Ley Lines: The Greatest Landscape Mystery

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It gives a detailed history of the subject from its Edwardian roots, through the hippy revival of the 1960s and 70s, to the rational and multidisciplinary approach of the late 1990s. Hutton noted that this pulled along "a potential fissure between rationalism and mysticism which had always been inherent in the movement". The archaeoastronomer Clive Ruggles noted that after the 1920s, "ley lines soon faded into obscurity". For many ley hunters, this Neolithic period was seen as a golden age in which Britons lived in harmony with the natural environment. The term was originally posited, just three years after the end of World War One, by Alfred Watkins, a councillor in rural Herefordshire in the UK.

Or, as Michell wrote: "The St Michael Line of traditional dragons sites in south-west England… appears to be set between two prominent Somerset hills, both dedicated to St Michael with ruined churches on their summit. His obsession with leys was a natural outgrowth of his interest in landscape photography and love of the British countryside.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. A prominent example of this was the work of Christopher Tilley, who devised the idea of phenomenology, or using human senses to experience a landscape as a means of trying to ascertain how past societies would have done the same. He also covers the fascinating, and creepy, paths of the dead used for centuries by churches when interring their dead.

He proposed the existence of a network of completely straight roads that cut through a range of prehistoric, Roman, and medieval structures. According to a review in The Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Watkins sought to prove that "mounds, moats, beacons and markstones fall into strait tracks, i. The songlines you must walk if you desire to fulfill your dreams aren’t drawn on the ground or mapped on a piece of paper, they’re tucked inside the epicenter of your heart. So I decided to walk from the entrance of the Silvertown tunnel… to the monumental stone circle at Stonehenge, and see how I could connect them.The Old Straight Track got a somewhat unexpected kickstart in 1969 with the appearance of hippy guru John Mitchell’s seminal The View Over Atlantis. Very comprehensive book, easy to read, full of information, full coverage on all main aspects of the phenomena, best book for a full introduction on the subject who also displays plenty of examples on the subject. His critics noted that the straight lines he proposed would have been highly impractical means of crossing hilly or mountainous terrain, and that many of the sites he selected as evidence for the leys were of disparate historical origins. I've always been interested in the opposition between the natural and the artificial, the sacred and the un-sacred," explains tan jones.

In 1961, Tony Wedd put forward the belief that leys were established by prehistoric communities to guide alien spacecraft. Ultimately, this compilation reminds readers how closely the act of creating art—written and visual—is linked to the art of listening. There, Wilhelm Teudt had argued for the presence of linear alignments connecting various sites but suggested that they had a religious and astronomical function.This one started quietly when, on 30 June 1920, a respected businessman and photographer was visiting the Herefordshire village of Blackwardine, the site of a Roman settlement with the distinctly Celtic name of Black Caer Dun.