In my last piece I said: “The real formation always brings with it a decisiveness, a will and an intent. The real formation carries a sense of completeness. Nothing needs to be added or taken away. There is never the spirit, often found in a fake, of an improvised enterprise.” and “I do not know why the circles arrive here or how they are made. However, it is clear that they come from elsewhere, they are designed elsewhere and their appearance in our reality takes only moments. When a crop circle is delivered, it arrives fully formed.”

We do not know how a crop circle is delivered but it is hard to conceive that the design is anything less than fully formed at the point when the decision is taken to pull the metaphorical trigger. Not only is the design complete to the tiniest detail but I believe that the formation is oriented exactly according to its context and that it is also precisely sized to fit the conditions in the field. It is my view that the formation, existing fully-formed but as yet unmanifest in some place unknown and unimaginable to us, is available for minute adjustments, reorientation and re-scaling in the moments before it is fixed in the field.

I have selected five examples of crop circles which demonstrate these characteristics.

1. Liddington Castle 1st August 1996

fig 1/fig 2

 

Two crop circles arrived simultaneously at the Liddington Castle field on 1st August 1996. The second formation, known as Liddington B, is not discussed here but was remarkable for the exquisite and elaborate patterning of its ground lay. The main formation (fig 1) was a carefully organised interplay of circles and crescents which referred both to Sun/Moon symbolism and to the Vesica Pisces. (Curiously the clearest Vesica crop circle ever arrived nearby at Ashbury, also on 1st August.

Most people tended to enter the circle along tramline 2 which led straight through the heart of the formation (fig 2). This central tramline touched the ends of the two flattened rather boomerang-shaped spaces. Walking around each of these forms one would find that they ended exactly against tramlines 1 & 3 which formed portals back into the main area of the crop circle.

There was no way of understanding, while walking these spaces, that a perfectly placed gateway back to the centre was available at the far end. The crop circles seem to exhibit two primary objectives in the fields. Firstly, they welcome us and make it easy to move within the formation. Secondly, out of respect for the plants, openings are made to facilitate our passage from area to area without the need to stomp down living crop.

Even while accepting these two objectives I had never seen tramline-formed doorways positioned with such care and precision. The Liddington Castle formation might have been a few feet larger or a few feet smaller but the perfect coordination of tramlines 1 & 3 and the outer edges of spaces A & B demonstrates two things. First, the formation was pre-designed and had - in some form or other - an existence elsewhere, and second, before being placed in the field, decisions were made to adjust the size of the pre-existing formation to comply meticulously with the tramlines.

One thing is sure: the tramlines were not shifted to accommodate the crop circle!

2. Stonehenge 7th July 1996

fig 3/fig 4/fig 5

 

It is difficult to describe to those who were not there what a shock and revelation was the Stonehenge formation of 1996 (fig 3). Nothing remotely comparable in size or complexity had been seen before. We were jolted.

I was concerned at the time with the placement of formations in the field. I did not then realise how crucial an area of study this would become but, even in 1996, it was clear that the framing of the formation, like the framing of a painting, was always the result of some thought. Why did formations never collide with hedges or trackways? Why, whenever there was a juxtaposition, did it appear deliberate?

The corner of the Stonehenge field seemed important. At our first visit, we had to walk down the pathway to the bottom of the field and then move back into the formation but, very soon, the farmer realised what an attraction it would be and took out a section of fence at the corner by the road. This corner became the visitors’ entrance and also the location of a van selling souvenirs and collecting entrance fees.

A group of us went in on the first day to a gargantuan and incomprehensible confetti-storm of circles. Our second astonishment came with the first photographs. A book could be devoted to the subject of the 1996 Stonehenge crop circle but it is my intention here to concentrate on its relationship to the corner of the field. 

15,000 visitors are said to have moved from that corner into the formation and I must have passed through that gap in the fence a dozen times. A very accurate electronic survey which included the roads was made by the late Dave Probert, a professional land surveyor and I put it on my drawing board.

My idea was to work out the angle encompassed by the formation from the corner (fig 4) and, when drawn carefully, the angle proved to be 36°. I cannot now recall what led me in this direction but I was thrilled by what the drawing revealed. John Martineau’s work in the early ‘90s showed that the Pentagram or five-pointed star (fig 5) played a significant role as an invisible underlying constraint in crop circle geometry. An actual pentagram did not appear in the fields until the arrival of the Bythorn Mandala in 1993 but, even before then, John’s work revealed the underlying geometry of many formations.

The pentagram contains five isosceles triangles which have an angle of 36° at their point. This angle is almost magical in that it determines the ratio between the two long sides (red in the diagram) and the short blue side of the triangle. The ratio is 1 to 0.618, the Golden Section.

The Golden Ratio exists in both the plant and animal kingdoms and is present in our own physical structure. It has been used for millennia by artists and architects and the pentagram, also known as the Star of Life, has been considered a magical symbol through the ages.

I was surprised to find this enigmatic angle so specifically placed here. I attempted to construct the whole star but without success. I also sought to find if it was pointing somewhere specific on the map but again there was no result.

Why was the Stonehenge formation placed so exquisitely to generate a 36° angle from the corner of the field?

A curious footnote. Diagram (fig 4) shows that a line drawn from the corner through the centre of the main circle passes exactly through the centre of circle 22. 22 is the second number of the Master Number Series which relates to contact with other dimensions. Another curious footnote. The 36 (that number again) circles on the spine of the formation have pairs of one, two or three circles beside them. Circle 21, 22’s neighbour uniquely has four on one side only.

As always, the cynic would say that this whole piece is either coincidence or numerical blather. I leave it to you to judge.

3. West Kennett Squares 4th August 1999

fig 6/fig 7

 

West Kennett (fig 6) is perhaps the formation that makes my argument most forcefully. It was a fractal of squares, based on a simple protocol. A large central square, sometimes called the Mother Square featured a smaller, Daughter square on each corner. Each of these Daughter squares, obeying  the same rules, in turn had a smaller Granddaughter square on each of its corners. Two points should be born in mind here. First, the internal corner squares of the Daughter and Granddaughter units are not visible because they appear in already flattened crop. Second, though in principal the fractal systems could recur infinitely, the crop circles have tended to carry out only three iterations after which a circle is placed where the fourth should have been. This is shown also in the Koch triangular fractals at Silbury Hill and Milk Hill in 1997.

But I digress! Many people notice poppies or other wildflowers standing straight and undamaged in the middle of a vigorous sweep of laid crop on a formation. This is a demonstration of the astonishing species-specific nature of the crop circle energy.

Photograph (fig 7) shows a tall thistle situated perfectly in the centre of the swirl forming one of the small outlying circles of the formation, the circles which I assume to be the fourth iteration of the fractal order. This thistle was the tallest plant, of any type, in the field and was also at the highest point in the field. It was photographed by Andreas Muller on the morning the formation was discovered.

I am certain that the West Kennett formation was minutely positioned in the field to offer one of the peripheral circles as a frame to display the thistle. How else could this have happened? It takes days, if not weeks, for a thistle to achieve this height. What kind of civilisation takes delight in celebrating a single plant in this way?

4. Stonehenge Ribbons 4th July 2002

fig 8

 

I wrote  about  the Stonehenge Ribbons (mainly about their numerology in relation to the Etchilhampton Cross) in the piece I posted on 20th August 2008. I want here to talk about the  uncanny precision of positioning of  the ribbons formation in relation to the adjacent barrows and tramlines.

The photograph (fig 8) shows just how carefully this elaborate formation nestles into its place. Bear in mind that it is 754 feet across. Let me examine each of the ribbon-ends in turn. First, the three ribbons touching the barrows. Starting at bottom right, or 5 o’clock, observe how the semicircular curve at the end of  the ribbon kisses the tramline surrounding the barrow. Next bottom left, or 7  o’clock, see how precisely the corner of the ribbon touches, like a finger, the second barrow. Centre left, at nine o’clock, the ribbon corner this time exactly touches the third barrow’s tramline. Each of the remaining three ribbons end with a differing, but very specific, relationship to the tramline grid. There are many lessons in design embodied here.

Elsewhere I have compared the positioning of this huge crop circle amid the barrows with the task of lowering an ocean liner into Trafalgar Square. How do they do this so perfectly?

5. Barbury Castle 1st June 2008

fig 9/fig10

 

The Barbury Castle stepped Spiral (fig 9) of 1st June 2008 was remarkable primarily for the way it contained Pi, 3.141592654... within its structure. But it was to reveal other surprises.

The photograph shows a bridle path which cuts into the edge of the circle. Others have bemoaned the poor aim of the circlemakers! “They had a whole, clear field, why did they collide with the path?” The purpose of that “collision” was revealed by Bert Janssen who showed that the bridle path lay exactly along one of the four lines which squared the circle (fig 10).

If, as tradition has it, the square represents the Material Realm, the world, while the circle represents the Spiritual Realm, then the squaring of the circle geometrically carries great meaning. It symbolises a marriage between heaven and earth which, I have suggested, is one of the crucial stories of the crop circle phenomenon.

My regular readers will know that I avoid certainties.  Nevertheless, in my experience I have never known the surface of the earth to shift, transform and adapt itself to the features of a crop circle.  Is it logical to assume then that the crop circles will occasionally shift, transform and adapt themselves to the existing features of the world?

MG

http://temporarytemples.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2008/12/8/4012465.html

Images by Steve Alexander. Fig 7 Andreas Muller. Diagrams by Michael Glickman.