Scattered all over the world are stone monuments left by people who lived during what we now call the megalithic age, the age of stone building. No one doubts the existence of Stonehenge or the megaliths of Easter Island, the pyramids of Peru or the dolmans of Ireland. They are there for all to see. Scientists have even speculated about and perhaps demonstrated how they were built. The unanswered question remains not how were they built, but why.
Why did a stone-age people, in the midst of their daily struggle to survive, feel the need to move megaton boulders miles over the landscape, sometimes even importing stones across vast bodies of water, just because rocks of a particular size and color were not available locally?
Current theories say the structures served as calendars or astrological observatories. But there are much simpler ways to construct such things. And why were they often placed at specific locations when it would have been much easier to build where the materials were found? Also, why do buildings of significance to one religion tend to be built upon the holy sites of earlier religions?
It could very well be that the last person able to answer these questions was slaughtered by Julius Caesar (See Caesar, Julius) during his conquest of Gaul, when the indigenous religion of the Druids was wiped out. It could even be that the Druids arrived too late on the scene, the knowledge of the builders of the great monuments having already passed into obscurity.
But there are those living today who claim there is a geometry to holy places, a pattern to structures of England's Glastonbury Abbey and the rocks at Stonehenge. They believe this knowledge was known to the builders of the pyramids, to certain members of the first Freemason societies imported by King Solomon to build the Temple at Jerusalem, and to other ancient builders in tune with Earth rhythms. Those who believe this are called ley hunters, and they believe the earth either was or still is seamed through with lines of power, called ley lines. Where these lines intersect or rise close to the surface they can be detected, it is believed, by diviners (See Divination) and people attuned to the primitive forces that align our world. Whether they are naturally occurring fields of magnetic force, ancient rivers of glacial melt, or mystical veins of power is a matter of debate.
It is said that even people not in tune with ley lines can feel or intuit their power, a notion that explains why holy places remain holy. They "feel" sacred. Every year, thousands of modern Christians worship at the magnificent Cathedral of Chartres, unaware that they are standing upon the same ground where Druids once led sacrifices among the sacred oak groves of Gaul. And who has not entered a forest or climbed a mountain and felt, for a fleeting moment, an experience of reverence?
Sources: Hitching, Francis. Earth Magic. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977.
