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I've been thinking about this for a long time, but still I'm not sure how to put it, so I'll just throw this out there. I think maybe it touches on a few things both Calum and Theresa have said. Though maybe they had better be the judge of that.

I don't believe in ley lines or places of power or the like, although I say don't believe more to mean that I'm yet to be convinced, though I have nothing against others believing what they will. I think if certain places mean anything, this is to do with how they are viewed by the people of that place, and that is somehow formed by the character of that place. So people raised around trees and people raised around factories will tend to view those environments in different ways for obvious reasons.

Given that everything is in one sense in the mind of the beholder - I see a chair before me but the image of that chair and the knowledge of what it is for is inside my head - then maybe the meaning of something intangible (a feeling about a place) is as valid (at least for the person concerned) as the meaning of something solid (like the chair).

I cannot shake off the feeling that some places do indeed have a bad essence (really don't like the word energy in this context, but that's more a personal choice). I'm living in Coventry (UK obviously) at the moment, and although I like it well enough in this small bit of the city (it was a village outside the city limits up until about 50 years ago) the rest of the place feels so much like it carries the weight of its own history, and so many of the people seem to be part of that.

Coventry's history is that it was a big weapons/airplane parts manufacturing city and pretty much got bombed flat during the second world war. Old buildings are few and far between. Worse still, when they got around to rebuilding the place, the council was all fired up on modern architecture of the worst kind (the sort that may look amazing on a drawing board in the same way as a Picasso painting may look amazing, but you wouldn't want to look at it every day) and, in the name of reinventing Coventry as a thrusting modern city, managed to finish off the work that the luftwaffe did in the 1960s. Ten years on, those new buildings didn't look so great after all, so they kept rebuilding and rebuilding, and in fact haven't really stopped. It's like the place is an architectural testing range. The "improvements" just seem to make it worse, and weirder, and less and less like somewhere you would want to live. It's Frankenstein's city. I know there's some good people here, but going into that city centre just crushes your soul, everyone looks downtrodden and unwell, and they have this weird unhealthy complexion like people who live under stones.

On the other hand, San Antonio seemed a pretty healthy place. It looked clean. There was plenty of space and a lot of trees everywhere. Aside from a couple of those corporate skyscrapers in the centre and places like Wal-Mart which in any case isn't anywhere you would hang around unless you're buying stuff, I didn't really see any truly ugly buildings. People for the most part looked happy, and they all seemed pretty much agreeable people.

So... rose-tinted spectacles and the perspective of a visitor no doubt, but Coventry really feels cursed for want of a better word, like a big grey hole sucking you in. Maybe it's the accumulated meaning of all the bombing and the "social engineering" through modern architecture.

Not really sure if this is an essay, or a question, or just some thoughts, but there you are. Places definitely have different atmospheres, and we might describe that in different ways, but I suspect we may mean the same thing.

_________________
"For as long as the world shall endure, the honour and the glory of Mexico-Tenochtitlan must never be forgotten."
- Chimalpahin Quautlehuanitzin

Great post.

I know exactly what you mean. And yes, in a way, the explanation we can accept for this doesn't really matter because the end result is the same - some places make us feel very good and some places make us feel very bad. Places definitely do have an 'energy' (even if we see that as a metaphor) .Maybe it is ley lines, or good energy and bad energy, electromagnetic fields from countless overhead and underground electrical cables, or maybe it is like places have energetic 'memory'. I don't know. But I do think that when we realize that a place is having a toxic effect on us, finding somewhere that feels better is an excellent idea.

I did that and it's like a weight was lifted off me. I also tend to think that types of people are attracted to similar environments that they resonate with while other people will be repelled by them. Sounds like you are being repelled to some extent by your environment and are not a 'vibratory' match to it. Perhaps if you found somewhere where you felt 'at home' you would also find a greater number of people there who you 'resonate' with. "Like attracts like", and I do think that this also applies to environments and people.

Wow. And a great reply, not least because I've said that very same "the explanation we can accept for this doesn't really matter because the end result is the same" to myself on many occasions. Going into the centre of town here it also makes me wonder if the character of the place doesn't sort of imprint itself on people. I know there's that idea about objects being somehow able to record things or events - that's one I really wonder about, and not something I could dismiss.

_________________
"For as long as the world shall endure, the honour and the glory of Mexico-Tenochtitlan must never be forgotten."
- Chimalpahin Quautlehuanitzin

Dear War Arrow,

What you say about Conventry is so sad. I do acknowledge ley lines. In Singapore, they are called dragon lines. My late beloved husband told me some bad stuff happened after a section of the MRT, Singapore's subway system, was build at part of a dragon line. Places definitely carry energy. Colin, my late beloved husband, and I esoterically cleansed homes. One of the homes was located in a cemetery in Malaysia. Most cemeteries have peaceful energies, but not this one.

To me every creation both animate and inanimate carries energies.

Walk In Balance,
Deer

Dear Calum,

War Arrow's so right about your reply. It is a great one. It's so important for a person's overall health to resonate with the place in which he/she lives.

Walk In Balance,
Deer

Coventry has a history that predates bomb making and WWII by thousands of years.
Celt, Roman and Saxon, North men(Danes, vikings) and Normans have all left their mark there.
There is loads of history there, and if you get yourself down to the river, soon enough you will find that the city and industry is left behind and a wonderful landscape opens out for you offering you peace, quiet and solitude.

I believe in ley lines. I can tangibly feel them buzz in certain places, our ancients certainly believed in them. Many of the henge's, tombs, megaliths in Britain are all believed to be built upon ley lines.
Map of British ley lines http://www.beckhampton-adam.co.uk/Index.cfm?pageID=6

Stonehenge is a great example, it is believed to be built on top of a ley line vortex, I guess that means where several lines merge. For me it was a place I avoided like the plague for a long time, I got headaches, felt sick in the region, and that was without going near the stones. One day I just went, deep winter, ( cold and raw on the plains) and it was wonderful. I realised though the stones were magnificent and a wondrous feat of ancient engineering, they had been placed here as guardians to the land, it is the land that is important. I personally would call it sacred land, the energy just pulsates.

Perhaps you are more sensitive to these things than you believe, maybe the energy or feelings you have experienced are not necessarily negative or positive, it's just that your experiencing something new.

Nope. I've been down to that river. Fine beyond the city limits, but everything within, not so good. Sorry - I know how this place makes me feel well enough and I slightly resent being told this is something I just don't understand.

_________________
"For as long as the world shall endure, the honour and the glory of Mexico-Tenochtitlan must never be forgotten."
- Chimalpahin Quautlehuanitzin

Just throwing out possibilities War Arrow, doesn't make them valid.

Oh okay, that's fair enough. Didn't mean to snap.

_________________
"For as long as the world shall endure, the honour and the glory of Mexico-Tenochtitlan must never be forgotten."
- Chimalpahin Quautlehuanitzin

I didn't noticed you had

for some reason or another i think of england as a depressing place.

maybe its the boring monarchy thing or perhaps to many black and white movies growing up

It is a depressing place.
I love my land but there's no love loss for my country, if that makes sense.
It's over populated and it's seriously expensive to live here, wages often don't match up with the price of everyday living. We have one of the highest teenage pregnancy stats in Europe, there is a whole culture based on welfare hand outs. In fact you are often better off sitting on your fat arse taking hand outs then you are trying to earn an honest days money. We get free health care but that's a zip code lottery as what level of care you will receive. We get free education from nursery right through to adult education, which could be better, but isn't that bad, it is of my opinion that if you want to learn then you will. The public transport is a joke, and I do mean a joke, going 100 miles can take hours. The police think they are above the law, the politicians steal from us, jeez, we can't even decide on a prime minister, so dire was the selection we had to choose from. The people are sick from the cheap massed produced food they eat, we drink far to much alcohol, binge drinking, we don't give a flying fart for anyone else.
We have no manners, folk no longer speak to their next door neighbours, you can live next door to the same person for years and never say hello, WTF
Crazy, this country is finished, it's done with, unless your a multi millionaire, then you can build yourself a huge pile in the country and enclose it with a big brick wall.

Saying all that, there are parts of this land, once you get away from man that are still breathtakingly magical and spell blindingly beautiful. The land is beautiful, the people are ugly.

Yes - I'd say that's a pretty fair assessment. The place feels weighed down by its own history, and the bits of that history that might have something going for them, are not necessarily the bits that get celebrated. I think it's the "island mentality" that gets me. London had its problems, but it was nice because it felt like it was connected to the rest of the world.

_________________
"For as long as the world shall endure, the honour and the glory of Mexico-Tenochtitlan must never be forgotten."
- Chimalpahin Quautlehuanitzin

i thought this movie a bit of happiness in england.