Stonehenge is at the heart of a sacred and a ritual landscape, surrounded by the graves of the elite of prehistory. If the stone circle can be seen as the hub of a wheel, there are solar and lunar alignments which go through the centre like the spokes of a wheel. The kind of alignments found at Stonehenge are the kind that would have been the result of prolonged observation rather than mathematical precision, as has sometimes been suggested.

The history of dowsing in the West Country can be traced to the fifteenth century when German dowsers came to England to locate lost tin mines. Condemned by Martin Luther as being the work of the Devil, dowsing has nothing to do with the black arts. Eight out of ten people can dowse to varying degrees; it has nothing whatsoever to do with belief. In my opinion, it depends on body chemistry. A form of energy beneath the earth that we are unable to measure scientifically is transmitted through the body and into the rods. It is possible at Stonehenge to pick up the alignments in a vehicle and even on the top of a double-decker bus. It is not recognisably magnetic because although many people use metal welding rods bent for hand holds, others use wood while pendulums of all descriptions also react strongly.





If you take dowsing rods and walk around the circle the rods move on the alignments, many of which are sited at the openings between the stones. At Carnac in Brittany, where huge avenues of stones are arranged in lines across the French countryside, the stones appear to be standing on top of the energy lines. It seems highly unlikely this could be accidental. The four station stones, or the Aubrey Holes, are sited where markers were placed as the monument evolved. Today it is possible to discover by dowsing a form of earth energy, as yet unknown, which may explain part of the mystery as to why Stonehenge is in such an apparently inauspicious place. Much has been made as to why ancient people brought the bluestones 240 miles from a place already sacred to them, and the sarsen stones twenty miles to the site. It would have been far easier to construct their circle close to the source of the materials, so why did they choose to haul the stones to a waterless site where they themselves never settled? Perhaps they did so because they recognized that this is a place of strong earth energy, earth forces, earth magic – call it what you will. The ancient Chinese called it the dragon power and the earth energy lines (today we call them ley lines) the dragon paths. One of the legends of Stonehenge said it was a sacred place of dragon or Serpent Worship.

Is it coincidence that area is also in myth connected with Uther, the father of King Arthur? Vortigern, whose nobles were slain by Hengist, was rumoured to have been involved in the murders of both King Constantine – Uther’s father and Uther’s eldest brother – King Constans. The second son was Aurelius Ambrosius (after whom nearby Amesbury is supposedly named), who revenged these murders by killing Vortigern, and is reputed to have placed a worthy monument over the grave of the massacred Britons. Legend says this was Stonehenge. Constantine’s third son was Uther, who took the name “Pendragon”, or “Dragon’s Head”.
Before the Henge appeared in prehistory the ancient Chinese were practicing acupuncture. This recognizes two opposite and complimentary energies, which can be found in all of nature, flowing along pathways known as meridians.

The ley lines have been compared to the veins beneath the surface of the earth mother and there is a school of thought that suggests that the stone pillars act as acupuncture needles penetrating the earth’s energy centres, which channel and strengthen strong earth places.
Stonehenge is reflective and it mirrors the beliefs, the dreams and the expectations of those who travel from distant places to an inhospitable and exposed grassland in Wiltshire. It is a testimony to man’s practical ingenuity and spiritual longings, and a place of mystery, of magic and of enduring wonder.