Excerpt: The Sacred Alignments and Sigils
Categories: General
Ley Lines, Geomagnetic Fields, and The Earth’s Grid
An excerpt from The Sacred Alignments and Sigils, by Robert Podgurski.
Tags: Robert PodgurskiMany ancient and so-called primitive cultures maintain a belief that the earth is demarcated or apportioned by naturally occurring energy lines. These lines were in existence and part of this planet long before people superimposed artificial longitudes and latitudes to mark geographic regions. Perhaps modern map grids are humanity’s attempt to mimic those naturally occurring lines. It’s possible that early pioneers of mapping such as Eratosthenes and Ptolemy, with their propensity for constructing grids, were influenced by an intuitive understanding of these natural partitions or lines in space and on the earth. These cords of power or dragon lines are most commonly referred to as ley lines in the West. English author and antiquarian Alfred Watkins was one of the first to consider and write about the bands that run along the earth’s surface. Visionary authors Buckminster Fuller, Carlos Castaneda, and Bruce Cathie, and many other luminaries have helped to promote the idea of naturally occurring power cords. The patterns exhibited by these astral or geomagnetic lines are closely allied with the Grid Sigil’s utility and origins.
Alfred Watkins laid the foundation for the wide range of theories about the lines of power that crisscross the earth. Watkins felt that certain paths were established as prehistoric trading routes and came to represent paths that existed between sacred sites, wells, and other landmarks. Watkin’s notion of ancient trade routes doesn’t pan out logistically in several cases because lines often go through insurmountable geographic obstructions such as crags. However, Watkins did notice that many of the megalithic sites and sacred mounds are often situated along these lines. It appears that Dion Fortune, in The Goat-Foot God, actually provided Watkins and his followers with the notion of associating ley lines with lines of power connecting sacred sites. Theories about this latticework of sacred sites and connecting lines continue to proliferate almost exponentially to this day.
In Carlos Castaneda’s account of the Yaqui people’s cosmography, Don Juan’s recollection of Juan Tuma’s explanation is one variant approach providing an explanation of the cords of power.
To me the most fascinating was his description of some beams of light or energy that allegedly criss cross the earth. He said that these beams do not fluctuate as everything else in the universe does, but are fixed into a pattern. This pattern coincides with hundreds of points in the luminous body.
Castaneda’s passage addresses an important and frequently overlooked aspect of ley lines. From either the Native American perspective or the Western Hermetic approach the notion of man as a little world mirroring the greater world sheds light on the Grid Sigil’s importance as a key to working with the threads that span microcosms and macrocosms. Juan Tuma suggests that the fixed pattern of the beams of light coincide with numerous points, or nadis, in humankind’s luminous or astral body. Within various branches of Yogic philosophy the belief in chakras or marmas is a prominent tenet that holds that these wheels of energy are power zones of the astral body sensitive to subtle vibrations and influences. Within Vedanta Yoga the term nadi is literally a stream or current and is used to signify the numerous nerves in the physical body. These nadis are people’s connection with the stars and their emanations or kalas according to the various Tantric sects. If we turn to Daoist thought we receive a further distinction that these nadis or neural currents run through our bodies and over the earth as the yin and yang of the lung-mei, or “dragon current.”
The Daoist pairing of Yin with negative, cool, receptive, and feminine qualities and Yang with masculine, positive, generative, and warm qualities further qualifies the details of a given location’s fluid magnetism. The yin strain of lung-mei, as designated in Chinese geomancy, is said to run along valleys, depressions, or subterranean springs in the earth, whereas the yang current is found along ridges, mountaintops, and elevated regions. Watkin’s ley lines and Castaneda’s fixed beams of light, I believe, are all attempts to label the fusion of celestial and terrestrial energies in a stabilized lattice or superstructure appearing in the known universe. Lung-mei, animal magnetism, orgone energy, and the Serpent Power, or kundalini, are all representative of terrestrial-based energies that pertain to the root forces of life and generative currents on earth. They’re connected to each other conceptually in that they’re power sources that manifest as lines or rays of energy. Some attribute the lines to an extraterrestrial origin. From a synchronic or acausal approach we need to view these earthly and celestial energies as concomitant and harmonious. They may actually be generated through the interaction and synchronistic alignment of energy fields to take on the semblance of flowing streams or lines of energy that connect everything. John Dee, in echoing the Arab Muslim philosopher Al-Kindi, succinctly stated, “Every place in the universe contains rays of all the things that have active existence.” As these rays combine, reactions may take place and give rise to other energies and permutations in the great chain of being.
The Enochian system John Dee developed under Sir Edward Kelley’s seership reflects a desire to pierce the mysteries of nature systematically and to harness these energies for his and England’s benefit. Ultimately it is difficult to ascertain precisely what Dee may have felt was possible to achieve through magical contact with the governors of the Thirty Aethers because he doesn’t comment on their use or import. We do know that he was seriously involved with England’s colonial interests because of his works on navigation wherein he helped to initiate that country’s expansionist doctrine and aims. Dee believed that Queen Elizabeth I was a descendent of King Arthur, and Dee himself traced his lineage back to the Welsh king Hywel Dda. He also attempted to assist Robert Cecil and his associates in their mining ventures abroad through metaphysical methods of detecting precious metals. It is therefore very possible that Dee may have felt there was some bona fide material utility for the forty-nine Angelic Calls. However, as Crowley stated in The Book of the Law, the kings themselves must serve and this is also ultimately true of oracles and visionaries. Dee may never have fully fathomed the scope of the Enochian system of magick and to a degree he served as a steward for chronicling its reception.
With the advent of the Grid Sigil we now have the sense that the Enochian Calls pertain not only to physical power zones on the earth but also to the subtle spaces that lie between the aethers and material planes. Within court Dee understood the politics and polity of rank and position. Class distinction and social upbringing most assuredly have an influence upon humans’ conception of deities. Dee himself moved within the circles of court; therefore, his reference point was one of the upper echelons of society during his time. The angels themselves reside in palaces and cities and the forty-nine Calls represent keys to the gates of these habitations.
As an overseer of the angelic séances with Kelley, Dee cataloged what he may have perceived as a hierarchical structure in the spirit realm similar to that of a royal court. In contradistinction to the angelic hierarchy the Voudonic pantheon of modern day Haiti’s loa or spirits assume the guise of common folk. For example, Papa Legba, who holds one of the highest posts as guardian of the crossroads between this world and alternate realms, is often depicted as an old man in poor man’s clothing hunched over a cane. These loas are the oppressed lower classes’ avatars just as the complex structure of the angelic court served to appeal to sensibilities and conceits of the medieval mindset. The Grid Sigil system represents a move beyond the type of systematization as underpinned by a social or ideological framework.
The Grid Sigil’s origins and implementation shed light on how this tool is related to the subtle currents of the astral body. From its initial form I intuited that it was a type of interstellar navigational device for travel by a celestial agency that may very well have had something to do with the creation of our universe. This Grid Sigil device was projected through space and set up as a sort of marker or transmitter to navigate by in the void. The center of the cross of the Grid Sigil in essence was the point where the Zim Zum or initial expansion and contraction of space took place and where the physical universe took germination. Consequently, the Grid flowered, emanating manifold layers and multiple reticulations from that reaction. This isn’t to claim that this Grid Sigil pattern is the sole device responsible for initiating the act of creation. It may be in fact one perceivable element of the knowable universe’s latticework. The Grid Sigil in fact represents one factor amongst several aligned coterminal forces that led to the start of the expansion and contraction of the greater mechanism that manifests being. But before speculating any further on these specific issues, we need to consider humankind’s possible early implementations of the earth’s grid.
The Sacred Temple’s Stellar Link
A long-standing traditional belief asserts that various stones, obelisks, pyramids, and temples were erected in antiquity at key intersection points of the earth’s grid. One method of testing this concept has been to mark out the geographical locations of these sites on a globe, draw lines intersecting them, and follow their paths around the world to see if they reveal any other areas of paranormal activity. Several areas that come to mind are places such as the Bermuda Triangle or areas where gravitational anomalies occur, such as the Oregon Vortex near the town of Grants Pass.
Some investigators’ methods of plotting out this grid have been extremely haphazard while others have gone to great lengths to develop a more systematic and scientific approach. In his books Harmonic 695 and Harmonic 33, Bruce Cathie, a former New Zealand Air Force captain, worked out a system of grids using various mathematical calculations supposedly based upon various levels of geomagnetic harmonic resonances emitted by the earth. Subsequently, utilizing Cathie’s and others’ findings, Ivan Sanderson, the founder of the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, followed these grid maps and plotted out the location of nine areas similar to the Bermuda Triangle, including one salient region off the coast of Australia that’s been the site of numerous aircraft disappearances and similar phenomena. Whether the systems set forth by these investigators are valid isn’t easily determined because of the highly idiosyncratic criteria they’ve employed. However, when we compare their findings with various historical and archeological artifacts, certain aspects of a naturally occurring grid begin to stack up, such as acute geomagnetic energies or unexplained phenomenon that occur near the intersecting power lines.
Possibly Bruce Cathie was influenced on some level by his aboriginal neighbors in relatively nearby Australia who developed a grid system all of their own. In fact, the indigenous tribes’ designated grid may be one of the oldest extant. These native peoples have inhabited their vast continent for possibly 60,000 years before any outside interference or contamination was perpetrated by the white European Christians who invaded their lands. According to David Mowaljarlai, a noted elder of the Ngarinyin tribe and a former spokesperson for many of the aboriginal tribes of Australia, the continent is a living body whose surface is inscribed by an invisible network. Australia—known to the Ngarinyin as Bandaiyan—is an animate body divided up into Dambun, or sectors, within each block of the grid. Each Dambun is the province of a specific tribe assigned to oversee sacred spots and is subsequently watched over by the dreamworld Wandjina, or earth spirits. The Aborigines’ notion of Dambun closely parallels Kelley and Dee’s assignation of the ruling governors of the Thirty Aethers to specific geographical locations. The lines or paths of these Dambun themselves form routes for travel and commerce and the Aborigines believe that they were created by the Wandjina for the people to follow literally on the ground. This notion of the grid lines as paths closely parallels my own early intuitive sense of the Grid—that it formed a map-like system projected into space as sign-posts or markers for ancient beings that used it to travel and create within a given space. Mowaljarlai’s understanding of the grid in terms of its microcosmic import is therefore useful to consider, not just in theory, but also for practical applications.
About the Author
Bevin Donahue
Bevin is the associate comms director at North Atlantic Books.
