Do animals move around following ley lines?

This was the question recently put to me by a researcher from a wildlife charity.  I loved the question because it focused my attention on that wonderful interplay between animals and landscape.

Immediately I could imagine any animal – a squirrel, an elephant, a spider – moving through their environment. What was drawing them in a particular direction? What was guiding the path they chose?

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Some of you may not be familiar with the concept of ley lines. Others of you will be very familiar, so forgive my brief description.

Ley lines are thought to be flows of energy that move through the landscape. Some people are very sensitive to them.

Dowsers are very interested in tracking them.

Australian Aborigines called them Song Lines and say that people, especially shamans, are attracted to go ‘walkabout’ along them.

In the British Isles the students of Earth Mysteries are fascinated by how many sacred sites, significant places, churches and places of worship seem to be located on very long straight lines. For example, the most famous of these long lines in England is the St. Michael Line which runs from Land’s End in the south west through to the Norfolk coast in the east.

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There is much discussion about the nature of leys. What exactly are they?  In the ‘Ley Lines and Ecology‘  booklet that I wrote quite a while ago, I suggested that there were several types of ley.

Earth’s energy matrix 
Just as human bodies have a matrix of energy, identified as meridians in Chinese medicine and acupuncture, so planet Earth also has an energy body.  Some of these energy lines are several miles high and wide and extend thousands of miles.  (That makes sense, doesn’t it, given the size of the Earth relative to a human being.) Some can be tiny too.

River imprints 
These are the echoes of where water used to flow.

Electromagnetic flows 
These are related to the electromagnetism inherent in any body, but amplified here by the minerals in the ground (eg: where quartz meets clay meets granite) and the way in which tectonic plates exert pressure on each other.

Animal path imprints 
These are the echoes from the repeated movement of animals along a particular path.

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So to come back to the original question: do animals follows ley lines?

My intuition is that like most things in nature, it must be an interplay between all the dynamics of the landscape and the circumstances.

Just as migrating birds use electromagnetic sensitivity to guide their flight paths, but are thrown off course by changing winds and thermals, so all animals interact with their environment.

No matter how strong a ley or path echo might be, if there is an obstacle or predator in the way, the animal will obviously change direction.

The squirrel flows along branches from tree to tree, but shifts direction where appropriate.  (Or evolves into a flying squirrel.)

We humans of course create tracks too. It is obvious in our traffic systems. (Imagine our planet without traffic. Would there still be the energy imprint of where the motorways ran?) You can see how we create tracks too in crowded high streets and busy station concourses as hundreds of people instinctively make flows and adjustments. Waterloo Station, London

When we walk in landscape we are also guided by well-worn paths.

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How beautiful it is then to walk free of determined tracks and to move intuitively through our environment. This free movement can be in forests and mountains and deserts. It can be in parks and gardens. It can be in our homes. It can be on dance floors.

How liberating and healthy it is to follow our instincts and play with the song lines and invisible leys to dance with life.

Malvern_Hills_in_June_2005The Malvern Hills