The Michael Leyline

The World’s Most Famous Leyline.

It is interesting to see how many churches dedicated to Michael are situated on hilltops. Glastonbury Tor is the obvious example. In The View Over Atlantis in 1969 John Michell presented probably his most important and enduring visionary insight: the idea of the Michael leyline.  He was struck by the similarity of Glastonbury Tor and a nearby far smaller hill at Burrowbridge, often known as Burrow Mump.

Both are topped by ruined churches dedicated to Michael. Both are similarly aligned.  Although referring to the alignment as ‘centred on Avebury’ he talks of it being ‘set’ between the two Somerset hills. The term suggests that the whole thing somehow spread outwards east and west across the country from a point of origin determined by the Tor and Mump. ‘Both these hills appear to have been artificially shaped so that their axis align with each other, and their orientation, 27 degrees north of east, can be read off a large Ordnance Survey sheet.’ These are wild ideas that no archaeologist would ever endorse.

From here he was led to note that a line connecting Tor and Mump could be extended westwards to St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, through his churches at Brentor (which Michell states is about a mile off the alignment but near enough to make it noteworthy).

Brentor

St Michael’s Mount. Photo Keith Naylor.

There are Michael sites to the east but the line most notably goes on through Avebury stone circle (a place already considered a serpent temple by some) and into Norfolk and the abbey at Bury St Edmunds. It travels across the longest continuous stretch of land in southern England.

The suggestion is that the dragon force in the landscape was recognised by early Christians and certain esoterically-inclined church builders of the early Middle Ages. It became distorted until equated in the popular mind with the Devil. Michael was considered to be the ideal figure to keep these forces in check, due to his role in the Book of Revelation “War in Heaven”. The real nature of Michael’s relationship to the dragon force and what he himself may truly represent is an ongoing study.

Michael ley from The Sun and the Serpent by Miller and Broadhurst.

The suggestion is that the dragon force in the landscape was recognised by early Christians and certain esoterically-inclined church builders of the early Middle Ages. It became distorted until equated in the popular mind with the Devil. Michael was considered to be the ideal figure to keep these forces in check, due to his role in the Book of Revelation “War in Heaven”. The real nature of Michael’s relationship to the dragon force and what he himself may truly represent is an ongoing study.

John Michell’s formulation of the line has set countless pilgrims off along it. It is now officially marked on a National Trust direction-finding plinth on the summit of Glastonbury Tor as the “dragon path”.

Text adapted from Avalonian Aeon and The Michael Line, the Qabalah, and the Tarot.