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From: bradford@Amsaa.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Ley lines.
Message-ID: <12181@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Aug-84 14:35:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12181
Posted: Tue Aug  7 14:35:33 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Aug-84 02:02:18 EDT
Lines: 36

From:      Pete Bradford (CSD UK) 

	There seem to be quite a few people to whom a discussion of
'ley lines', right out of the blue, is pretty much on a par with
somebody bumping into Greek for the first time!
	
	Let me, very briefly, put those of you who are interested
in the picture......

	I first came across the concept of ley lines in a British
book, the title of which, as near as I can remember, is "The Old
Straight Path". Again my memory is rusty on the author's name, but
I'm pretty sure it's Alfred Watkins, or something of that ilk. He
wrote the book in the 1920s.

	Watkins 'discovered' that certain features of the British
countryside tend to lie on virtually straight lines; these features
included tumuli, barrows, crosses(both stone and chalk crosses
carved in the chalk soil), early churches, Roman sites, moats,
isolated trees or clumps of trees, tumps, old inns, and places
containing the name 'cross' or the syllables 'ley', 'leigh' 'ly',
'lay', etc. These sites are readily seen on the Ordnance Survey maps,
but others such as notches in the sides of hills can often be seen
only by travelling along a 'ley line'.

	Watkins' interpretation of these 'straight lines' was that
they represented surveyed routes along which Ancient British Man
travelled for specific purposes such as collecting flints, salt, etc.
Watkins suggested that these straight paths would have represented
the easiest way by which Ancient Man could have found his way over
what to him would appear to be monumental distances. (Pun intended!)
However, only a select few of the Druid chiefs would have the 'know-
how', and - just as in many areas of today's society - they would
guard this secret jealously. (This explains the 'magic' and the
mystic qualities that these ley lines assumed in the minds of the
common man, and which I mentioned in my previous letter.)