DEMG - Desire Paths – A New Line on the Ley? - John Billingsley

The defining characteristic of a ley is – I hope we would all agree – straightness. That was the key point that Alfred Watkins drew attention to, and even advocates of the alleged energy lines that have come to be mis-labelled ‘ley lines’ generally feel honour-bound to stress straightness.

It was this deliberate straightness that nettled many when Watkins first proposed the ley hypothesis; in the 1920s, it was hard for many to believe that primitive prehistoric peoples (as they were thought to be, despite the architectural evidence otherwise at places such as Stonehenge) could or would have laid things out in straight lines. Well, times move on, minds open under the weight of evidence, and the principle of deliberate prehistoric alignment – albeit not leys per se – is now accepted.