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The View over Atlantic – John Michell

Mr Guy Underwood’s Patterns of the Past provides further clues ……

In the course of his work he made the remarkable discovery that the entire geographical arrangement of prehistoric Britain coincides with the lines and centres of the subterranean influence.

Every stone circle has at its centre a strong source of energy, referred to by Underwood as a blind spring, and the individual standing stones mark the paths and spirals of underground streams, cracks or other features associated with intensified magnetism. Underwood distinguishes between three different types of current, one emanating from underground flowing water and two others, aquastats and track lines, whose nature is not altogether certain, but which frequently follow the course of old tracks, linear earthworks, ancient banks and boundaries.

The current that runs along these lines is everywhere related to the traces of prehistoric engineering, to lines of standing stones and earth ridges. Its course, therefore, has evidently remained constant for thousands of years although, according to Underwood, the direction of its flow varies with the phases of the moon.

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The mysteries and divinations of the Druids were founded upon the secret of the spiritual paths. Certain trees and plants were held sacred; mistletoe, the yew tree and the thorn for example; and these, Underwood finds, are invariably to be found growing over a blind spring or at a centre of magnetic influence.

Such places are chosen by birds for building their nests, by animals for giving birth. Cows standing on an old mound or barrow are attracted by the emanating current, the centre of which coincides with the monument. Farmers, noticing their cattle, gathering round a prehistoric stone, suppose it originally to have been put up for their convenience as a rubbing post. Yet it is not the stone itself that appeals to the animals, but the hidden spring over which it was erected.

Migrating birds, whose flights were closely observed by the natural magicians of antiquity, follow lines of magnetic current; so do animals and insects. The signs and portents by which the auspicious sites for churches and tombs were once located were those that indicate the spots of inherent sanctity, discernible through observation of nature and the interpretation of growth and movement.

The arts of divination, by which the natural centres and lines of the sacred current may be discerned, were formerly practised in connection with the universal science of spiritual engineering.

In the first place the lines were straightened to conform to a system of regular geometry. Underwood discovered that the forms of prehistoric structures are repeated underground in the rings, spirals and straight channels of the magnetic current. He concludes that stones and earthworks were placed to mark the subterranean flow.

Yet it is evident from his examples that the monumental achievements of the prehistoric builders were not intended merely to mark the natural channels.

For where, as at Stonehenge, stones have fallen or moved from their original position, the current has shifted with them.

Moreover, Underwood finds that the present outlines of the White Horse, cut into the chalk face of the Berkshire Downs, also follow the lines of influences discernible by dowsers. It has been shown by aerial photographs, however, that the White Horse no longer occupies its original position, erosion of the turf over the centuries having caused it to move some distance down the hill.

It can therefore be inferred that in some way the pattern of structures on the surface of the earth can affect the course of the subterranean flow. The massive works of the prehistoric landscape architects determined rather than marked the paths of current.