Whatever his private views may have been, Watkins always put forward leys as an archaeological discovery - a system of routemarking used in ancient times - and he received a great deal of hostility from the archaeological establishment, which continues to this day. However, there is some evidence that during the time of the Straight Track Club there was beginning to be a realisation that there may be other implications of the alignments. When glancing at an article in one of the Club’s folios at Hereford Central Library during the Moot organised by John Michell in 1971, I noticed a reference to energies associated with standing stones. Much later, this concept of leys as currents of energy was to be put forward again in Skyways and Landmarks by Tony Wedd in 1961.

Watkins took as his main points on leys the obvious prehistoric ones of stones, tumuli etc., but also found that many apparently non-prehistoric sites such as pre-Reformation churches and medieval castles would fall on the alignments. He accepted them as mark points due to the fact that they were often built on more ancient sites, though not always for the same reason (the alignment of churches was rationalised by an edict from Pope Gregory in the seventh century saying that pagan temples should be converted into churches; castles were usually said to be on the alignments because they tended to be on the highest point locally. Today, as a friend proof-reading this booklet reminded me, the government marks the highest points with telecommunication masts, and I have often found microwave towers on leys; particularly memorable is the beautiful alignment I walked in Scotland once with the Northern Earth Mysteries Group. This has a microwave station on one of its hills). He also noticed that clumps of trees, particularly Scots pines, seemed often to occur on leys, also stretches of straight track and road, cross-roads and junctions, though he would only accept this last group of sites as confirmation points.

In the current wave of interest in the subject, which began in the 1960s, another phenomenon was discovered which would probably have disturbed Watkins more than ideas of energy. Far more churches than would be expected from Gregory's edict were found on leys, and many were found to be comparatively modern with no older church having been known on the site. St. Augustine's Church, Addlestone, for example, was built in 1939, yet has several leys passing through it and it has a very powerful atmosphere. There may have been something there before - it has the "feel" of a much older church - but if so, no information on it has survived.

Certainly in the case of the pine clumps - the most ephemeral of all the ley points - there are far more than can ever be accounted for by seeding from prehistoric clumps. It began to look as if, astounding as it may be, the ley system is self-replicating, regenerating its mark points by subconsciously impelling people to build certain buildings or plant pines at the spot where they are intended to be. This is backed up by the many legends of supernatural beings moving stones, as at Godshill on the Isle of Wight, where the church was started on one spot, but the angels were said to have moved the stones to another each night, and eventually the builders relented and the church was built there.

But if places of worship were subconsciously sited, it surely cannot be simply to make the job of ley-hunting easier! There must be deeper reasons, and to detect them we must examine the uses to which the buildings are put.

Sound is, as mentioned in Skyways and Landmarks Revisited, published in 1985, an integral part of most worship, and it certainly seems likely that this boosts the energy in the leys - an opposite principle to that of the sandjar ley detector, which produces vibration at powerful places. Yet this cannot be the whole story, for I have found at least two Quaker meeting houses on leys (Kirkbymoorside in Yorkshire and Woking, Surrey) and it is likely that others are too, for I have experienced head-hum in every Meeting House I have visited, including the one at Egham, which is a modern bungalow on a housing estate. Yet the Quakers do not have music at their meetings, which are mostly silent except when a participant feels moved to speak.

So it would seem that the act of worship is in itself important, and this is not restricted to Christianity, as we shall see. Yet the doctrines of the various religions are different and jealously guarded, usually with each believing their own creed to be the only true one. The only common theme seems to be the worship of the creator, in whatever form he/she/it is envisaged. Nevertheless, the ley system seems to make no distinctions between them, and we must try to investigate why this might be so.

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