Throughout my first hesitant months I was vividly aware of the opposing hazards of self-delusion and prejudice that beset anyone engaged upon such a voyage of discovery. The problems were succinctly expressed by Underwood in that remark of his that I have already quoted: "Auto-suggestion is his (the dowser's) enemy, and preconceived ideas may blind him to important facts when these seem impossible, or produce some chance and unrepresentative results." Underwood was speaking of his own experience and though I too had encountered the hazards, I was more fortunate than Underwood for I had his own work as a datum point against which to check mine. And at this point it seems appropriate to discuss in rather greater detail the ideas in his seminal work, 'Patterns of the Past

Underwood refers to his lines generally as geodetic or telluric; that is to say forces which originate in or represent peaks of electro-magnetic, gravitational or odic fields. these lines are never single, but triple, double, two triples, three triples and so on. They divide into three main categories:

The Water Line width varies considerably. When small, it consists of three slight lines. When large, each line will be seen to be a triple in its own right. When six feet wide, nine triples may be perceived - even up to 27 triples.

The Track Line consists of two parallel triples - width 12-24 inches. It is of little significance in the layout of sacred sites, but all old roads are aligned on them and almost all animals follow them.

The Aquastat consists of two pairs of triples.

Geodetic lines normally, says Underwood, take winding courses and may be zig-zag, looped or folded into hair-pin bends. They usually maintain one general direction for considerable distances. Multiple lines had special religious, and their presence is frequently indicated on sacred sites by notches or grooves in the stones of the site.

Sites such as Stonehenge or the Bradbury Circle at Bradford-on-Avon, which he discovered by dowsing, have loops and spirals formed by these primary lines. He then refers to 'blind springs' and primary spirals'. 'Blind springs' are centres upon which primary lines converge and from which they emerge. their effect is to cause the converging lines to take a spiral course. These spirals are called 'primary spirals'. They enclose the spring and after numerous coils terminate upon it. The blind spring was the esoteric 'centre' of the Old Religion as well as being the actual centre of its monuments. It was holy ground. These spirals may expand their radius by about three feet from January to June, contracting from June to January, but primary lines remain stationary so far as their main axis is concerned. Parallel lines do, however, expand and contract between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. G.M.T. They are shortest at night and attain their maximum at 3.15 p.m. This is something, incidentally, that I have never positively checked. Neither have I received any indication that this is so in respect of ley-lines.

In his book, Underwood produces a wealth of dowsing evidence to show that our so-called 'primitive' forbears arranged their habits, society and agriculture according to geodetic considerations, and he says that geodetic phenomena were accepted as divine manifestations of the Life Spirit. Because these phenomena were complicated and invisible it was natural that priests in charge of the arrangements should evolve some system whereby they could be recognisable to the initiated while still remaining incomprehensible to outsiders. They did this by means of mounds, banks, ditches, stones, dolmens, stone circles, walls, terraces, roads, pits and ponds in varying arrangements. (I believe that this relationship is correct, but I hope to show later on that these were not only markers for the initiate but rather causes and stimuli of the phenomena.)

Underwood further asserts that dowsing reveals that the greater proportion of minor topographical features are man-made and that some of the major features, such as the shape of hill-tops and the courses of rivers, have been considerably altered by man. It is difficult to accept that the great coombes sometimes found in association with important prehistoric structures in hilly country are entirely natural - try looking at the Deans and Dunes around Brighton. I hope to show later that certain tremendously important topographical phenomena in Sussex cannot be natural. At any rate, none of prehistoric man's work exists without geodetic dowsable phenomena. Underwood tells of his dowsing experience at Stonehenge, bewildering in the complexity he discerned - the Acropolis, Avebury, Carnac - even the individual stones of Stonehenge have their own internal geodetic subtleties. The Slaughter Stone has notches indicating the passage of multiple water lines. Hill figures such as the White Horse of Uffington are geodetically oriented.

In his chapter, 'Freemasonry and Medieval Architecture', he jumps a millennium or two, and points out that English pre-Reformation churches exhibit the same dowsing phenomena as prehistoric monuments. We saw earlier in the book how Pope Gregory V gave specific instructions that the pagan British were to be Christianised by building churches on their traditional religious sites. What is remarkable, however, is not that geodetic phenomena should be present in pre-Reformation cathedrals and churches, but that these buildings were constructed so as to take account of them. He points out that many ecclesiastical buildings are not even straight or based on a rectangle. Southwark Cathedral has a bend in the nave. Chichester Cathedral has hardly a line that is straight. Canterbury has nave, choir and retro-choir out of line. Pisa is most odd. Many churches are otherwise inexplicably sited. Some are half a mile from the village they serve. Some are built on unsuitable ground. Winchester is built on a swamp. Some are totally disproportionate to their community's needs. He says, "The results of my visits to a great many medieval buildings ... established without doubt that an almost identical system was used for their location and layout as had been followed in respect of prehistoric temples and other early monuments ... the inescapable inference was that the secret preserved so closely by the Freemasons was their knowledge of the geodetic system and the observance of certain rules in connection with it."

He goes on to explain, just as I found, that this is a subject on which there is no recorded history - that is, recorded in a way intelligible to contemporary man, who is only just becoming adept at storing data in non-visual ways. He also says that this esoteric knowledge was hidden from all by men unlikely to risk the fate that would be incurred by a public statement. Indeed, it has become obvious that the Knights Templar, protectors of the operative Masons in their day, and heirs to the pagan, gnostic, occult tradition (for all their external Christian trappings), were destroyed by an unholy alliance between the French monarchy and the papacy, not only for their temporal wealth but also for their preservation of arcane pre-Christian secrets.

However, the manipulation and understanding of the Earth Force is susceptible, according to Underwood - and I certainly subscribe to this view - to analysis by the established exact sciences, although it involves a multiplicity of disciplines and specialisations that may be difficult to harness in a concerted effort. Nothing that he says, or that I shall seek to say at this stage, should cause us to relegate dowsing to the realms of the occult. This is a term often used by established science to dismiss and thereby avoid 'difficult' subjects, or by those who seek to impress us by mystery and prevent serious investigation which might undermine their subjective credulity. Rather I seek, just as Underwood, to indicate that dowsing is a means (albeit empirical) of providing data that may open doors for new targets in atomic science, in wave physics, in philosophy, sociology and archaeology. Indeed, it could result in a new evaluation of man and his relation to the cosmos, that could involve all the -ics,  -isms and -ologies at the end of the day. I seek to show that dowsing is not just a country 'art'. It is a means of showing by the use certain tools that we are influenced by changes in the force field around us, subtle as they may be. Furthermore, these force fields are not just fields that influence man, but may be influenced by man and harnessed to his purpose for good or ill.

Guy Underwood refers to Alfred Watkins and 'The Old Straight Track' only in passing, and makes no attempt to link his work with that of Watkins. However, he correctly recorded the dowsing phenomena associated with the works of this earlier civilisation. I say this in the full belief that Guy Underwood was a more subtle dowser than myself. but his interpretations of the phenomena as causal in the siting of ancient monuments I do not necessarily believe to be exclusively true. As I began to extend my research to include the great monuments of Europe, in particular the cathedrals, I became more and more convinced that this theory was too simplistic. Charpentier, in his book 'Le Mystere de la Cathedrale de Chartres', is clear that the present position of the Cathedral and its earlier ancient druidic site is due to a particular telluric power point that occurs there. He is not arguing from anything other than a theoretical or mystical consideration of the telluric currents. Not being a dowser nor having access to dowsing information, he was not aware of the particular lines of Chartres which relate specifically to architectural features, doors, towers, etc., of the construction. The question is, do these lines exist because of the design of the Cathedral or does the design of the Cathedral arise from the lines?

I do know of a site in the South Downs of Britain which exhibits all the dowsing characteristics of a small church - that is to say, a triple line circle, such as one would find passing through a font. It is in the middle of a football field, and I can find no record of any church having been there. My experience of water dowsing is minimal., but it may well be that this is an indication of one of Guy Underwood's blind springs, and that the siting of churches and stone circles was indeed determined by such a factor. the siting of the font on these circles (which range from 2 yards to 300 yards in diameter) gives some sort of credence to the fact that the placing of the fonts over blind springs was in order to get the 'charging' benefit of the blind spring below; a continuance of the pagan mysteries of the Earth Goddess. Chartres Cathedral, for instance, has a huge 6-bar circle which is flattened on one side and running the length of the nave via the west door, as are others of such magnitude. Lesser churches are not bothered by such niceties and only the font relates to the circle.

I am prepared to accept that these sites were indeed determined by such considerations as Underwood, a unique pioneer, indicated. However, as we noted elsewhere, Underwood did not dowse between sites and so missed the ley-line effect. He did state, however, that various lines did enter and leave by doors, but did not observe that they were straight, dismissing them as underground water-courses. An interesting point occurs at this time. He may have been right (and so might I be) in saying that the ley-lines exist but are not based on underground water-courses. It all comes back to the dowsing phenomenon. the dowser's mind is enormously selective. If it were not so, dowsing a London street would be impossible as the sewers, electric cables, gas pipes, water pipes and telephone lines would produce such a mishmash of reactions as to make the whole exercise impossible. Yet a G.P.O. engineer can use the rods quite satisfactorily to locate his underground services and so can the gas-man. Neither involves himself in the other's affairs. In the same way, it is curious that in setting out to check Underwood's results I had ley-lines in mind. He always had water in mind. What we have both found coincides in part but diverges in important aspects. In the cathedrals we have both dowsed, I have found some of the things that he found and other things that he did not find. Our dowsing maps of Stonehenge are not identical. I cannot find his spiral in the centre, for instance; perhaps that is a water spiral. However, I find the following pattern at both Woodhenge and Stonehenge: in the case of Stonehenge the extant stones are within the central circle; in the case of Woodhenge the pattern is within the layout of posts. We both find the six lines emerging from the Heel Stone from the six notches, but Underwood's run off in a meandering direction. Mine go straight to Woodhenge.

What I began to suspect was that we may well be dealing with a phenomenon that exists at various levels. Underwood was in fact dealing with an exoteric phenomenon; the appreciation by the megalith builders of underground water and blind springs in choosing their sites. What I stumbled on by chance is the esoteric aspect; the transformations of the energy of blind springs, etc., by the use of purpose-built structures, and its injection into different fields of force, along with energies from other sources (celestial from the earth temples of Wolstenbury, Malling, etc., and the so-called hill forts) which create the ley-lines. These are superimposed upon and feeding on the naturally occurring telluric phenomena. To that extant I had reason to suspect that upon the ley-system is imposing or developing a macro-system of broader fields of force on which the planetary conjunctions exert themselves. But that is a story for another time. Teilhard de Chardin's 'noosphere' would be involved here, I feel. Therefore Underwood's results and mine would not co-incide in all respects because we did not look for the same thing. I always had ley-lines in mind when I checked his findings.

But the basic problem was, do the lines determine the structures or do the structures determine the lines? Clearly, an architect of a medieval church or cathedral was unlikely to be a violent atheist or he would not have been selected for, or inclined to build, religious monuments, and so the effect might be the same, as he would be spiritually open to such unconscious considerations. I did not feel, either, that a ley-conscious architect would necessarily have a precise plan of the ley-system that would result from his design. When he had selected or been given his site, I had no doubt many exoteric and esoteric factors were involved in his plan and I had equally no doubt that I was only dimly aware of a few. And the lines on churches and cathedrals do not always associate with deliberate architectural features. In some way that I could not fathom the basic form and style of architecture was relevant. The abandonment of the Roman for the Gothic arch is highly significant. As well as permitting much higher roofs the thrust pattern thus produced would be entirely different and would create a new factor in whatever is transmitted from that site.

It is relevant here to note that we have been able to show that it is possible to create ley-lines today. This is done by arranging the charged or 'sacred' stones in particular patterns, but they are always consistent - or so it would appear. Such lines always lock into the nearest feature of the ley-system in their path. The megalith builders created their sites and therefore a ley-system. Woodhenge connects to Stonehenge and a 49-bar line goes south-east from Stonehenge to a point which I do not yet know. It is argued that medieval church builders built on the old sacred sites and therefore built within the ley-system and did not interfere with it. Consequently ley-hunters seeking projected lines on maps linking these sites will come up with some fairly spectacular results. Yet I cannot always dowse predicted lines. From this I concluded that the building of the medieval churches did affect the living ley system and altered it for two reasons: one, they were not necessarily always on ancient sites and, two, they produce a different ley configuration from conventional megalithic or druidic monuments. This interruption of the system (and a cathedral would do this massively) would impose different channels on the leys - rather as a series of magnets and iron filings in a particular configuration would produce a particular pattern in the iron filings, and the introduction of a new and powerful bar-magnet would immediately change the pattern as a new equilibrium of forces were established. Thus a new and later church might divert an earlier line onto or from a feature not foreseen by the architect of the latter. At the same time, lines from doors, etc., are not necessarily perpendicular to those doors. It appears that they may have been originally, but later sacred features of the landscape may have made greater demands and pulled them away.

In his conclusion Underwood explains his initial reluctance, later overcome by certainty, to believe that he was on to something. He states that what he has experienced through dowsing is the Earth Force, a force recognised by science but not understood. Our forbears had certainly come to terms with it. He says, "I became absorbed by the discovery of the extreme importance of the serpent symbol in prehistoric religions and the subsequent emergence of the serpent as a god believed to control fertility, and always associated with water and usually with the moon. As the serpent is the one land-living vertebrate which naturally and frequently reproduces all the geodetic spiral patterns, it seems reasonable to assume that both the serpent and spiral symbols are representative of the geodetic spiral." Dragon is a word of Greek origin - drakon - and it originally meant any large serpent, and the dragon of mythology remained, for all its embellishment, essentially a snake. In Egyptian lore the god, Apepe, was the great serpent of the world of darkness. The Greeks and Romans generally accepted the serpent as an evil power although sometimes the drakontes were held to be beneficent dwellers inside the earth. For the Christian Church the dragon-serpent was symbolic of sin and paganism. The great dragon-killing Saints were George and Michael. Many early paintings show one or other delivering whole townships from dragons and converting them to Christianity. It seems likely that the religion of the megalith builders was one of serpent worship. Indeed one of their greatest monuments, that of Avebury, not far from Stonehenge, was originally conceived in the form of a serpent. As it has been partially destroyed, we assume this, owing to the felicitous activities of a man well ahead of his time, Dr. W. Stukely, Minister and Freemason. He perceived the temple of the serpent at Avebury and in his book, 'Avebury in 1763', reproduced a drawing of what he saw. Unhappily, its destruction by pillagers of stone for building has established archeologists reluctant to accept that the present day Avebury circle is in fact part of a greater serpentine whole. It must be noted, however, that Stukely was a man steeped in the Old Tradition, and was seeking to find some elusive unifying pattern behind the prehistoric features of Britain. For him there was no doubt that this was the serpent passing through the circle, the twin symbols of alchemical fusion. Underwood says that his own observation of the dowsing lines at Avebury confirms Stukely's statement.

Alfred Watkins, in 'The Old Straight Track', first drew attention to the fact that some of his leys could be associated with St. Michael because of the occurrence of his name at various points, mainly the terminal points, for example, St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall. Later students of the art have identified a central dragon line in the ley system which goes straight through Avebury, from St. Michael's Mount through Glastonbury, where two Somerset tors stand on either side with ruined churches on their summits both dedicated to St. Michael. It passes on to Bury St. Edmunds, another great medieval abbey, and is remarkable for the number of hills and churches dedicated to St. Michael that fall on its route. In 1977 we established that this line does exist in dowsable form. Dragon legends may be found in abundance throughout Britain and, as John Michell observes in 'View over Atlantis', where such legends and dedications occur the places "appear always to coincide with sites of ancient sanctity".

Indeed in Sussex itself, the scene of this story, dragon legends persist. St. Leonard slew a dragon in St. Leonard's Forest near Horsham. The 'nuckar' has emerged from his deep pond in Sussex folklore from time to time. On one of his escapades he fell prey to the cunning of one Jim Puttock. It appears, according to Jacqueline Simpson in 'The Folklore of Sussex' that "dunnamany years ago" a "nuckar" was swimming in the Arun River, snapping up cows and men, and even "sticking his ugly face up agin the winders in shipyard when people was having their tea." So said a Sussex hedger recorded in 1929. Clearly something had to be done about this anti-social behaviour and the Mayor of Arundel offered a large reward to anyone who would put an end to the 'nuckar' or 'knucker'. The dragon came to a bad end, due to a dubious 'pudden' that was fed to him by the aforesaid Puttock who, upon the onset of the anticipated collywobbles, cut off his head with an axe. Puttock is a modern version of one Jim Puck who earlier was the hero of a similar adventure. Jim Puck was alleged to be buried under an ancient tombstone in Lyminster Churchyard, his tombstone showing a battered full-length cross superimposed over a herring-bone pattern which, according to local tradition, represents the hero's sword laid across the dragon's ribs. Even in the 1930s somebody still decorated the stone with fresh snapdragons.

The word 'nuckar' is thought to derive from 'nicor' in Scandinavian languages meaning a water monster, and the Anglo-Saxon epic, 'Beowulf'' describes 'nicoras' as serpents of both sea and fresh water pools. Several hundred 'knucker-holes' exist in Sussex, and Jacqueline Simpson quotes Miss Helena Hall, in whose 'Dictionary of Sussex Dialect' the knucker-holes are defined as follows: "Springs which rise in the flatlands of the South Downs. They keep at one level, are often twenty feet or so across, and are reputed to be bottomless. The water is cold in summer, but never freezes: in a frost it gives off vapour, being warmer than the air. Knucker-holes are found at Lyminster, Lancing, Shoreham, Worthing and many other flats."

Dragon legends abound across the length and breadth of the land, whether in Loch Ness or Lough Neagh, in Sussex or in Berwick, where the Lambton Worm was finally dispatched, and where the deeds of St. George, St. Michael, St. Patrick and St. Catherine are remembered. And, of course, Apollo slew the python dragon at Delphi and thus created the most sacred shrines of Ancient Greece. What does it all mean? It means that the cult of the serpent, dragon or nicor was a feature of the pre-Christian religion of these islands. It means that the folk-lore or racial consciousness has recorded the vanquishing of paganism by Christianity in the slaying of the dragon by St. George. As with all folk memories, we would do well not to dismiss them as a symbolic reference to something of greater reality. The dragon-lines of Britain were real before Christ and are real to this day. The dragon myth is, I believe, an attempt by unlettered man to embody the truth about the serpent meanderings of that telluric force we now call the ley-system, and by knowledgeable man to express in a harmless symbol a dangerous truth.

Certainly the dragon wreathed his mighty coils around that part of Sussex where my metal rod inexorably led me, to the Templar Church near Hilaire Belloc's windmill at Shipley, and the discovery in the water-meadows beside it. For the thought started to develop in my mind, as I had by this point dowsed Stonehenge, that perhaps there was a minor system in the South Downs which developed into a major system based on the six-bar line on the Slaughter Stone. If that were so, then the Wolstenbury tumulus was a key local interchange and the Coldharbour Wood embankment was a junction. Where, therefore was an interchange, where the triple became a six-bar line? I followed the triple-system through various Sussex churches going north towards Horsham. I conferred with David? He had always been interested in Shipley Church to the south of Horsham, as it was said to have been the southern headquarters of the Templars and, as we have shown, the Templars seemed to have had more than one hand in the whole affair. He nagged me until I went there.