EARTH MYSTERIES

I’ve always had a problem with Earth Mysteries. I’ve felt the pull of the countryside, and of particular sites within it, and am sure this plays a part in what we call spirituality (a concept I would rather see as bonding). But the actual concept of leys and earth energies coursing through the land is problematic.
My major objection is this: if earth energies exist, we can argue they would be consistent throughout the planet. Yet whilst in the west they are said to go in straight lines, in many parts of the east they abhor straight lines and meander.
This inconsistency is damning. Rather than having real Earth energies, we can better see such ‘energy paths’ as social and cultural constructs designed to offer human understanding and guidance of ideas of higher consciousness and its effects.
This remains my position on Earth energies. But research into Lost Civilisations has posed another possibility of interest. Should a previous civilization have been ‘lost’, then the most likely candidate would be an early sea-faring society, which disappeared as the sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age, swamping coastal communities.
Imagine the mind-set of any surviving priests to those events of 10,000 years ago. To them, their sea gods would have destroyed them. As mythologies develop, it would become clear that floods were punishment by the gods for man’s improper ways. Being superstitious, they would be searching for signs and enlightenment of how they were now to live. But from where would those signs come?
We see the main effects of the end of the last ice age in terms of rising sea levels. But in geophysical terms, much more was occurring. Glaciers were retreating, easing stresses on the land. Permafrost was also disappearing from vast areas of land. Under the land the water table was rising. And whilst these geophysical effects would not necessarily cause massive earthquakes, they would have caused geophysical disturbances great enough to disturb existing cracks and release massive pulses of electromagnetism along these cracks.
The researcher of Earth mysteries should now realize where I’m going. We know that electromagnetic bombardment of the brain can cause hallucinatory effects. Hence, we can see our early priests finding these sites of particular importance for receiving messages from their gods – in effect, hallucinations would be more likely to happen at such sites. They were even, perhaps, drawn to them by signs in the sky in the form of Earth Lights, also known to occur near geophysical disturbances. And it is not hard to imagine them picking these sights for their new temples to appease their new gods.
Of course, that was 10,000 years ago. The land would have taken centuries to calm down, and even today certain effects would occasionally be monitored. Such effects seem to have been found, but only slight. So perhaps the haphazard nature of monitored effects at some sacred sites can now be understood. There is no pattern, for the time when the pattern was evident has gone.
Such a theory gives leys no more importance than that originally envisaged by Alfred Watkins – simple lines that people followed. But in a surprising way, it could give vital importance to Earth mysteries research if ever accepted as a possibility. For through global warming, we could be approaching a time when sea levels and water tables begin to rise once more. What better predictor of such a time could there be than the growing increase in effects at these sacred sites – an increase that must inevitably occur if the above hypothesis is correct.

© Anthony North, January 1999

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