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Dragon Slayers are the Good Guys - Part 2

© Sharon K. West

Part Two of a Two-Part Article.

In part two of "Dragon Slayers are the Good Guys," we enter the misty land of mystery and speculation. This is the place where information suggests conclusions but gives rise to even more questions. In the process, however, we may gain some understanding.

The journey to the dragon's lair involves visiting various places to pick up bits and pieces of information.

Our first destination will be a visit with a man by the name of Alfred Watkins. Alfred was a pioneer in the field of photography, as well as an inventor, archeologist and antiquarian. He was also quite a controversial fellow. He had a theory which he devoted the last fourteen years of his life toward, accumulating a mass of evidence to support it. Alfred discovered on June 30, 1921, that a series of straight lines could link landmarks (ancient sites or holy places) at Blackwardine, England, near Leominster, into a network of ancient tracks, which he called ley lines. His theory was that this alignment was not due to mere chance, but that prehistoric man could have used these landmarks as sighting points to construct a sort of road network. His discovery was made via a "vision" he had of a pattern of lines stretching across the landscape. Alfred later associated ley lines with Tout, the chief god of the Celtic Druids and the building of mounds dedicated to him, as well as ancient traders' routes. The word "ley" comes from a Saxon word for cleared glade.

Alfred wrote several books on this subject, including "The Old Straight Track," "The Ley Hunters Manual" and the "Archaic Tracks Around Cambridge."

In 1936, occultist Dion Fortune picked up on Alfred's idea of ley lines and associated them with "lines of power," which linked prehistoric sites. This developed further in the 1960s, when they became linked with UFO sightings and in geomancy, which is an ancient form of divination where seers read markings in the earth or sand after handfuls of soil are scattered on the ground. Feng Shui incorporates the idea of geomancy in the location and orientation of physical items so as to be in harmony with energies within the earth itself and other elements. Practitioners of Feng Shui believe that powerful currents and lines of magnetism run over the whole surface of the earth and that the placement of objects in relationship to these lines affect the balance between positive and negative.