Devereux, Paul

(1945– )

   British researcher of earth mysteries whose work has furthered scholarly attention to the archaeology of shamanism and opened up the topic to a broad audience beyond academia, as well as contributing to debates in academia—archaeology in particular. As editor of the earth mysteries journal The Ley Hunter, Devereux recently revised the notion of ley lines as intentional links between prehistoric and historic sites (first suggested by Alfred Watkins), or as the spiritual arteries of the earth, to the “spirit tracks” used by shamans during out-of-body travel. The argument is contentious (deconstructed by Alby Stone in Straight Track, Crooked Road [1998]) but has injected new energy into the interpretation of ley lines. Devereux has also explored the prehistoric use of psychedelics for inducing altered states of consciousness in The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia (1997), with particular attention to shamanism and rock art and other visual cultures. His work, as a member of the Dragon Project Trust, on the power of place also attends to shamanism in discussing the effects of electromagnetic and other anomalies at sacred sites that may affect human consciousness. The recent Dream Project by the Dragon Project Trust, involving collaboration between Devereux and Stanley Krippner, indicates that dreams are indeed influenced by scientifically unknown factors at sacred sites.