Crap Theories
of the Mind, Body and Spirit
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> Ley Lines: Yes, they’re a lovely idea - mystical,
romantic, pre-Celtic an’ all – but, alas, almost certainly bunk… |
Crap rating:
****
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Ley Lines
It is clear
to us that Megalithic peoples knew all that we now know about the planetary grid
and then some. The stones which they so carefully placed upon ley lines were
used to communicate with anyone else linked via common telluric energy flows.
The Becker-Hagens Grid,
Straight lines were invented by the Ancients - possibly by
By contrast, ley lines
are held by Those In The Know to be similarly ancient and straight, but provide
mysterious links, ‘energy channels’ or ‘lines of force’ between locations A, B,
C etc., but which, unfortunately for researchers, do not, in fact, exist in any tangible
sense. And prior to the
nineteen-twenties, history was not even aware of the non-existence of ley lines
as they had yet to be identified and named as such:
At first
hearing, the idea that ancient mounds of earth, burial places, prehistoric
standing stones and old churches should have been constructed on invisible
straight lines stretching in all directions across the face of the country
seems quite absurd, but that is what Alfred Watkins suggested when he first
made public his discovery of ley lines in 1922.
Why should our primitive ancestors have bothered with such
incomprehensible feats of surveying and engineering?
Ley Lines, Sullivan, 1999
But is it really ‘quite absurd’ that ancient Britons could
carry out the ‘incomprehensible feat’ of arranging things in straight
lines? Assuming such alignments are in some cases more than
coincidental, the Roman-style beacon method could provide the original
trackways, with subsequent stones and buildings being added, for convenience,
along existing transport paths. (Watkins
himself believed leys to be abandoned trade routes.)
Less comprehensible are the wilder claims of Watkins’
followers, care little for established archaeological conventions of
evidence-based theory building. For as
ley lines caught on, marching legions of amateur pre-historians and occultists
(the kind who never get invited to orgies and wars) went traipsing the English
countryside of a Sunday afternoon, lining up this and that, drawing-in lines on
the map and speculating on the sacred significance of any object – man-made or
natural - that chanced to fall within spitting distance of a chosen
trajectory. So what does it all
mean? Dowsers and UFO-logists, in
particular, have been eager to offer theoretical perspectives:
Did Watkins rediscover cosmic energy
fields once known by ancient man?
Yes, energy fields are detectable at
many ancient sites by a variety of methods. Many people experience certain
physical sensations triggered by exposure to this energy, such as a tinnitus
(ringing in the ears) or a prickling in the fingers or other extremities.
Dowsing rods can also detect this energy. Dowsing has been able to map the
course and width of some of the ley lines that link these ancient ruins. It is
estimated that most ley lines are approximately six feet wide…The energy fields
of ley lines have been shown to fluctuate, the width increasing two-fold at
sunrise and sunset. Three key lines have have been tracked, spanning the globe.
The E-line links southern
‘The
Ghostly Gal’, http://www.helium.com/items/109096-the-purpose-of-ley-lines
And before you can say ‘Erik von Daniken’..
…not only
did [ley line hunters] discover long-lost trackways, they unearthed lines of
massive earthworks that could never have been constructed for any practical
purpose, parallel lines of sites and regular geometrical relationships between
sites forming giant landscape figures that on
so vast a scale that they were forced to question whether they could ever have
been the work of man. [My emphasis]
Sullivan, 1999
There is at least a consistency in the idea of unseen lines
being the handiwork of unseen aliens - and the theory is impossible to
disprove. And the link between leys (or
equivalent networks of mysterious geometrical patterns) and extraterrestrial
visitations has engaged the best efforts of many, here and abroad. John Goddard asks:
Could it be
that the intelligences behind the flying saucers built the ley markers for
navigational purposes, or perhaps in order to find readily a form of magnetic
current that is useful to them?
Flying Saucer Review, 1964, in
Sullivan, 1999
Well, yes, of course that’s probably what happened, but for
the sophisticated space traveller, wouldn’t visible landscape features such as
rivers, mountains, motorways or the lights of urban conurbations provide a more
tangible means of negotiating a strange
planet than ancient tracks and standing stones, however ‘magnetic’ their
‘current’? Perhaps not, since French
UFO-logist Aime Michel has offered evidence to the effect that space visitors
only permit their craft to be witnessed from locations that can be aligned on a
geometrical grid spanning the whole of that author’s country. If you are not yet convinced, check out Fig.
17a.
Fig. 17a Aime Michel’s grid
of UFO sightings and their purported alignments
Biased selection and
‘data-trawling’
That ley-liners produce findings that are impressive (at
least to the impressionable) can be attributed to two basic methodological
errors. The first lies in the criteria
by which objects on the landscape are accorded status as ley markers; suitable
candidates are numerous and varied: ancient mounds, unworked stones, moats and
islands in ponds, traditional wells, beacon points, camps, fords, castles and
churches. (Never mind that no church or
castle dates from the megalithic era; for Watkins the assumption is made,
irrespective of evidence, that these will have been constructed on the sites of
earlier stone-workings.) When it suits, a small group of pine trees standing
alone may suffice. Examples of these
that do not fall upon a hypothesised ley line may be discounted or ignored.
In the following paragraph, Sullivan describes a ley-hunting
outing, but shows at least a note of caution in his summary impressions. He is,
from a couple of initial clues, mapping what may or may not turn out to be a ley
line :
Heading
northwards the line passes over Cleeve Hill, one of the prominent peaks on the
Cotswold escarpment, but unfortunately [!] the line misses the banks of an Iron Age fort and the curious ring
earthwork on the lower slopes of the hill.
It does, however, pass through the summit of the hill… In the other
direction the line passes through St. Michael’s Church, close to the summit of Chedworth
Beacon and on to St Mary’s Church at
If this is ‘not a classic ley by Watkins’ standards’, nor is
it atypical; either way, the research process is itself more instructive than
the conclusion. Note how the ancient
fort and earthworks are (‘unfortunately’) omitted for being misaligned, while
two post-Norman churches and a probably-random hilltop are potentially
valid. Why not, instead, ditch the
churches, retain the prehistoric stuff and conclude that, on this evidence, ley
lines are not straight, but squiggly?
This approach to research resembles that of Sigmund Freud: filter
your observations to fit the theory rather than apply anomalous data to refute
or fine-tune that theory.
[Please note that although I have used Sullivan’s Ley Lines extensively as a source, his
overview of the area is for the most part level-headed and objective - not to
mention interesting - although he can be annoyingly uncritical of the more wayward,
paranormalist ‘thinkers’ who populate his field of study. I would also query his uncompromising
assertion that ley lines are ‘a phenomenon that after 75 years still begs an
explanation’.]
It further helps the ley hunter’s task that, for Michel and
others, the alignment of just three salient map points warrants a modest
Which brings us neatly to ‘data-trawling’. A researcher (from any discipline) may
collate a mass of numerical or geometrical data based upon observation; then,
having made no specific prediction regarding the relationships to be found,
scan their scatterplots for hidden significance. Most of the lines on Michel’s map (fig. 17a)
link no more than three locations and at least one of the aligned locations is
hundreds of miles from the other two, eg. the ‘line’ that runs: Beauquay /
Domerat / Riom. Meanwhile, much closer
towns to each of these are not linked, as to do so would contravene the
‘straight line principle’. (As happened
with Sullivan’s iron-age workings, above.)
Although Sullivan notes that Michel’s work is ‘discredited
now, and rarely referred to in UFO literature’, it is a mystery why it was
credited in the first place. As for the
content of ‘UFO literature’, past or present – that is for another discussion.
Plate xviia The unremarkable alignments of Beaverbrooks
stores in
An analogy: there are probably sound economic and logistical
reasons for the positioning of Beaverbrooks
the Jewellers stores (Plate xviia), but we may reasonably assume that an
awareness of ‘telluric energy flows’ did not overly figure in planning
proposals placed before council ombudsmen.
This map was picked at random off the web and the straight lines added
to illustrate the ease by which one may conjure up order from chaos, meaning
from the meaningless, etc. When
data-trawling, if it is straight lines you are looking for, straight lines you
will find.
Watkins himself specified a minimum of four aligned features
to confirm a ley line, though routinely broke his own rules when failing to
attain that number. But even four
seemingly-aligned data points are nothing to write home (or books) about; in
1983, the archaeologists Williamson and Bellamy, from an exhaustive survey,
concluded that chance alone was sufficient to explain the relative positioning
of all reported ancient landscape features.
(A more formalised version of data-trawling may be found in
‘factor analysis’; psychologists, for example, identify human performance or
personality variables, such as ‘IQ’ or ‘extraversion’, from a statistical
breakdown of scores recorded by questionnaires and psychometric tests. While considered more academically legit than
simply eyeballing one’s data for salient patterns, the method is error-prone,
and resulting factors, or ‘lines of best fit’ that emerge may be no more ‘real’
than are ley lines. See Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, 1983, for a
critique.)
Computerised data-trawling also explains the uncannily
prophetic ‘messages’ that may be found in ancient scriptures, as reported in Michael
Drosnin’s ludicrous The Bible Codes. (‘Elton
John will rewrite Candle in the Wind with even worse lyrics than first time
around’ etc.) But that, too, is beyond
the scope of this discussion.
What is not under dispute in the present analysis is that
some well-known ancient workings were built to align either with astronomical
events (
Footnote: ley lines is not, strictly speaking, a Crap Theory of the Mind Body and Spirit so
much as a Dodgy Theory of Life, the Universe and Everything; but it is of the
same stripe: believers in ley lines will, in my experience, further engage you
at length on the significance of the pyramids, the ark of the covenant or the
return of King Arthur. From here you are
but a dowser’s twitch away from tarot cards, homeopathy and Bach’s bloody
Flower Remedies. For it is within this
colourfully warped version of the natural world that so many bona fide CTOMBS thrive and prosper.
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