Ley lines and Kirlian photography are two concepts that anyone curious about energy and hidden patterns comes across often. Yet the names behind these two concepts belong to two entirely independent people, who lived in different countries and in different periods. In this article we look first at how Alfred Watkins discovered ley lines, and then at who Semyon Kirlian, the man who developed Kirlian photography, was.
Who Was Alfred Watkins?
Alfred Watkins was a businessman, photographer and amateur archaeologist born in 1855 in the Herefordshire region of England. Watkins' main profession was the grain trade, but in his spare time he carried out amateur archaeological work, driven by an interest in the history and geography of his region.
How Did He Discover Ley Lines?
In 1921, while looking at a map of the Herefordshire region, Watkins noticed an interesting pattern. He saw that ancient burial mounds, church ruins, hilltop monuments and other old landmarks were arranged along a straight line on the map. Watkins gave these lines the name "ley", a name that came from the "-ley" suffix repeated at the end of some place names in the region.
According to Watkins' own theory, these lines carried no mystical or energetic meaning. In his view these straight lines were ancient trade routes dating from the Neolithic period, that is, routes people had formed in order to travel from one point to another by the shortest and most practical path. Watkins set out this idea in detail in his book "The Old Straight Track", published in 1925.
How Did Ley Lines Later Become Mystical?
Watkins' original, practical and historical theory evolved in a different direction years after his death. In 1969 the writer John Michell expanded Watkins' concept and proposed that these lines were in fact an invisible energy network surrounding the earth. Michell had developed this interpretation drawing on the idea of chi flow in feng shui. This reinterpretation gave ley lines the mystical and energetic meaning we know today, a meaning that did not appear in Watkins' own original theory.
Archaeologists and scientists today regard ley lines as pseudoscience. The main objection raised by critics is that when lines are drawn across a sufficiently large number of points, it is statistically inevitable that some points will align in a straight line by pure coincidence.
Who Developed Kirlian Photography?
Kirlian photography was developed by an entirely different figure, one with no connection whatsoever to Alfred Watkins. The technique was developed in 1939 by the Soviet (Russian) engineer Semyon Davidovich Kirlian and his wife Valentina Kirlian, in the city of Krasnodar in the Soviet Union.
While repairing high-frequency electrical equipment used in a hospital, Semyon Kirlian noticed that a bright glow formed around an object placed between the electrodes. This observation led him to carry out experiments aimed at capturing that glow on a photographic plate. When the Kirlians placed an object on a photographic plate and applied a high-voltage, high-frequency current, they obtained an image of a coloured corona discharge around the object.
Why Was Kirlian Photography Associated with the Aura?
The Kirlians' technical achievement acquired a mystical interpretation over time. In the 1970s, researchers and popular writers, particularly outside the Soviet Union, began to claim that these corona images reflected the body's aura or life energy. The scientific literature, however, shows that these halos can be explained entirely by physical variables such as the object's moisture content, its electrical conductivity, the pressure applied to the plate, and the voltage and frequency settings. Every electrically conductive object, living or not, produces a similar corona discharge under the same conditions.
Conclusion
Alfred Watkins and Semyon Kirlian represent two different faces of the search to make the invisible visible, yet these two names never intersected. Watkins was an archaeologist mapping ancient routes in England in 1921, and his theory was entirely historical, carrying no mystical claim. Kirlian was an engineer photographing electrical corona discharge in the Soviet Union in 1939. The later association of both concepts with energy and the aura came about through reinterpretations made by other writers, years after the original discoveries.
References
This article is for informational purposes only. The accounts of ley lines and Kirlian photography given here are presented in a balanced way, reflecting both their historical origins and the scientific community's assessment of the subject.