London's Ley Lines Pathways of Enlightenment

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Watkins' would find Ley Lines by taking an Ordinance Survey map, dropping pins in locations of interest and then placing one end of a ruler from an important location like an old church or Neolithic site. Hutton suggested that some of the enthusiasm formerly directed toward leys was instead directed toward archaeo-astronomy. BBC History only mention a single standing stone "which may have been used as a cross by St Augustine". Let’s change the emotional climate of the capital and make it a better place to live, and an uplifting centre of healing and light.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. The idea of "leys" as paths traversing the British landscape was developed by Alfred Watkins, a wealthy businessman and antiquarian who lived in Hereford. His ideas were rejected by most experts on British prehistory at the time, including both the small number of recognised archaeological scholars and local enthusiasts. Along the journey, the artist responded to what they saw with poetry, storytelling but most of all, song. The problem is that we really know nothing more about such sites - until, that is, we look at the elevation and geography of the city.

Together you will explore how London came to be, we will travel through history to understand the city’s connection to Egypt, the Romans and the Age of Enlightenment. They are imaginary lines connecting historical landmarks - like churches, manor houses, and burial mounds - first observed by self-taught archaeologist Alfred Watkins in 1921 after he had a revelation about straight roads across the British countryside. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. The sample distribution from the standing stones was compared with the theoretical distribution to show that the occurrence of straight lines was no more than average. H. Piper's paper presented to the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club in 1882, which noted that: "A line drawn from the Skirrid-fawr mountain northwards to Arthur's Stone would pass over the camp and southernmost point of Hatterall Hill, Oldcastle, Longtown Castle, and Urishay and Snodhill castles.London's Ley Lines covers these leys and many more that can be found in the capital and nearby countryside. He was one of the founding members of the Dragon Project, launched in London in 1977 with the purpose of conducting radioactivity and ultrasonic tests at prehistoric sites, particularly the stone circles created in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.

Reflecting his move towards archaeology, in 1991, Devereux published an article on sightlines from the prehistoric site of Silbury Hill, Wiltshire in Antiquity. This is a wonderful story, though one I feel Simon Pope, like myself, relishes telling without entirely believing. The oldest example of a temple laid out to this design is Stonehenge (whose megaliths were raised 3,500 years ago). But its story does not end there, for when one aligns it with its attendant stone circle – now marked by St.In essence, the practice was a continuation of the pagan green man, whose head spewing forth vegetation is found carved more often throughout English churches than statues of the Virgin Mary.

He also noted that the ley hunting community had "functioned as an indispensable training ground for a small but important group of non-academic scholars who have made a genuine contribution to the study of folklore and mythology. Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde Islands, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Cook Islands, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, European Union, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Niue, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Republic of Croatia, Republic of the Congo, Reunion, Romania, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Sweden, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (U. Translating the term lung mei as "dragon paths", he reinterpreted tales from English mythology and folklore in which heroes killed dragons so that the dragon-slayers became the villains.As David Newnham wrote in 2000: "Throughout the 60s and 70s, ley-line theory was to mutate and bifurcate, to bend with every passing fad, so that it frequently seemed as though its only purpose was to highlight the failings of our own times. Walking those lines of energy [feels] like a way of intentional healing, of showing gratitude and awareness to those places. Along the route there will be areas to sit while Gemma talks but please make sure you have gone to the toilet and have everything you need with you as we cannot make extra stops. He says: "It's going to disappoint people who think it's to do with earth energies and all that sort of thing, I'm not dismissing it but I have found them to be more practical.