Ley Lines and the Mapped Terrain
Day 23 of 31
TRANSIT TO TRACK Mercury Rx 29 Sag
Where the internet gives us an easily searchable archive complete with thousands of occultists just on the other side of the screen, our predecessors needed to make do with far less. They were also fundamentally human and thus people of their time, infected by and fighting against the prejudices of their age. We will be guilty of the same crime, as everyone who comes after will be tried in succession. Humans should look back on their history and see how far they’ve come, not how far they’ve fallen. However, many occult thinkers within the last 200 years claim the far past to be superior: whether that’s the Atlantians/alternative history or the “purer” connection people of the past had with nature.
Alternative archeology is one of the main facets of modern occultism, for better or for worse. To be explicit at the top, I do not believe in much of it. Atlantians, Lemuria, all that nonsense – I know about it because you need to know about it to understand magic from Blavatsky on, but I don’t give it much credence. Aside from it being largely recycled racism from white men desperate to deny the capabilities of other humans, the worldview falls apart pretty quickly when pressed. I want to hold space for the possibility – or at least that there might be a kernel of truth in the mess – but I also don’t think we need to waste our time on those subjects. One of the concepts of dubious methodology that has managed to survive a sufficient debunking of its origin is “ley lines”, purported confluences of energy along ancient, invisible geological lines.
SPECULATION & A GOOD STORY
I had half-mistaken the history myself until sitting down to write this post. I knew about the alternative archeology elements of ley lines but had also been convinced of earlier origins in English folklore. After some Google-fu and checking “The Book of English Magic” by Gomm and Heygate, there is no actual evidence for the concept in the English (or Western) canon prior to the 20th Century. Alfred Watkins, a landscape photographer, traced lines along famous sites in England. His theory was that the alignment was purposeful and reflected trade routes or some kind of cultural significance that had since been lost. That’s certainly reasonable. There are plenty of societies – modern and ancient – that attribute significance to particular routes and paths: waterways, political borders, roads, railways, and holy sites to name a few. It doesn’t require a stretch of the imagination to make the argument and the story it tells feels right, but unfortunately for Watkins, there really isn’t much evidence.
“The Map is not The Terrain.”
As you will find time and time again in the history of modern magic, occultists attribute mystical and magical properties to emerging scientific theories. We see it with people claiming quantum mechanics proves magic (it does not) or orgone energy still today. People drew on Watkins and attributed magical power to those lines that the ancients were naturally more sensitive to than us. Gromm and Heygate attribute the popularization of the idea to Dion Fortune in her book “The Goat Foot God” where she uses the concept to define “power centres” along straight lines. The New Age would explode the concept further from the 60s onward, with John Michell giving the most definitive narrative by tying the idea to Feng Shui and other forms of geomancy with a mythologized druid community using these lines to maintain harmony across Britain.
However dubious the attribution to ancient magicians of Britain, there is quite a lot to be said about the magical relationship between physical places. In my Energy Mapping class, I introduce my own mix of practices to discern the magical properties, presences, and flow of Circumstances within a place. I use the term “ley line” but with a different “how it works” logic than the traditional. I define ley lines less by religious structures and more with the landscape itself, drawing heavily on Feng Shui and my understanding of witchcraft. The “rules” are a bit more complex than drawing straight lines on a map, although we are still drawing a map in the end.
“The map is not the terrain” is a central axiom to modern magical thought. Good advice outside the occult, it means that the actual experience of something is always different from the idea of it. Maps fail to consider the curvature of the Earth, with all the different projections doing their best to manage. Even localized maps can’t effectively turn the flat plane of paper into a true and dynamic reflection of the Earth’s surface, its features, and their movement. She may seem quite still to us save for a few shakes and quakes, but the Earth is no less changing than the rest of the Universe. If we hold strictly to the idea that they must be in a straight line or there’s some literal line on the Earth (some New Agers argue ley lines are literally the gem-edges of our crafted Earth worn down over time into the sphere shape it is now) then we have to confront how there’s no evidence for the lines in any material way nor do the maps actually show a straight line that reflects Reality.
Instead, let’s consider the axiom once more and recall why maps are useful: an idea of the terrain allows us to prepare for actually traversing it. And remember, maps have great power on their own, shaping Reality for many. A new district is drawn and suddenly the education your children receive and the taxes you owe change drastically. There is power in projections, empty as they might be on their own. Creating these maps can be useful, but maps should be dynamic and understood to be reflections of Reality rather than the key to defining things themselves. In the course, we walk through how to construct these maps or use various maps to do so: everything from hydrographs to the different lenses of Google Maps. So while the actual ley lines themselves are more fluid than straight lines on a page, drawing those lines and uncovering the geological history of Earth can help us utilize the abundance of natural energy in magic!
ENERGY MAPPING WITH LEY LINES
Ley lines are “rivers” of energy that occur as a consequence of the relationship between material and symbolic existence. Generally speaking, a ley line begins at a point of high energy: a literally high place, geologically active locations, river mouths, or artificially constructed points. For example, in Feng Shui, there are three major "dragon veins” of energy that run through the mountain ranges in China. The rationale is that the mountain range is constantly shifting and therefore embodies the endless generative power of the dragon. Drawing from those principles and many more, the gist is this: work with the energy and you get benefits, cross the energy and you get problems. Things built along a ley line tend to flow well but where ley lines intersect or where conflicting energies meet, we tend to see problems. What complicates this is the Nature(s) of the energy within the particular flow present. A flow of Water crossing Fire will be especially dangerous where Water and Air clashing might not cause anything to happen at all!
Earlier this spring, I spent some time mapping the area around me in the City of Minneapolis. Highways and major roadways are artificial ley lines. Liminal spaces along which tons of energy, people, and movement occurs. Mercury is the keeper of Magic and Travel for a reason! Roads also tend to match the landscape, further aiding the flow of energy along them. While dowsing is the traditional technique for finding ley lines, I prefer to just use my own psychic senses. Letting myself wander and tracking where I felt the energy on Google Maps, One of the three major ley lines confused me: there were two separate lakes but no clear connection between them. Doing a little research, I learned that one of the now-lakes was the site of a Dakota city in what was a chain of marshy rivers that flowed alongside the Mississippi. There was the connection: the marsh was both a traceroute and a flowing body of energy for thousands of years. It was white settlers who dammed the river only a century ago, draining the marshes and creating the flatlands upon which most of Minneapolis and the southern suburbs are now built. The leyline perfectly matched the old maps when laid over my projected flow.
Near where I live, there is an old Catholic basilica built atop a hill, naturally at the crossroads of the City’s major roadways. From there, energy flows primarily along the roadways and then cuts through a nearby park. A small hill range that interrupts the flow of energy from the basilica built atop a larger hill. The Women’s Club built atop it – literally an artificial tunnel through the hill – is is famous for its lovely dinners and haunted halls. The eastern roadway carries the flow east: a Catholic university’s square is built in a circular wheel that distributes the energy outward along Downtown. I would be less convinced the architects of the area weren’t at least somewhat aware of the occult implications if the other roadway didn’t contain the Scottish Masonic Center and end in a cemetery filled with mausoleums, OTO symbols, and masons. Anyone who knows much about the Midwest knows it’s full of occultists and long has been. As boring as we look from the outside, you should know that secrets are best kept where things are quiet.
LEY LINES 101
In looking for ley lines around yourself, start with the flow of water. Fire and Water are the two active magical elements.Fire is itself transformation and Water is the element that incorporates. Moving water generates energy, stagnant water concentrates it. Generally speaking, concentrated energy is a recipe for disaster. There are times where you might purposefully want to create a concentration of energy where it otherwise isn’t (wells are effective for this) but water is meant to move. Depending on what flows through the waterway, you could find a sacred pond or a swamp filled with nightmares!
That said, waterways aren’t the only way we need to think about with water. First, there is a massive “ocean” of water beneath the Earth’s crust. All the water sucked in by the subduction of tectonic plates churns along through the Earth’s cycle. Just as we drink in water and expel it, so does our primordial mother. That takes time, however, and the water isn’t really what you'd think: it’s in a special state of matter due to the intense pressure and heat. Not quite stone itself, Ringwoodite takes on a spinel crystalline structure. The imagery of even water becoming a gem deep enough within the domain of Hades is quite fitting. More importantly for human civilization, there’s a ton of groundwater flowing underfoot and knowing where it's concentrated, how the water table ebbs and flows, and what all is within the soil that the water travels through influences it magical properties. It’s also important to remember that humans pump massive amounts of water from one location to another. The walls of your home contain little mini-ley lines in the form of your plumbing just as the sewers underfoot are ripe for the foul to feast.
In a practical sense, mapping ley lines and understanding the other energy flow factors serves two purposes. First, you can more easily incorporate those external energies into your working. A magician might want to work alongside a river’s edge when dealing with the Dead but that same position could be catastrophic to the binding of the Dead to a living vessel. The power contained within our souls is fairly small. What makes it so “powerful” is its Nature: Creation. If you only rely on your own flame to work magic, you will probably succeed in manifesting whatever you desire, but it would be much easier if you could feed that flame with the magic-rich air around you! The second reason we need to understand the spiritual map along with all the other maps we keep in mind is to know where spirits are, where other Wills are active, and to identify potential threats. It also enables more proactive outreach. Where should you put a shrine for your local gnomes? Do you plant your lavender on the east or western side of the property? Where should your bed go in your room to help with astral projection? All of that can be answered with a good map.
