Archaeologists note that there is no evidence that ley lines were a recognised phenomenon among ancient European societies and that attempts to draw them typically rely on linking together structures that were built in different historical periods. Archaeologists and statisticians have demonstrated that a random distribution of a sufficient number of points on a plane will inevitably create alignments of random points purely by chance. Skeptics have also stressed that the esoteric idea of earth energies running through ley lines has not been scientifically verified, remaining an article of faith for its believers. Williamson, Tom; Bellamy, Liz (1983). Ley Lines in Question. Tadworth: World's Work. ISBN 978-0-43719-205-9.

From one perspective, the tale of ley-hunting is one of a classic modern religious movement, arising with an apocalyptic language which appropriated some of the tropes of evangelical Christianity, flourished for a brief time, and then subsided into a set of motifs and assumptions retained by a particular subculture of believers. From another, it is a frustrating tale of missed opportunities. The neglect of landscape and sensory experience by mainstream archaeology in the mid twentieth century was indeed a serious omission, which earth mysteries researchers could well have remedied to the lasting benefit of knowledge [...] Misled by a fixed and dogmatic set of ideas, however, they passed this by to focus on an attempted proof of beliefs which were ultimately based on faith alone. A study by David George Kendall used the techniques of shape analysis to examine the triangles formed by standing stones to deduce if these were often arranged in straight lines. The shape of a triangle can be represented as a point on the sphere, and the distribution of all shapes can be thought of as a distribution over the sphere. The sample distribution from the standing stones was compared with the theoretical distribution to show that the occurrence of straight lines was no more than average. [54]In any case, the idea has gained a great deal of traction and popularity, however much it has evolved from Watkins’ first conception of it. This 2nd edition of this book contains an expanded classification of Earth energies, Earth energy grids, Nodes and now includes a new classification of large Vortexes along with their descriptions. In addition to that it contains maps of Energy lines around the city of Bath in the UK and a wide area around the Avebury stone circle. Regal, Brian (2009). "Ley Lines". Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. p.103. ISBN 978-0313355080. Fairies, also known as the “wee folk” and “sidhe”, are known to travel along specified paths as well. There are many tales in the British Isles and Ireland that point out fairy pathways leading into hills and traveling over fairy bridges. These paths also happen to follow ley lines. Folks are warned never to travel a fairy path during twilight hours -dawn or dusk. Or at night for fear the fairies might carry them away. So, we have the dead, wraiths, and fairies all traveling along these ancient energetic grid-lines. But why? Ley Lines Today: Why Are They Important?

Marcus, Clare Cooper (1987). "Alternative Landscapes: Ley-Lines, Feng-Shui and the Gaia Hypothesis". Landscape. 29 (3): 1–10. Charlesworth, Michael (2010). "Photography, the Index, and the Nonexistent: Alfred Watkins' Discovery (or Invention) of the Notorious Ley-lines of British Archaeology". Visual Resources. 26 (2): 131–145. doi: 10.1080/01973761003750666. S2CID 194018024. In his 1961 book Skyways and Landmarks, Tony Wedd published his idea that Watkins' leys were both real and served as ancient markers to guide alien spacecraft that were visiting Earth. [21] He came to this conclusion after comparing Watkins' ideas with those of the French ufologist Aimé Michel, who argued for the existence of "orthotenies", lines along which alien spacecraft travelled. [22] Wedd suggested that either spacecraft were following the prehistoric landmarks for guidance or that both the leys and the spacecraft were following a "magnetic current" flowing across the Earth. [22] Whether the lines were networks of landmarks intended to guide alien visitors to population centres or were wellsprings of natural energy, or whether they are nothing at all, the idea has become so popular that it can be really difficult to ignore it. Ley lines have been characterised as a form of pseudoscience. [52] On The Skeptic's Dictionary, the American philosopher and skeptic Robert Todd Carroll noted that none of the statements about magnetic forces underpinning putative ley lines have been scientifically verified. [51]Williamson and Bellamy's book brought two different responses from the ley hunter community. [41] Some maintained that even if the presence of earth energies running through ley lines could not be demonstrated with empirical evidence and rational argumentation, this did not matter; for them, a belief in ley lines was an act of faith, and in their view archaeologists were too narrow-minded to comprehend this reality. [41] The other approach was to further engage archaeologists by seeking out new data and arguments to bolster their beliefs in ley lines. [41] Hutton noted that this pulled along "a potential fissure between rationalism and mysticism which had always been inherent in the movement". [41] Devereux also claimed that the ley lines could just be coincidentally overlapping with esteemed monuments. The lines that Watkins drew on his map could easily be explained as chance alignments. Jeff Belanger, the author of Paranormal Encounters: A Look at the Evidence which discusses the supernatural significance of ley lines, agreed. He pointed out that the fact that the term could be used to describe a line of any length or location detracts from its validity, and claimed that it was not specific enough to use.

In the British countryside, a mound is a natural or man-made hump of rounded earth that stands higher than its immediate surroundings. These often pre-Roman glimpses into ancient Britain have shaped the nation’s cultural identity, although no-one really knows what many of them were used for. Being able to draw connections between them in this way is inevitable given the sheer number of them. Doyle White, Ethan (2016). "Old Stones, New Rites: Contemporary Pagan Interactions with the Medway Megaliths". Material Religion. 12 (3): 346–372. doi: 10.1080/17432200.2016.1192152. S2CID 218836456. The archaeologist Richard Atkinson once demonstrated this by taking the positions of telephone booths and pointing out the existence of "telephone box leys". This, he argued, showed that the mere existence of such lines in a set of points does not prove that the lines are deliberate artefacts, especially since it is known that telephone boxes were not laid out in any such manner or with any such intention. [19] The associations with various kinds of spiritualism and supernatural phenomena are much stronger than the original idea that they were mere trade routes.And how intriguing it was. Crossroads, in particular, were regarded as redolent of otherworldly powers. As unconsecrated ground, crossroads became common places to bury suicide victims and so-called witches, as well as points from which evil or restless spirits would supposedly disperse and ghosts would roam. More esoteric beliefs blossomed during the folk revival of the 1970s. And what was the theory that emerged from these purposeful wanderings? Being a practical man of the world, Watkins decided that these alignments represented ancient thoroughfares, routes along which goods such as salt, and craftsmen like flint knappers, traversed the countryside. He does speculate that the ley-men, surveyors using twin poles to lay out their routes across the landscape, were seen as seers of some sort because of their near-magical powers (he imagined the famous chalk Long Man of Wilmington to be an image of a ley-man) and that superstitions built up around way markers as the paths themselves fell into decline. But at heart, this practical man of means insisted that ley lines were a crucial element of pre-Roman British trade, tentative first steps on the journey to the mercantile empire in which Watkins grew up. However, in the 1960s, there was a huge revival of interest in his work and in the idea, as there was in many kinds of esoteric and non-mainstream notions.