Ley Lines or Dragon Lines

Posted by Magnetic Blue
January 12, 2008

Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth

There is a theory that lines of some sort connect places of significance. For example, a line drawn between two ancient sacred sites, two medieval churches, two ancient burial sites or an ancient well and the summit of a hill, and then extended in either direction will be seen to link several or many more such sites. A classic and popular example is a line drawn between churches dedicated to St. Michael from Cornwall north-eastwards across southern Britain. This connects not only several such churches but also Glastonbury and Avebury. These are presented as objective facts for which it is possible or even necessary to find an explanation. Both claims for the veracity of such lines and their explanations, and arguments against them, are far from objective or neutral. The present discussion is not interested in whether such claims can be scientifically proved or disproved, or in the adequacy or accuracy of the complex metaphysical systems built around acceptance of such lines, but focuses on the nature and role of such understandings in the wider practice of Pagan living in a living planet.

via Great Dreams

“Ley Lines” or simply “leys” became part of the currency of the English Language after 1921 when Alfred Watkins

Stood on a hilltop in Herefordshire and suddenly perceived the beautiful English landscape before him as newly laid out in a web of lines linking together the holy sites of antiquity.

Watkins himself thought of these lines as ancient trackways or mundane roads. Those convicted by UFO stories have thought of ley lines as the navigational flight paths which direct space aliens around our planet. These stories are less important now, except as the initial cause of considerable interest in alignments of sites and in the lines themselves.

Theories about ley lines can be divided into two broad groups: those which hold that lines occur naturally and those which hold that they are human artefacts. Some theorists understand ley lines to be cognate with the natural channels along which positive and negative energies flow in Chinese geomancy or Feng Shui. These are frequently names “Dragon Lines” and carry beneficial energies just as river courses carry beneficial water. Just as water can stagnate, so natural energies can become negative.

Ley lines have also been compared with the “song lines” of Aboriginal Australian cultures. These are paths along which creative, Dreamtime ancestors walked giving shape to the land (or walk — this creative activity does not belong to the past because all time in the Dreaming is synchronous). They rest and a rock forms, they dig for water and a stream flows, they sleep in the land and there is a hill, they emerge and there is abundant and healthy life and further creativity. Those initiated know the songs which express, reveal, respond to and honour the land, the ancestors and life. They sing the land as they travel it and as they sing the land arises to meet them.
Quoted from pages 148-149 of the book Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth by Graham Harvey

The Aboriginal songs reminded me the Indian Nagas:

Dancing with Dragons

The Nagas were known for their great magickal powers and the pearls of great price that they carried in their foreheads. The Nagas, also patrons of lakes, rivers, rain, and clouds, lived in wonderful palaces, often visited by the gods. […] Sometimes the Nagas were pictures with serpent heads and human bodies. They were said to live at the top of Mount Meru, where they had a golden palace full of music, gems that fulfilled wishes, wonderful flowers, and beautiful companions. In the center of this garden, which once belonged to Varuna, stood a dragon guarded tree of life and reincarnation.
Quoted from pages 1-34 of the book Dancing With Dragons: Invoke Their Ageless Wisdom & Power by D. J. Conway

Stories or legends are all similar…

Sacred Geometry

Sacred Geometry: Deciphering the Code

[…] Megalithic monuments, such as Stonehenge in England (which also faces northeast), have distinct orientations: they are orientated to other nearby monuments via ley lines and often incorporate astronomical alignments related to the Sun and the Moon. Sacred geometry is needed to locate and align such sacred structures.

Stonehenge & the Ancient Britons (Lost Treasures of the Ancient World)

In the past it was of the greatest importance to site churches, temples and megalithic standing stones on a “location of power.” In imperial China (and increasingly again in our own times) the practice of feng shui has been used to find the hsueh, or dragon point, to provide maximum energy to important buildings, especially palaces, temples and tombs.

The early Christian Church went as far as to issue directives that, in every case possible, new churches should be sites on old pagan “power spots”. This, of course, was considered desirable for three reasons: the priestly geometricians of the church would harness the power, worshippers of the old religion would continue to come to the site, and the original pagan artefacts would be destroyed. This has interesting implications when we come to look at the geometry of ley lines.

Lastly, but most importantly, the structure itself must adhere to certain geometric rules. Such rules have been well documented — for example, the exact dimensions of King Solomon’s original Temple in the Jerusalem were recorded in at least two places in the Bible, and the subsequent rebuilding (twice) of his Temple has occasioned further discussion of the sacred geometry of the building. In fact, in Victorian times people, such as Sir William Stirling, wrote whole volumes about the sacred dimensions of the Temple. The architecture of Gothic cathedrals were, in turn, based on these recorded dimensions.

[…]

Great Pyramids, El Giza, Egypt by Shashin Koubou Art Print Poster

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In the last several hundred years many attempts have been made to retro-fit sacred geometry to the Great Pyramid in Egypt, including totally contorted interpretations of the Bible based on pyramid dimensions measured in fractions of an inch. Only in the late 20th century was it realized that the dimensions expressed in whole royal cubits conform to simple Euclidean geometry. Likewise the careful study and measurement of European megalithic structures — dating back easily as far as the pyramids of ancient Egypt — and the ley lines connecting them also relied upon a very distinct sacred geometry measured in whole numbers of megalithic yards.

The message that comes through loud and clear is that ancient man was every bit as clever as modern man. The geometry he used in his buildings is still not fully appreciated, understood or utilized by modern man.

[…]

Place names tended to repeat certain syllables in a way that was well beyond statistical chance: villages, features or farms commonly had endings such as “-cole” or “-cold” or “-dod”, “-leigh” or “-ley”. Because of this last, Alfred Watkins named them ley lines.

[…]

Beacon Fire - From the movie The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition)

The ley lines included not only sacred and legendary sites but also high places where beacon fires were lit. The leys were, in fact, lines of sight. They were meant to connect visually the main human settlements and religious and defensive centres of the country to stone circles and Iron Age forts via fairy rings, marker stones and circles built over by churches.

[…]

Some people think that ley lines might simply be an accidental set of coincidental alignments. They believe these chance alignments are what you would expect from the random connection of many thousands of possible points to be found on an Ordnance Survey map or, indeed, in any piece of long-inhabited countryside. This explanation can soon be dismissed by anyone who walks along these ley lines or trackways — they will see a number of additional markers on the exact alignment that would convince even the most hardened sceptic. Alternatively, by applying statistical mathematics (which incidentally includes the use of phi) to the alignments that just include major structures, the major ley alignments are shown to be well beyond what you might expect from statistical chance.
Quoted from the book Sacred Geometry: Deciphering the Code by Stephen Skinner