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Lines on the landscape: Leys and other linear enigmas
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December 23, 2025
I have to be honest, I didn't begin reading this book with an open mind. A long time ago I read Alfred Watkins' The Old Straight Track and found it fascinating and became, and still am, happy to accept that in Bronze Age and Neolithic times in Britain there were people and tribes that believed in creating and maintaining pathways or ceremonial routes that were more or less straight and had the means, intellectually and mechanically, to achieve their aims. However, I have never been convinced that such trackways were conduits of some form of spiritual power and even less convinced that they form or once formed a navigation network for alien visitors.
The opening chapters of this book: an Introduction, an historical outline of the theory behind ley lines, and separate chapters, which I can only describe as archaeology-lite, on Prehistoric Lines in Britain, Historic Lines in Britain and Europe, and Lines Worldwide are fine and give a great deal of information on where to find specific suspected ley lines – especially in England and South Wales. The extension, in Historic Lines in Britain and Europe, to include such sub-headings as Linear Town Planning in Seventeenth-Century London and Post-Modern and High-Tech Alignments, however, stretches the subject a little too far. The single paragraph on the Nazi Party's New Order architecture under Albert Speer could have been expanded. After all, that form of right wing lunacy and arrogance probably brought in all manner of spiritual nonsense. I believe Herr Goebbels was a sucker for most esoteric hokum.
The two final chapters, Modern Ley Hunting and particularly A Passage of Spirits – The Sanctity of the Straight, lurch heavily towards the fantastical theories behind ley lines and alignments. Modern Ley Hunting emphasises the authors' insistence that new published theories and analyses should be backed by some sort of scientific or mathematical evidence, but that is all let down by A Passage of Spirits which gets itself lost in the shadowy byways surrounding the important ley line question: “What was their purpose?” Guiding spaceships? Channeling primal energy beams to Stonehenge? Trackways for herding sheep and cattle? Who knows? Each one may have had a different purpose. Some may have been built by forced labour as a meaningless punishment for offending the local chieftain or high priest.
As I suspected when I started reading, there are no real proofs and no definitive answers. Ley hunting may be a nice way to enjoy a walk in the fresh air and nothing more.
The opening chapters of this book: an Introduction, an historical outline of the theory behind ley lines, and separate chapters, which I can only describe as archaeology-lite, on Prehistoric Lines in Britain, Historic Lines in Britain and Europe, and Lines Worldwide are fine and give a great deal of information on where to find specific suspected ley lines – especially in England and South Wales. The extension, in Historic Lines in Britain and Europe, to include such sub-headings as Linear Town Planning in Seventeenth-Century London and Post-Modern and High-Tech Alignments, however, stretches the subject a little too far. The single paragraph on the Nazi Party's New Order architecture under Albert Speer could have been expanded. After all, that form of right wing lunacy and arrogance probably brought in all manner of spiritual nonsense. I believe Herr Goebbels was a sucker for most esoteric hokum.
The two final chapters, Modern Ley Hunting and particularly A Passage of Spirits – The Sanctity of the Straight, lurch heavily towards the fantastical theories behind ley lines and alignments. Modern Ley Hunting emphasises the authors' insistence that new published theories and analyses should be backed by some sort of scientific or mathematical evidence, but that is all let down by A Passage of Spirits which gets itself lost in the shadowy byways surrounding the important ley line question: “What was their purpose?” Guiding spaceships? Channeling primal energy beams to Stonehenge? Trackways for herding sheep and cattle? Who knows? Each one may have had a different purpose. Some may have been built by forced labour as a meaningless punishment for offending the local chieftain or high priest.
As I suspected when I started reading, there are no real proofs and no definitive answers. Ley hunting may be a nice way to enjoy a walk in the fresh air and nothing more.
Displaying 1 of 1 review