jmm@bonnie.UUCP (Joe Mcghee) (08/17/84)
??????????????????????????? For those interested in the subject of ley lines, there is a very informative discussion of them in "Secrets of the Stones" by John Michell (published by Penguin Books). They were first noticed by Sir J. Norman Lockyer and others. In John Michell's "Secrets of the Stones" we find: The development of scientific astro-archaeology at the beginning of this century was inspired by one man, Sir J. Norman Lockyer, the eminent astronomer and scientist, founder and for fifty years editor of "Nature" magazine, credited, among the many triumphs of his long career, with the discovery of helium. In 1890 Lockyer went on vacation to Greece and noticed some interesting alignments among the Greek temples. Later he found similar astronomical alignments in the Egyptian temples. In 1901 Lockyer and F.C. Penrose, another astronomer-archaeologist, turned their attention to Stonehenge. In 1906 Lockyer published "Stonehenge and other British Stone Monuments Astronomically Considered". In the second edition of this book Lockyer pointed out that key alignments of various megalithic sites coinsided with the important days of the Celtic calendar at the beginning of May, August, November and February. Other stones were arranged to mark the "clock stars" that can be used to give the time at night. At Stonehenge Lockyer found that sunset in the first week in May and the November sunrise were indicated by the two remaining "station stones" when viewed from the center. He concluded that these alignments belonged to the earliest part of Stonehenge. The subject of ley lines was next taken up in 1922 by Alfred Watkins in his book "Early British Trackways". Watkins devoted the rest of his life to accumulating the traditions and physical evidence that confirmed his first intuitive recognition of "leys", as he called the prehistoric alignments. In 1925 he presented the complete case for the ley system in "The Old Straight Track". Ley enthusiasts formed the Old Straight Track Club, whose papers, now preserved in Hereford Museum, contain voluminous evidence of leys from all over Britain and beyond. Later ley lines were found in Brittany, the Celtic area of France, and in Germany by Wilhelm Teudt. Teudt, however, disregarded or was ignorant of the fact that these sites were areas of Celtic habitation in ancient times and instead attributed them to Teutonic tribes and used them as a basis for promoting Nazi concepts of the Aryan Master Race. bonnie!jmm J. M. McGhee