An Exploration of Their Mysterious Powers
What is the actual nature of the sacred sites? How can we explain the extraordinary – and often miraculous – phenomena that occur at them? Hundreds of millions of pilgrims journey to these power places each year. The momentum of both religious tradition and modern tourism is commonly suggested to explain this astonishing movement of people. Yet much more is going on than mere religious custom or vacation travel. How do we account for the enormous popularity of these places? What makes them sacred, and what do people hope to gain from their visits to the sites?
When I first began to study and visit these places, I was overwhelmed by their many differences. In addition to a wide variety of Paleolithic and Neolithic sacred sites, thousands of places were venerated by the historical religions of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Islam, Sikkism, and Zoroasterism. Some sacred places were naturally-occurring geological features such as caves, mountains, forest glens, springs and waterfalls. Other holy places were identified by a variety of human-made ceremonial structures such as pyramids, stone rings, temples, mosques, shrines and cathedrals. Many of these places had been venerated since deep antiquity. Others had become pilgrimage centers only recently. Initially confused by this great diversity, I failed to recognize certain elements common to sacred sites around the world.
As a beginner in the study of holy places, I lacked two things essential to a deeper understanding of the subject. I had not acquired knowledge concerning the world’s pilgrimage traditions and sacred sites. More important, I had not visited enough of the sites to experience and understand their power. Only with the passage of many years – during which I visited nearly a thousand pilgrimage places and read extensively on pilgrimage traditions, sacred sites and related subjects – was I able to peer beyond superficial differences to discern factors common to the places irrespective of their geographic location or time of use.
Thus far, I have recognized twenty factors that contribute to the mysterious power of sacred sites. I believe these various factors function, independently and together, to create, perpetuate and amplify a presence or field of energy that surrounds and saturates the sacred sites. This energy field, or power of place, may be defined as a nonmaterial region of influence extending in space and continuing in time. To conceptualize this idea of sacred sites having spatially defined energy fields, it is useful to consider the phenomenon of magnetism. As any school child knows, if you place a magnet beneath a plate of glass having iron filings on top, the filings will be influenced by the power of the magnet. While science is not able to fully explain the dynamics of this power, the phenomenon is real. It is called a field.
Similar to the power of a magnet, the power of a sacred site is an invisible field of energy permeating the area of the sacred site. Myths and legends of the sacred places tell of certain sites that have the miraculous ability to heal the body, enlighten the mind, increase creativity, develop psychic abilities and awaken the soul to a knowing of its true purpose in life. I believe that the energy fields of the sacred sites are responsible for these extraordinary phenomena.
Evidence indicating the existence of such energy fields may be found by studying the discovery, development and continuing use of sacred sites. In other words, how were the sacred site locations initially discovered or chosen? What are the ethos and the esoteric wisdom that went into the construction of the structures and artifacts at the sites? Why do human beings continue to visit the sites over long periods of time? Considering these questions will allow us to build a convincing argument for the existence of subtle energy fields at the sacred sites.
Although this information is intellectually fascinating, my primary purpose in discussing it is to introduce the idea of a power of place existing at the sacred sites, and to assist people in experiencing that power when they visit the sites. Simply by walking into the immediate area of a sacred site a pilgrim enters into the energy field of the place whether they know of the presence of energy fields or is unaware of them. Our experience of the energy fields, however, may be amplified by consciously connecting with them through knowledge, intention and meditation. By knowing of the existence of the fields, by mentally intending to connect with them and by practicing meditation when we are at the sacred sites, we can actually establish a psychic linkup with the power of place. Such a linkup with the fields will assist us in more fully benefiting from the power of the sacred sites.
Paul Devereux, an authority on the geophysical aspects of sacred sites, comments that:
When a person visits a ceremonial monument, is it their intellect, their five senses, their intuition, or the electromagnetic fields around their bodies that perceive the place?….One may individually respond in a limited set of ways to a site, but it is crucial to know that one’s preferred reactions are only part of a network of knowing that is involved in a more complete description of the place. (1)
I believe that the nature of a person’s experience of a sacred site may be influenced by them having what Devereux calls a “multi-mode” approach to the sites, that is, by experiencing the sites from the vantage points of both knowing and feeling, both mind and heart. Knowingmeans having an understanding of such matters as the mythology, archaeology, history, geology and (possible) celestial orientation of a site. Feeling means the ability to sense and tune into the presence of power at a site.
The ancient people who discovered the power places and erected structures at them quite probably related with the sites through both feeling and knowing. If contemporary people wish to access the energy fields of the sacred sites they should likewise use both knowing and feeling. In the beginning sections of this essay I will deal with the matter of knowing by discussing several factors that contribute to generation and perpetuation of the sacred site energy fields. In the final section of the essay I will deal with the matter of feeling by showing an easy-to-do meditation technique for actually connecting with the energy fields.
Numerous kinds of power places and sacred sites may be found around the world. As we examine the factors contributing to the presence of energy fields at these places, it will be useful to have a list of the kinds of sites one may encounter. Over the years, I have identified thirty-two categories of power places, which I have listed below, along with examples of specific sites. Some of these categories overlap and some of the sites mentioned could be listed under two or more categories.
— Sacred mountains: Olympus, Fuji, Popocatepetl, Ararat, Kailash, Hesperus
— Human-built sacred mountains: Great Pyramid, Teotihuacan, Silbury Hill, Cahokia mound
— Sacred bodies of water: Pushkar Lake, Ganges River, Lake Titicaca, Blue Lake
— Sacred islands: Lindisfarne, Iona, Miyajima, Delos, Wizard, Valaam
— Healing springs: Asklepions, Milk River, Bath, Tomagawa Onsen
— Healing and power stones: Blarney, Men-an-tol, Kabba
— Sacred trees and forest groves: Bodh Gaya, Anuradhapura, St. Catherine’s at Sinai, Glastonbury
— Places of ancient mythological importance: Vrindavan, Izumo Taisha, Kachina Peak
— Ancient ceremonial sites: Machu Picchu, Karnack, Palenque
— Ancient astronomical observatories: Stonehenge, Monte Alban, Externsteine, Carnac, Fajada Butte
— Human-erected solitary standing stones: throughout the world
— Megalithic chambered mounds: Newgrange, Gavr’inis, sites around the northeastern United States
— Labyrinth sites: Knossos, Glastonbury Tor, turf mazes of England, stone mazes of Scandinavia
— Places with massive landscape carvings: Cerne Abas giant, Serpent Mound, Nazca lines
— Regions delineated by sacred geographies: Kii peninsula, Languedoc, Australian songlines
— Oracular caves, mountains, and sites: Siwa, Delphi, Patmos, Hebron, Mt. Sinai, Katsuragi San
— Male deity / god shrines / yang sites: Shiva jyotir lingams, Apollonian temples
— Female deity / goddess shrines / yin sites: Shakti Pitha, Diana temples, St. Brigid springs, Marian shrines
— Birthplaces of saints: Lumbini, Bethlehem, Assisi
— Places where sages attained enlightenment: Shatrunajaya, Nantai San, Bodh Gaya, Mt. Tabor
— Death places of saints: Kushinager, Dakshineshwar, Tiruvanamalai
— Sites where relics of saints and martyrs were/are kept: Canterbury, Kandy, Mt. Athos, Vezelay, Konya
— Places with enigmatic fertility legends and/or images: Cerne Abas, Sayil, Paestum
— Places with miracle-working icons: Sabarimala, Tinos Island, Izamal, Guadalupe
— Places chosen by animals or birds: Durham, Talpa
— Places chosen by various geomantic divinatory methods: Koya San, Chinese feng shui sites
— Ancient esoteric schools: Giza, Chartres, Uxmal, Mitla, Ephesus
— Ancient monasteries: Lhasa, Externsteine, Mihintale, Ellora
— Places where dragons were slain or sighted: St. Michael’s Mount, Delphi
— Places of Marian apparitions: Zaragoza, Lourdes, Fatima, Knock, Zeitun
— Unique natural features: geysers, volcanoes, sink holes
— Places where UFOs or other anomalous extraterrestrial phenomena have been seen.
Contributing Factors
Factors Contributing to the Power of Place
There are more than a dozen factors that contribute to the presence of energy fields at the sacred sites. The discussion that follows is certainly not a complete commentary on the subject. More factors could be added to the list and chapters, if not entire books, could be written on several of them. These factors are not listed in any order of importance. No such thing as a “most sacred place” exists in the world and no factor contributing to the power of a place is the single most important. A constellation of factors comes into play, and we must view them as a horizontal grouping rather than as a vertical or hierarchical ranking. Our list begins with the fundamental aspect of any site – the Earth itself – and continues with the human inputs into the site, both structural and intentional. Not all sacred sites, or types of sites, will have each of these factors. Some sites will have more or less than other sites. According to my understanding, it is the combination of a number of these factors, rather than just one, that catalyzes the psychological and physiological effects in human beings.
Geophysical Characteristics
Geophysical Characteristics of the Sacred Site Location
Planet Earth is an enormously complex entity experiencing multiple energetic phenomena that interact with human beings in both known and unknown ways. Atmospheric conditions, temperature variations and sunlight intensity are examples of such energy phenomena that profoundly affect humans both physically and psychologically. The same is true of various geophysical phenomena such as magnetism, radioactivity, gravity, the presence of subsurface water, the presence of concentrated mineral ores, volcanic activity, earthquakes, tremors, and other seismic activity, ultrasound, ionization, earth lights phenomena and other geophysical anomalies. Research has shown that many ancient sacred sites are located directly upon or in close proximity to areas known to have unusual levels of these various kinds of geophysical phenomena. Paul Devereux comments that,
In Iceland, for example, the main national site, the tenth-century AD Althing, was built not merely on a fault, but on the rift formed between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates – an extension of the mid-Atlantic ridge. In Ohio, in the United States, the 2,000-year old Serpent Mound, an inexplicable earthwork a quarter of a mile long, was built over a geological site unique in that country: due to volcanic action or meteoric impact it is a highly compressed area of intensive faulting….The greatest megalithic complex in the world, around Carnac in Brittany, France, is hemmed in by fault systems, and occupies France’s most volatile tectonic region….In England and Wales all stone circles are situated within a mile of a surface fault or an associated tectonic intrusion….Clearly, the association of such important sites with such distinctive geological features would not have happened by chance. (2)
Devereux also writes,
If we are not dealing with some bizarre coincidence, what could the ancients have been seeking at fault zones? The first, obvious answer is that these parts of the Earth’s crust have been subjected to considerable tectonic forces; they are natural “energy zones”. Faults tend to have high mineralization around them affecting local electric and magnetic fields, and to be points of weakness where stress and strain in the crust can manifest, causing energy effects within and above the ground. (3)
In nearly every region of the world ancient people revered particular rock outcroppings, springs, caves and forest groves. Energy-monitoring studies have revealed that many of these sites do indeed have unusual geophysical energy anomalies relative to the surrounding countryside. Not having scientific devices to measure the high-energy fields of these sites, how did prehistoric people determine their precise locations? Perhaps an answer may be found in the human faculty of sensing; ancient people somehow felt the energies of the sites. While this idea may at first seem preposterous, it gains credibility when we learn that neuroscientists estimate contemporary human beings use no more than 5-15 percent of their inherent mental faculties. Perhaps prehistoric people used, consciously or unconsciously, other parts of the brain that allowed them to sense the energy fields of the sacred sites. It is common knowledge that human beings develop skills and understandings uniquely appropriate to the place and time in which they live. Ancient people, living in harmony with the Earth and dependent upon its bounty for all their needs, may have developed skills that modern people no longer use, cultivate or even recognize. Therefore, in the same way any of us today can sense variations in temperature – simply a change in the thermal energy field – prehistoric people could perhaps sense subtle geophysical energies at particular places on the land.
To give further credibility to this hypothesis, consider the ability of various animal species to travel with unerring accuracy across great distances. Pigeons are able to home from hundreds of miles away, salmon return to their birthplace after swimming halfway around the world and swallows return to a previous year’s nesting place after journeys of 10,000 miles. How is this possible? Unable to explain the phenomenon, scientists have suggested that these animals have some kind of brain mechanism that gives them the ability to navigate by sensing the electromagnetic fields that crisscross the planet. In other words, these species have a “turned on” brain and sensing faculty in relation to the energetic environment in which they live. Is it not conceivable that the species Homo sapiens, with its enormously complex brain, has a similar (though currently mostly unused) sensing faculty? Possessing such a faculty does not necessarily imply having a conscious awareness or understanding of the sensing process. A bird can return to its nesting place without having (as far as we know) any conscious mental awareness of the behavior. Prehistoric people could likewise have been attracted to the power places on the Earth without even being aware of the attraction.
The ancients sensed the places of power but how then would they explain them? Not having the scientific knowledge to understand the geological causes of their felt experiences of power place energies, prehistoric people might have sought to explain those energies with myths and legends about spirits, deities, gods and goddesses, and magical powers. The sacred sites of antiquity were those places where spirits entered from otherworldly realms. In order to more fully understand the powers of these places, it is important that we study the connection between the existence of localized geophysical anomalies and the so-called paranormal phenomena spoken of in the miracles and legends of holy places.
Visual Beauty of Locations
The Visual Beauty of the Location of Sacred Sites
While it is not true in all cases, a large percentage of the world’s major holy sites are in locations that are, or once were, places of great visual beauty. Examples are unusually-shaped mountains or rock formations, elevated places with stunning views, waterfalls, colorful mineral springs and geysers, the meeting points of rivers, lakesides, crescent-shaped bays, islands within lakes, luxurious forest groves, and the entrances to caverns and grottos. The rarity and beauty of such places have affected human beings since the dawn of time, arousing in them feelings of awe, reverence, inspiration and peace. Consider the words of the following three poets who were each deeply touched by the beauty of particular places.
The English poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850), writing in his poem “The Recluse” described the numinous quality of the Cumbrian Mountains and Lake District of northern England.
Tis, but I cannot name it, tis the sense
of majesty, and beauty, and repose
A blended holiness of earth and sky,
Something that makes this individual spot
This small abiding place of many men,
A termination, and a last retreat,
A center, come from whatsoever you will
A whole without dependence or defect,
Made for itself and happy in itself,
Perfect contentment, Unity entire.
One of China’s greatest nature poets was named Han Shan and he lived around the end of the eighth century AD. His poems suggest that he was a scholar-farmer who retired to a place called Han-Shan or Cold Mountain in the T’ien-t’ai mountain range in eastern China. A follower of Ch’an or Zen Buddhism, Han-Shan spent the latter years of his life as a hermit, wandering the forested mountains and writing poetry extolling the virtues of a contemplative life in the great temple of nature.
A thing to be valued – this sacred mountain;
how can the seven treasures compare?
Pines and moonlight, breezy and cool;
clouds and mist, ragged wisps rising.
Clustering around it, how many folds of hills?
Winding back and forth, how many miles of trail?
Valley streams quiet, limpid and clear –
joys and delights that never end. (9)
One thousand years after the time of Han-Shan another Chinese mountain hermit known as Yeh T’ai wrote of his experience of sacred space…
At a true site….there is a touch of magic light. How so, Magic? It can be understood intuitively, but not conveyed in words. The hills are fair, the waters fine, the sun handsome, the breeze mild; and the sky has a new light: another world. Amid confusion, peace; amid peace, a festive air. Upon coming into its presence, one’s eyes are opened; if one sits or lies, one’s heart is joyful. Here the breath gathers, and the essence collects. Light shines in the middle, and magic goes out on all sides. Above or below, to right or left, it is not thus. No greater than a finger, no more than a spoonful; like a dewdrop, like a pearl, like the moon through a crack, like the reflection in a mirror. Play with it, and it is as if you can catch it; put it off, and it cannot be god rid of. Try to understand! It is hard to describe.
Unusual geographic features, in addition to having an aesthetic influence on the human soul, also have an effect through the power inherent in their symbolic meaning. Geographic space is subject to conceptualization. People have always given various meanings to spectacular features of the land. In ancient times mountain peaks were sanctified as abodes of the gods and as connecting links to the sky, stars and the heavenly realm. To make a pilgrimage to a sacred mountain symbolized a person’s yearning for contact with the divine, the luminous and the visionary. Caves and springs, on the other hand, were thought to be gateways to the underworld, and a sojourn to such a place could be a potent symbol of the journey into the hidden realms of the psyche.
A symbol, as defined by Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary, is “something that stands for or represents another thing; especially, an object used to represent something abstract.” The Oxford American Dictionary defines symbol as “a thing regarded as suggesting something or embodying certain characteristics.” There is, however, more to symbols, especially in the domain of the sacred, than these definitions indicate. Symbols are not only representations or suggestions of things; they can also be actual conduits of the essence of those things into the mind, body and soul of a human being. Even more, symbols may be understood to be the thing itself; sacred images do not refer to, rather they are. One author tells us that,
In order to deeply understand a symbol, you must assimilate it; it has to become part of your spiritual geography….The recitation of a myth does not “remind” a tribal member of its truth; the myth exists in timelessness, and its recitation is the myth here and now. A primordial language has a mysterious quality of transmission and is indivisible from the reality it evokes….Those who stand outside these traditional means of invoking, or more accurately, recognizing spiritual reality may think that symbols “stand for” something, but this is not true. Rather, what we are calling symbols are really the spiritual truth embodied, or manifested, before us….By understanding spiritual symbolism in this higher sense – as entry into visionary reality – we come to understand something of the real nature of sacred sites. (5)
Symbols, according to the belief people invest in them, can be enormously effective in catalyzing both psychological and physiological transformation. Thepower of a symbol, therefore, derives both from the archetype of which the symbol is a direct manifestation and, equally, from the exercise of human belief. The practice of belief, of consciously held intention, allows for the evocation of the particular quality indicated by the symbol. Belief is thus a way of “tapping into” and drawing from the realm of the miraculous. Intention is the connecting link with the power of the sacred sites.
Sacred Geography
The Location of Sacred Sites According to Regional Configurations of Sacred Geography
Throughout the ages many cultures have conceived of geographic space and expressed those conceptions in a variety of ways. One expression of these conceptions has been by the establishment of sacred geographies. For this essay’s purpose, sacred geography may be broadly defined as the regional (and even global) geographic locating of sacred places according to various mythological, symbolic, astrological, geodesical and shamanic factors. Let us briefly discuss examples of each of these kinds of sacred geographies.
Perhaps the oldest form of sacred geography and one that has its genesis in mythology is that of the aborigines of Australia. According to aboriginal legends, in the mythic period of the beginning of the world known as the dreamtime, ancestral beings in the form of totemic animals and humans emerged from the interior of the Earth and began to wander over the land. As these dreamtime ancestors roamed the Earth they created features of the landscape through such everyday actions as birth, play, singing, fishing, hunting, marriage and death. At the end of the dreamtime these features hardened into stone and the bodies of the ancestors turned into hills, boulders, caves, lakes and other distinctive landforms.
These places, such as Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Katatjuta (the Olgas Mountains) became sacred sites. The paths the totemic ancestors had trod across the landscape became known as dreaming tracks, or songlines, and they connected the sacred places of power. The mythological wanderings of the ancestors thus gave the aborigines a sacred geography, a pilgrimage tradition and a nomadic way of life. For more than forty thousand years – making it the oldest continuing culture in the world – the aborigines followed the dreaming tracks of their ancestors.
During the course of the yearly cycle various aboriginal tribes would make journeys, called walkabouts, along the songlines of various totemic spirits, returning year after year to the same traditional routes. As people trod these ancient pilgrimage routes they sang songs that told the myths of the dreamtime and gave travel directions across the vast deserts to other sacred places along the songlines. At the totemic sacred sites, where dwelt the mythical beings of the dreamtime, the aborigines performed various rituals to invoke the kurunba, or spirit power of the place. This power could be used for the benefit of the tribe, the totemic spirits of the tribe and the health of the surrounding lands. For the aborigines, walkabouts along the songlines of their sacred geography were a way to support and regenerate the spirits of the living Earth and also a way to experience a living memory of their ancestral dreamtime heritage.
Another example of a sacred geography, deriving from the realm of the symbolic, may be found in the landscape mandalas of Japanese Shingon Buddhism. Used as aids in meditation by both Hindus and Buddhists, mandalas are geometric arrangements of esoteric symbols or symbolic representations of the abodes of various deities. Drawn or painted on paper, cloth, wood or metal and gazed upon by meditators, mandalas are normally no more than a few square feet in size. On the Kii peninsula in Japan, however, Shingon Buddhism projected mandalas over enormous geographical areas from as early as the eleventh century AD.
Considered to be symbolic representations of the residence of the Buddha, these landscape mandalas produced a sacred geography for the practice and realization of Buddhahood. The mandalas were projected upon a number of pre-Buddhist (Shinto) and Buddhist sacred mountains, and the practice of monks and pilgrims was to travel from peak to peak in order to venerate the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas residing on them. Just as a meditator would “enter” a painted mandala through visual concentration upon it, a pilgrim to the landscape mandalas of the Kii peninsula would enter the mountains, thereby entering the realm of the Buddha. The passage through the landscape mandalas was made according to a specific and circuitous route. Ascents of the sacred mountains were conceived of as metaphorical ascents through the world of enlightenment, with each stage in the long walking pilgrimage representing a stage in the process through the realms of existence conceived of by Buddhism. (6)
Another fascinating form of sacred geography was practiced in ancient China. Called feng-shui(pronounced fung-shway) in Chinese, it was a mixture of astrology, topography, landscape architecture, yin-yang magic and Taoist mythology. One of the first Westerners to study feng-shui, the nineteenth century Christian missionary E. J. Eitel commented…
The Chinese look upon nature not as a dead, inanimate fabric, but as a living, breathing organism. They see a golden chain of spirited life running through every form of existence and binding together, as in one living body, everything that subsists in heaven above or earth below. (7)
This living spirit or life force was called chi and it was believed to manifest in three forms: one that circulates in the atmosphere, one in the earth, and another that moves through the human body (and also the bodies of animals). The practice of acupuncture was concerned with the study and stimulation of chi within the body, while feng-shuiwas concerned with the study and use of terrestrial chi.
Beginning as early as 2000 BC, the Chinese were conducting skilled topographical surveys and interpreting landforms according to the beliefs of Taoist mythology and astrology. By the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) all of China south of the Great Wall had been organized into a vast sacred geography. Mountainous regions were believed to have vigorous rushing chi while flat and monotonous land had sluggish slow-moving chi.Feng-shui, which literally means “wind-water”, was the practice of harmonizing the chi of the land with the chi of human beings for the benefit of both. Temples, monasteries, dwellings, tombs and seats of government were established at places with an abundance of good chi. At certain sites varying degrees of landscape alteration would be undertaken to further improve the presence and movement of chi. Hills would be contoured or truncated and the course of rivers would be changed in order to produce the best energetic conditions for various human activities. These naturally occurring power places that were structurally altered by humans became some of the primary sacred sites of China.
This delineation of sacred geography and the ensuing practice of large-scale landscape architecture astonished the first Europeans visiting China. Having neither a similar tradition nor a term to describe feng-shui, early Western writers dubbed it geomancy. While this term has lately gained a certain popular currency it is an incorrect use of the word. The word geomancyliterally means “earth divination” (geo-mancy), and it is believed to have been coined by Pliny the Elder when he met a group of mystics who tossed stones on the ground and then divined the future according to their configurations. The practice of feng-shui is more accurately described by the term terrestrial astrology.
Astrology has also been the basis of sacred geographies found in other parts of the world. Writing in Sacred Geography of the Ancient Greeks, Jean Richer says:
The evidence of the monuments shows in an undeniable way, but not yet clearly perceived, that during more than two thousand years, the Phoenicians, the Hittites, the ancient Greeks, and then the Etruscans, the Carthaginians, and the Romans, had patiently woven a fabric of correspondences between the sky, especially the apparent course of the sun through the zodiac, the inhabited earth, and the cities built by humanity. (8)
In his extensively researched books, Richer presents diagrams of immense astrological zodiacs overlaid on the mainland and islands of Greece. With central points at such sacred sites as the Parthenon in Athens, the oracle shrines of Delphi and Siwa, Egypt, and the island of Delos the zodiacs extended across the lands and seas, passing through numerous important pilgrimage centers of great antiquity. The architects of these vast terrestrial zodiacs were making their country a living image of the heavens. While the knowledge of how people originally used these great landscape temples is long forgotten, the locations of many of the individual sacred sites comprising the zodiacs are still known.
Other sacred geographies have their basis in geodesy. A branch of applied mathematics, geodesy is concerned with the magnitude and figure of the Earth, and the location of points on its surface. The early Egyptians were masters of this science. The prime longitudinal meridian of predynastic Egypt was laid out to bisect the country precisely in half, passing from the city of Behdet on the Mediterranean coast, through an island in the Nile near the Great Pyramid, all the way to where it crossed the Nile again at the Second Cataract. Cities and ceremonial centers were purposely constructed at distances precisely measured from this sacred longitudinal line. At each of these geodetic centers a stone marker called an omphalos (sometimes translated as “navel of the Earth”) was placed in a temple and marked with meridians and parallels, showing the direction and distances to other sacred sites. Writing of the practice of geodesy in ancient Greece, Robert Temple tells us the oracle centers in the eastern Mediterranean region…
seem at casual glance to be dotted around apparently at random. However, there is actually a pattern in their distribution which indicates a highly advanced science of geography in ancient times….The oracle centers of Dodona, Delphi, Delos, Cythera, Knossos and Cyprus are linked as a series, they are all separated from each other by a degree of latitude and are integral degrees of latitude from Behdet in Egypt….It is extraordinary that if you place a compass point on Thebes in Egypt you can draw an arc through both Dodona and Metsamor….The fact is that an equilateral triangle is formed by the lines joining Thebes with Dodona and Mt. Ararat. These facts cannot possibly be an accident. (9)
We also find tantalizing evidence of ancient landscape geometries in France, Germany and England. In the Languedoc region of southern France, for example, preliminary research has revealed a complex arrangement of pentagons, pentacles, circles, hexagons and grid lines laid out over some forty square miles of territory. Situated around a natural yet mysteriously a mathematically perfect pentagram of five mountain peaks, ancient builders erected a vast landscape temple whose component parts were precisely positioned according to the arcane knowledge of sacred geometry. (10)
In both England and Germany researchers have found extensive evidence of another form of sacred geography, this being the linear arrangements of ancient sacred sites over long distances. The English lines, more so than the German, are particularly well known. The British antiquarian Alfred Watkins with the publication of The Old Straight Track in 1925 first brought them to modern attention. For many years Watkins had trekked across the English countryside visiting and photographing prehistoric sites such as mounds, standing stones and rock cairns. His habit was to mark on detailed topographic maps the locations of the sites he had visited. Gazing at his maps one day in 1921 he noticed that many of the sites were situated on alignments that stretched for miles across the countryside. Calling these alignments ley lines, Watkins conjectured that he had found the remnants of a vast system of traders’ tracks constructed in Neolithic times. Archaeological dating has since confirmed the Neolithic origin of these lines but has disproved the notion that the lines were used for transportation purposes because the lines run arrow-straight across the land, making them impractical for transportation uses.
Since Watkin’s initial research many other landscape lines have been found in Britain linking both ancient sacred sites and pre-Reformation churches, which were themselves very often situated at places of known pre-Christian sanctity. The purpose and extent of the lines remains a mystery. In his later years Watkins stopped using the term ley lines, preferring instead to call the landscape markings simply straight tracks. The term ley line has stuck, however, and has come to mean something quite different than what Watkins originally conceived. As the so-called new-age movement incorrectly uses the term, ley lines are said to be paths of energy running across the surface of the earth. Watkins, however, never described ley lines in this way. Yet even though Watkins himself did not speak of ley lines as being energy lines there actually is some sort of energy or force flowing along the lines. Dowsers and other people with particularly keen sensitivities to earth energies have noted this throughout the British Isles as well as at many other places around the world.
In this brief discussion of sacred geographies we must also consider the enigma of the straight lines left on the landscape by archaic cultures in the Western Hemisphere. Examples include the Nazca lines in Peru, similar lines on the altiplanodeserts of western Bolivia, and the extensive linear markings left by the Anasazi Indians in the vicinity of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.
Mystified as to the origin and purpose of the Chaco lines, mainstream archaeology interprets them as ancient traders’ tracks. This explanation is untenable. The lines do not follow the natural contours of the terrain but rather run straight across the land, often going up the face of vertical cliffs, making them completely unsuitable for transportation of either people or supplies. Furthermore, terrain-specific roads and tracks dating from the same periods as the straight lines have been found nearby, thus undermining the explanation that the Chacoan straight lines were used for transportation purposes.
The English earth mysteries writer Paul Devereux has put forth an interesting interpretation of the straight lines at Chaco and other places where they are found around the world. He suggests they may be spirit lines – marking left upon the surface of the Earth to represent the spirit journeys, magical flights and out-of-body experiences of ancient shamans. The lines are thus the physical correlates of the routes of shamanic flight in the spirit landscape. (11)…Read More at Sacred Sites
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