles and mosques on the ruins of more ancient centers in the Middle East, yet by doing so resulted in further preserving the original prehistoric alignments.

The German researcher Heinsch found in a twenty-four kilometer area between Jerusalem and the sacred site of Shechem a total of nine solar alignments, and no less than eight points from which more lines radiated to still other holy Hebrew and Moslem religious edifices. These were exactly in the same manner and degree angles Heinsch had discovered in Germany and France.

We find too in Hebrew literature surprising allusions to the old line systems, and even the memory of the age when they were built. In the Old Testament we may see hidden meanings behind these passages:

“Thus says the Lord, stand you in the way and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and you shall find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16.

“Set you up way-marks, make you high places, set your heart toward the high way, even the way which you once had gone.” Jeremiah 31:21.

“Because my people have forgotten me, they have burned incense in vanity, and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths in a way not cast up.” Jeremiah 18:15.

“Truth shall spring out of the earth.” Isaiah 58:4.

“Prepare you the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” Isaiah 40:3-4.

The Tigris-Euphrates valley was the ancient home of the ziggurats or holy mountains, massive man-made multi-storied high places of mud brick construction built by the Sumerians and imitated by the later Babylonians. Researcher Zecharia Sitchin has demonstrated that the major ziggurat centers in Mesopotamia all fell on three intersecting lines and were spaced at regular distances from each other.

Santillana and van Deschend noted the significance of the ziggurats in Sumerian religion and thought. They were often named—as at Der, Lagash and Nippur—the dimgal or great binding post of the land, fixed and immutable centers upon which the country of Sumeria relied for its harmony and continuous existence. Dimgal also referred to the binding of the mountain-temples with the abzu or the great waters of the underworld which flow beneath the earth.

Going a step further, the ziggurats—especially at Nippur, Larsa and Sippar—were also called dur-an-ki or the bond of heaven and earth, the mediator between Sun, Moon and planets and the Earth’s surface.

Putting these two descriptions together we find the purpose behind the Sumerian ziggurats was to serve as gigantic connectors, balancing and harmonizing the energy exchange between sky, earth and the subterranean water currents, much in the very same manner as the ley standing stones did in Britain and elsewhere.

In the Caucasus and Ukraine are numerous stelae or stones placed in long alignments often carved in the form of heads and torsos of earth gods. Through the vast expanse of Russia and on into Siberia and ancient Tartary are stone rows and circles called babas. Similar standing stones, divided into head and foot menhirs, extend from the Altai eastward to the Irkutsk region. Rows of wells called kanats are found running straight across the deserts of Iran, and pillars along straight roads are scattered in Afghanistan. In Tibet pilgrims place small spherical stones along mani or unusually straight wall mounds in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Mircea Eliade noted that certain Hindu sects pay particular attention to placing new temples in relation to the cosmos above and the power centers within the earth, represented as a snake:

“Before the masons lay the first stone, the astronomer shows them the spot where it is to be placed, and this spot is supposed to lie above the snake that supports the world. Thus the cornerstone is at the exact center of the world.”

In Inner Mongolia at Xilin Hot and north of Hoh Hot are located the aobao stone mounds and piles, forming line arrangements. The local lamaseries have no explanation for these, only that they help to bring spiritual energies into the temple complex. And in Turkestan in the steppe country of central Asia are more monoliths set in straight lines, which the old tribesmen say were so placed as to fuse the energies of the earth dragon with those of the celestial orbs during certain seasons.

Perhaps more than any other civilization, China preserved much of the wisdom and spirit of the prehistoric past and the earth energy system, in its philosophy and in its understanding and perceptions of the environment.

Chinese literature records that the Emperor Yu as long ago as 2200 B.C.E. knew “the secrets of underground water” by “inspecting the earth.” The last phrase which in the Chinese reads siang-ti has the connotation, “to detect by divining that which is hidden,” and also refers to “feeling a vibration from what is below ground.”

The knowledge and importance of the subsurface currents and their patterns were further revealed in this statement by the fourteenth century writer Chen Su-Hsiao:

“In the subterranean regions there are alternate layers of earth and rock and flowing springs of water. These strata rest on thousands of vapors which are distributed in tens of thousands of veins and threadlike openings. The body of the earth is thus like that of a human being.”

And just as the physical functioning of our bodies in many ways determine our course of action during our daily lives, so the Chinese likewise attempted to regulate the actions of the physical body of the planet toward the same end.

Jing Nuan Wu, a modern engineer and acupuncturist, has found after several years of research into the I Ching or Books of Changes that this venerated system of Chinese divination was originally closely associated with perceiving water and energy movements within the body of the Earth.

The I Ching symbol is made of combinations of two kinds of lines, the solid line or male water-energy current, and the broken or female water-energy current. Wu notes that in the ancient name I Ching, “I” has the meaning, “in accordance with heaven and the earth’s water levels,” and also has the connotation of both “light” and “absence of light.” This indicates that the measuring of a lengthening shadow off some object or objects seems to have also played a role in the divination.

The second part of the name, “Ching,” complements this, for it refers to “channels” or “pathways” down which both shadows on the surface and waters carrying the “vital cosmic breath” below ground move at the same time a specific periods of the day or year.

The art of determining the activities and currents in the Chinese landscape was left to the practitioners of feng-shui, which means “wind and water,” and has the definition, “what cannot be fully comprehended and cannot be grasped.”

The duty of the experts in feng-shui was to determine the flows of the lung-mei or “dragon currents,” and calculate their influences—hsing shih—in the regions they passed through.

The currents were considered to be of two kinds: ch hing lung, a male or yang current that flowed primarily along jagged, high places and was represented as a blue or green dragon. And pai hu, a female or yin current that followed over low or hilly ground and was symbolized by a white tiger. The most beneficial spot of greatest or “luckiest” energies were those where the blue dragon flowed on the left and the white tiger on the right, and join together in a land form like the crook of an elbow, with the energy proportions being three-fifths male and two-fifths female.

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]