An invisible network of alignments connecting sites of sacred or ritualistic significance, keys (pronounced lays) were first named and defined by Alfred Watkins, a Briton, in the 1920s when he discerned notable patterns linking ancient burial sites, beacon hills, churches built on early pagan sites, stone circles, holy wells, and other landmarks. Watkins’s books, British Trackways (1922) and The Old Straight Track (1925), and his public lectures did much to establish his theories in the popular imagination. Watkins asserted that ancient sites were not situated by chance; early people carefully planned their trades routes, city sites, and sacred places according to very particular straight-line alignments with astronomical connections. He found that England was covered with a vast network of straight-line connections sacred and other important sites lined up with important sun alignments (such as midsummer sunrise). Watkins’s supporting evidence included the observation that the names of many sites, both ancient and more modern, that were aligned on particular paths contained variations of the word ley: lee, leigh, ley, lea, and so on. (The Old English word from which ley is ultimately derived means “grassland.”)
Others began to discover similar significant alignments in other countries; in fact, some ley hunters, as they call themselves, believe that the entire Earth is covered with a vast, significant gridwork.