"Imagine a fairy chain stretched from mountain peak to mountain peak, as far as the eye could reach, and paid out until it reached the 'high places' of the earth at a number of ridges, banks, and knolls. Then visualize a mound, circular earthwork, or clump of trees, planted on these high points, and in low points in the valley other mounds ringed around with water to be seen from a distance.

Then great standing stones brought to mark the way at intervals, and on a bank leading up to a mountain ridge or down to a ford the track cut deep so as to form a guiding notch on the skyline as you come up.... Here and there, at two ends of the way, a beacon fire used to lay out the track.

With ponds dug on the line, or streams banked up into 'flashes' to form reflecting points on the beacon track so that it might be checked when at least once a year the beacon was fired on the traditional day. All these works exactly on the sighting line."

Watkins surmised that these straight tracks, or ley lines as he called them at first, were the remnants of prehistoric trading routes. He went on to associate ley lines with the Greek god Hermes (the Roman Mercury, the Norse Woden) who was the god of communication and of boundaries, the winged messenger, and the guide to travellers on unknown paths. Watkins identified Hermes-Mercury with the chief god of the Druids.

In 1969, ley lines were taken up by John Michell, in his book "The View Over Atlantis", discussed them within the context of geomancy. Ley lines and geomancy, plus other esoteric subjects having to do with the Earth, were collected under the umbrella term of "Earth Mysteries."