Temporary Temples

The Woodborough Hill Inseminators

admin — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 09:19:48 +0000

Woodborough Hill, Alton Barnes 9th June 2012 – Wheat
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Woodborough Hill (Alton Barnes), looking towards Adam’s Grave.

Woodborough Hill is a curious place. It seems to lie at the heart of an area of agricultural fields synonymous with the crop circles. It also is one of the highest points in Wiltshire along with its neighbours Picked Hill and Milk Hill and has been the scene of some quite amazing paranormal encounters.

In 1992 it played host to a spectacular UFO sighting that is as much part of crop circle lore as bent nodes. On July 25th/26th of that year a group of UFO researchers lead by a US medical doctor, Steven Greer, were conducting a night-watch by the hill. Dr. Geer was the head of an organisation calling themselves CSETI (The Centre for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence). This group travelled all over the world to local UFO hotspots with the novel idea of trying to make contact with any UFOs they encountered. Rather than being passive observers, it was CSETI’s protocol to be pro-active; to actively seek out UFO ‘waves’ and to try to interact with the phenomenon as and when it occurred. It had developed a set of intriguing field protocols which it employed to draw attention to its teams and to signal that they were interested in contact.

As usual, the English weather was being distinctly inclement and uncooperative for the time of year, which had forced Dr. Greer’s group from the top of the hill with all their cameras and equipment. The group had earlier seen what was described as a “cartwheel of light” in the clouds at close range. Many of the group decided to call it a night and head off, but Dr. Greer and several others stayed in their vehicles on the concrete road by the bottom of the hill. At around 12.30am on the morning of the 26th July, there was a banging on the Window of Dr. Greer’s car, another group member was frantically shouting that there was a “spacecraft coming through the field”. There was no use in trying to use cameras in the wet, so Dr. Greer recorded the event using his microcassette recorder. Astonishingly, the group saw a classical UFO which they estimated to be about a quarter of a mile away they described it as having multicoloured lights that rotated counter-clockwise around the base of the craft. They estimated its size as 80-100 feet in diameter. Their report describes the craft approaching them from an opening in the trees; this created some considerable panic, with one member of the group becoming particularly distressed. The team were unable to get accurate bearing with their compass as it kept showing different directions for magnetic north. The craft then seemed to flip up, or change shape to show a triangular display of lights. In the audio recording of the event one person is heard exclaiming that it looked like a Christmas tree. Dr Greer then had the presence of mind to retrieve a halogen lamp from his car and pointing it in the direction of the lights began to signal to them. Astonishingly, the craft responded in kind. After approximately 10 ten minutes the group watched the lights slowly move away from them until they were no longer visible.This incredible sighting was the talk of the crop circle community for years to come and has made Woodborough Hill a famous and popular night-watch spot.

Atop Woodborough Hill in 1994 during an afternoon Steve and I spent with Andrew Collins and his team during his ‘Orgone 94’ experiments.

In another story two years later, another researcher Andrew Collins, was conducting research into orgone energy and its possible links to strange occurrences in the landscape. During the summer of 1994 Woodborough Hill became the site of a huge cloud buster, it drew the curious and made a very eerie sight. Andrew Collins used a combination of techniques including the cloud buster, orgone accumulators, visualisation (group meditations) and infra-red photography as part of his experiments. You can read about his work in this area in his book Alien Energy: UFOs, Ritual Landscapes and the Human Mind. It was during one of these experiments, just after dark that the group were settling down to a meditation/visualisation when they began to hear male voices and the laughter of children. Their first response had been that people were walking up the hill, in the hope of heading them off before they interrupted the experiment one group member walked down the hill to intercept them, but could find no one. The group distinctly heard the sounding of a horn, which, I believe, was recorded on an audiotape. To their general astonishment no source could be found for the sounds. It was suggested at the time that this could have been the ghostly sounds of an ancient hunt. Whatever you make of these incidents, it does seem that Woodborough Hill is a mysterious place, where, as they say, the veil runs thin.

There have been many crop circles around Woodborough Hill over the past twenty years or so. And the incidents above are only two of the more prominent stories in crop circle literature. On a night-watch at Knapp Hill during the summer of 1994, Steve and I witnessed a huge flash of light above East field, not accountable for as lightning. From Knapp Hill we were looking directly towards Woodborough Hill, the flash was photographed by Andrew Collin’s team and features in his Alien Energy book.

The Woodborough Hill formation. June 9th 2012 – Wheat.

So now, in 2012, there is yet another crop circle in one of the fields surrounding the hill. This time it is a curious set of three sperm-like creatures all seemingly travelling towards the hill. It is a curious design; there is definite movement to it. On the day we flew it was breezy, the movement of the crop as the wind blew over it only added to this impression. Surprisingly, the formation is in very young wheat. It is early to have circles in this crop type, we were lucky we could fly over it on the day it appeared, but even by the time we flew (late afternoon) you could see that the crop was springing up, or had never laid entirely flat. These formations were also relatively small, the largest of the three being approximately 100ft long. The fine lines in the centres of these formations were in some parts indistinct because of the coarseness of the crop and the delicacy of the design.

Swimming towards Woodborough Hill?

Woodborough Hill could be seen as a great pregnant belly on the landscape, or alternatively as an immense egg. There is something generative in the symbolism of this formation, something fecund about the event itself, an insemination of the landscape, or this magical hill? Interestingly, a couple of nights earlier I had a very powerful dream about witnessing a dramatic UFO sighting on the top of a mountain or hill. Not that I am claiming a definitive extraterrestrial origin for this formation, or the crop circle phenomenon, you’ll understand.

Immediately I was drawn to the centres of each of our sperm, or their nuclei if you will. If you are a regular reader of this blog you might remember that I wrote a fairly extensive blog on the ‘alien head’ formations of 2009/10 & 11. There have been a number of formations which have carried this motif over recent years, all were linked geometrically by the use of a vesica, crescent moon and in a couple of cases a crown.

These three little creatures are also of this type, they share geometric links with the ‘alien-head’ family of formations. You can read that blog again here:

Egg Heads: www.temporarytemples.co.uk/blog/a-city-of-pyramids/

Fig A – The Centre of the East Kennet formation 2011 – Vesica, crescent moon and circle with crown.

A circle, vesica and a crescent moon have been the features of this family type and a couple have carried crown-like features. Fig A Shows the centre of the East Kennet formation from 2011. You can see how the combination of circle, vesica and crescent combine to make an egg-head (or alien-head) motif. Fig B shows the Stanton St. Bernard formation of 2010 in which the head is topped with a crown very similar to what we see in the centre of each sperm in the new Woodborough Hill formation.

I have a few other curious observations to make about this formation. One is that the three sperms each have differing numbers in their tails – but they form a sequence. From the smallest to the largest the circles in their tails number 6, 7 and 8 respectively.

Fig B – Stanton St. Bernard 2010 – similar geometric components.

You will also notice that the smallest sperm has no fins, while the larger two do. I don’t understand the significance (if any) of these details, perhaps you do?

Fig C – Sketch of the centre elements; circle, vesica, crescent moon and crown.

Drawing a formation such as this is always a tricky process. While there is a definite geometry to some of it, for other parts they seem more ‘freehand’, if that is a word one can associate with the crop circles. It took some considerable time to assemble a drawing. I started by looking at their centres as this was where they were at their most geometric. Fig C shows a small preliminary sketch I made of one of them, a circle with a central vesica, a crescent moon and a crown. As I drew, I was struck by the femininity of these elements, taking centre stage in such an overall masculine image. The finished sketch took several hours, then several more hours to paint in the black ink. It might not be ‘strictly’ accurate, but near enough I think to capture the essence of the design.

Finished drawing of the Woddborough Hill Inseminators – drawing ink on watercolour paper – Phew!

Sadly, this formation became the first to be cut out this year by the farmer. I hear he was anxious to discourage hoaxers making circles in his crops. While one undoubtedly feels for the farmer, who must feel some helplessness in the face of something over which he has no control, years of experience tells us that this method simply doesn’t work. I can’t help thinking that because this formation occurred in such an immature crop, had he left the circle that come harvest time the formation would have been barley visible in the field – most of it would have certainly recovered.

KAREN ALEXANDER – JUNE 23rd 2012

Post Script
Sperm has been a subject for the circle-makers previously. The lovely Waden Hill formation of 1st July 2009 is one of my all-time favourite crop circles. It contained 28 sperms around a central space. Twenty-eight is a ‘perfect number’, so called because it is the sum of all its divisors. In keeping with the theme of fertility in this design, 28 days is also the average length of a woman’s monthly cycle. The sperm are contained within a seven-fold flower (with 14 petals). The interplay of numbers is beautiful.

The Manton Grove Polar Clock?

admin — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 16:46:26 +0000

Manton Grove, nr Marlborough, Wiltshire 2nd June 2012 – Barley
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Circle at Manton Grove – Does it show a polar clock?

The formation that appeared at Manton Grove on June 2nd was almost immediately identified as a polar clock. The formation is the first of 2012 to appear in barley. The unseasonable and changeable British weather in 2012 has meant that the crops are somewhat behind for the time of year; in 2011 we had our first barley circle on May 17th at East Kennett.

In fact there is not much barley growing in the Wiltshire countryside this summer, farmers have opted for more oilseed rape. An article on the ‘Telegraph Online’ website (posted 29th May) was headlined “Oilseed rape at record levels sparks hayfever and pesticides fears”. According to the reporter there was a 10% increase on the planting of the crop this year because of high demand for cooking oil and because frosts in other parts of Europe had killed many crops.

But this was causing concern amongst hayfever sufferers because of the pollen levels and fears that people deciding to walk in these colourful fields would be exposed to the toxic pesticides used to spray the crop – not to mention its impact on the wider environment.

The people inside the formation give it scale. It is the largest circle to have appeared in the UK this year – so far!

In another rather bizarre report on the same website (this time posted June 3rd) the headline read “Japanese tourists flocking to visit the UK’s rapeseed fields” apparently the crop is not grown in Japan and the tourists are amazed by its brilliant and beautiful colour, so much so that they flocked to photograph and visit the fields. I swear (this is utterly true) I saw on my local regional news a film report showing the intrepid Japanese getting of their tour bus to visit an oilseed rape field and the slightly bewildered, but smiling farmer only too happy to accommodate them at £1 each.

So now we have the happy phenomenon of tourists visiting farmers fields, even when there are no crop circles! Sadly the rapeseed flowers have now all but gone from our fields (or happily if you are a hayfever sufferer), and the crop circles have moved into barley.

(I have put links to the news stories at the bottom of this blog so you can see them for yourself)

Polar Clock app on the iPhone

The Manton formation is by far the largest circle to have appeared this year, I estimate that it is between 200ft – 250ft in diameter. At first glance it seems to be a circle containing a group of concentric rings of different lengths, but it was not long before people began to see it’s distinct similarity to a polar clock. If you google ‘polar clock’ you will immediately see colourful versions of the clock appear, especially if you search for pictures. The premise is simple, dates and time are displayed as concentric rings within a round clock face. Many polar clocks also change colour as each ring travels around its 360 degrees. There are polar clock apps for both apple and android phones. You can even download a polar clock screen saver.

There are some who have questioned this interpretation and I think that’s healthy. There has been at least one astronomical interpretation and there are many who are still looking for another meaning to its design. As ever, I am open to all ideas. There is also some questioning of how a time and date might be arrived at if we don’t know the specific order or designation for each ring – this is a good point – most polar clocks allow for you to rearrange, add or subtract the rings as it suits you. However, there is a kind of standard order and when this is applied the result does make sense.

Working from the centre:

Ring 1 – Month
Ring 2 – Date (day of the Month)
Ring 3 – Day (day of the week)
Ring 4 – Hour
Ring 5 – Minute
Ring 6 – Second
There is no ring for a specific year.

Drawing of the Manton Drove formation

As with all these things you have to accept some margin of error without a theodolite to accurately measure the angles. The results of this methodology show that the date is August 4-6th, a Saturday at approx 17 hours 46 minutes and 52 seconds – again there is room for hours, minutes or seconds either side of these.

If it is August the 4th, that could mean it is a date later this summer as August 4th falls on a Saturday this year. If it is August 6th – the next August 6th on a Saturday would be 2016. Make of this what you will, it is an open ended interpretation not a definitive one.

Drawing a polar clock by hand is somewhat tricky as each ring (apart from minutes and seconds) have to be divided differently. If you want to try it for yourself I would advise you use a protractor to help you, this is not an exercise that would benefit in anyway from the classical compass and straight edge (only) method.

If you take the order I have given to the rings:

Ring 1 – Month: divide by 12 (30° per month)
Ring 2 – Date: depending on the month divide by 28/29/30 or 31
Ring 3 – Day: Divide by 7 – you have to be slightly creative here as 360 does not divide equally into 7.
Ring 4 – Hour: Divide by 24 (15° per hour)
Ring 5 – Minute: Divide by 60 (6° per minute)
Ring 6 – Second: As per minutes.

You could try changing the ring designations around and see if any other coherent date is possible.

Manton Drove with colour – based on classical polar clock colourations. Drawing ink & promarkers on Watercolour paper

There have been several formations over the years that have showed times and dates, or planetary positioning indicating a date. I guess only time will tell if this is a clock, and if it is, if its encoded information is meaningful. Perhaps the design has no meaning – who knows! I think that’s why they call it the crop circle mystery.

I recently received an email asking me if I had tried spinning the circle to see what would happen. This query is based on Benham’s disk – an experiment where black and white images are spun and can produce the perception of colour depending on the frequency. This is because it is human perception that interprets frequencies as colours. This is a fascinating notion. I will be pursuing this to see what happens – I’ll let you know. There is a link to a web page below with instruction on creating your own experiment.

KAREN ALEXANDER – JUNE 16th 2012

Useful Links:

Record levels of Oilseed Rape

Tourists flock to see rapeseed fields

Polar Clock

Benham’s Disk

Quirky Quintuplet: Back to Square One?

admin — Sat, 19 May 2012 12:13:57 +0000

Eaton Water Copse, nr Hannington, Wilts May 12th 2012
Oilseed Rape (canola)
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Water Eaton Copse, nr Hannington, North of Swindon, Wilts. Reported 12th May 2012 – Oilseed Rape.

The third formation of the year was reported on May the 12th and was located at the rather elaborately named ‘Eaton Water Copse’ (near to Hannington) in Wilts, just North of Swindon. While there are many that would argue that Swindon does not have many endearing qualities, one only has to look at the countryside surrounding it to see that even though its town centre may not be the most picturesque, its encompassing landscape more than makes up for it. The rolling hills and grand expanses of farmers fields; a collage all shapes, sizes and colours, make a beautiful frame for the concrete and red brick town centre.

Swindon holds a very special place in my heart, not because I have ever spent much time there, or because I have any particularly fond memories of events there, but because it is the home of one of my favourite literary heroines ‘Thursday Next’ – Jasper Ffordes wonderfully funny, clever and unconventional creation. Sorry I digress!

The formation was a quintuplet; this is a ‘five dot on a dice’ design, one circle in the centre and four circles surrounding it in equidistant positions. It is a classical crop circle design-type. There has been a whole catalogue of variations on this pattern, with circles of varying sizes, some connected by a ring, others not, even one where (most unusually), the four orbiting circles touched the centre circle. Researcher and geometer Michael Glickman affectionately identifies them as the mother circle (in the centre) and her daughters (orbiting circles). This is so endearing that it is now how I think of them as well!

Drawing of the Eaton Water Copse formation. Ink on cartridge paper, finished with a watery blue watercolour in honour of its pretty location name.

A glimpse through any of the early books about the phenomenon will throw up a whole raft of quintuplets. While the quintuplet is essentially about the number four (it is four-fold in nature), it does have a curious connection to five through its anchoring centre circle. The quintuplet has long fascinated crop circle researchers/geometers (as evidenced above), because it has been such a reoccurring design, but it was geometer Allan Brown that really propelled the quintuplet into superstardom. He showed that almost every quintuplet-shaped crop circle carried a hidden property. That hidden property was that they all Squared the Circle.

In seasons past it may have been easy to forget the humble quintuplets in the face of other more complex and intricate designs, but after Allan Brown’s seminal contribution to the subject, it is almost impossible to look at each new quintuplet without asking “I wonder how it squares the circle?”

Squaring the Circle in the design of the Water Eaton Copse formation. Apparently, the phrase ‘Water Eaton’ means ‘farm by the water’.

For those of you that don’t know about the Squaring of the Circle, and for those who need a quick refresher, it is a curious and rather old riddle – how to create (with just a compass and straight edge), a circle and a square who’s perimeters or areas are equal. This may seem like a strange conundrum indeed, but there was a rationale behind this, it was not just some arbitrary geometrical or arithmetical exercise. In fact it carried a great and noble symbolic significance and that was nothing less than the reconciliation of Heaven and Earth. Traditionally, and symbolically, the circle represents heaven, whether by its unity (it encompasses all), or by its similarity in shape to the canopy of the sky (the heavens). Numerous philosophers and theologians including Empedocles, Hermes Trismegistus, St. Augustine, Pascal, Voltaire and more have summed the concept up when they said, “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere”. Similarly, the square has been traditionally and symbolically associated with the Earth, material reality. It is the original foundation block of matter, or as geometer

The lilac circle & the yellow square are not shown in the field, but constrain the proportions of the design nevertheless.

Michael Schneider calls it “Mother Substance”. Therefore to unite the circle and the square was seen as a great symbolic act. Ever wonder why many temples and churches carry a dome? This is exactly why. They marry the circle (the dome), with the square (the body of the building). In this way these buildings create a sacred space; they are a place where heaven and earth meet. One cannot talk of the Squaring of the Circle without talking of Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’; his famous drawing depicting a man stood inside both a circle and a square. Often cited as an exercise illustrating the portions of the human form, this work of art also carries an esoteric (hidden) meaning. Mankind too, is a meeting of heaven and earth, the divine and the profane. Man has an immortal, incorporeal soul and a temporal, material body.

The Squaring of the Circle carries within it this great human truth, but it also carries another and that truth is best expressed in the way in which we must seek to accomplish this task – with just a compass and a straight edge. With modern computers we can easily (okay then perhaps it’s not easy, but it is possible), to calculate the exact circumference or area of a circle, but traditionally this was not so. It is why we are all drilled at school in the delights of ‘pi’. Pi is an irrational number (a number that has no whole number solution – or whose decimal places go on ad infinitum), and we use it to approximate the perimeter or area of a circle by applying the formula 2 ∏ R (or ∏ R2) – pi is 22/7 or 3.142… Just as the true measure of a circle can never be fully known to the geometer, neither can the full measure of God or Heaven ever be fully known by man. However, conversely, with the square this is a simple calculation, symbolising that although man may be able to measure and manipulate the material world, he is unable to say such of the divine and its realm.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’: An immortal, incorporeal soul and a temporal, body of matter.

Many have speculated upon the inclusion of the Squaring of the Circle in crop circle design. But it seems to me that it is one of the fundamentals in creating a sense of sacredness in their spaces. I have often pondered as to why so many intuitively feel that there is a spiritual component to the circles, perhaps this is one reason. While many may not be aware of the subtle nuances of the geometry of the formation they might be visiting, I think intuitively we are drawn to such spaces and they in turn evoke such feelings. Perhaps this incorporeal marriage of the circle and the square in some crop circles can be sensed unconsciously, intuitively, even spiritually?

As I am fond of doing, I would like to relate some of these concepts to those of the philosopher Jean Gebser’s theory of consciousness change. If you are new to this blog, I apologise – please read previous blogs. Gebser talked of consciousness ‘mutation’ rather than evolution, one of his overriding concerns was that people should understand that when conscious changes (mutates), it does not throw off and discard the coats of the old, but it integrates them, sews them into a new garment – in other words all previous stages of consciousness (our origins) remain ever present. There is a tendency to think that consciousness change means only the end of the old and the beginning of the new, but it more of an assimilation of the new with everything we already are, I believe it is why Gebser called his fifth and next conscious stage ‘The Integral’. To me, the reoccurrence of the quintuplets are the ever-present origin of the circle phenomenon, still present and yet being constantly integrated into everything has come after them, season after season, symbolically, this is just magical.

Golden Section callipers laid on the drawing show that special proportion at work in the design.

The Eaton Water Copse formation had one other geometric secret and that was that it contained a golden section proportion – just like its predecessor at Yarnbury Castle last month. In my last blog I talked at length about the Golden Section as a transcending third component, and I would like to revisit some of that here.

The Golden Section (or Phi) is found in the proportions of all living things. It is found in the proportions of the human body and in the division and organisation of branches and leaves on trees and plants, to name just two of an almost infinite list of living systems this proportion governs and in which it is found. It is for this reason that the Golden Section is often referred to as ‘the fingerprint of the divine’. Like the tide leaves a wave upon the sand, so the divine, in creating life, leaves its own unique fingerprint on everything it touches via the Golden Section. The human mind has been shown to have an unconscious/intuitive connection to this proportion; simply, we consider it beautiful. Whether in the proportions of a face, a rose or in the spiral of a far-away galaxy, we are drawn to it like a moth to a flame, we seem to recognise its intrinsically ‘spiritual’ nature. Once again the Golden Section has, for thousands of years, been designed into the proportions of sacred buildings, some even growing by increments of phi as they were enlarged and added to. I go back to me earlier question of why many believe there is a spiritual component to the crop circles – it’s built in!

Flying over Water Eaton Copse: A beautiful sea of yellow for as far as the eye could see…

If the Golden section is a transcending third, a way of bridging the duality of our three-dimensional world, then what about the Squaring of the Circle? It seems to me that this too is yet another way in which the duality of reality can be reconciled. If the crop circles are some kind of catalyst, inspiration and commentary upon the changes we are undergoing at this moment in time it seems to me they are perfectly in sync with us!

Both the Golden Section and the Squaring of the Circle also seemed linked with the quantum mechanical notions of complementiarity and entanglement. Each is a model of complimentiarity; the idea that there is another way of complementing another that does not equate to precise equality, or quantity, but is based more on the quality of the relationship. Each is also an entanglement of parts, where each is an essential part of the other (and a greater whole) and when conjoined, create ‘spooky’ effects on human consciousness and the human spirit.

Steve and I finally got to fly over the Water Eaton Copse formation several days after it had been reported, it looked simply stunning in the yellow sea of the oilseed rape field it occupied. As we flew the farmer was spraying in the field, no doubt with some toxic cocktail some in our society have sanctioned because it is expedient and profitable. I am told he wants no visitors, believe you me, the last thing anyone wants to do is to breathe that in, or get it on their skin. I think it’s best we leave the farmer alone. Instead, you can see a collection of Steve’s beautiful photographs of this circle (and the one nearby at Ashmead Break) on our 2012 Image Library – we hope you enjoy them!

KAREN ALEXANDER – MAY 19th 2012

Transcendental Triangulation: Two Becomes Three

admin — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:05:05 +0000

Yarnbury Castle, April 28th 2012 – Oilseed Rape (canola)
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The Yarnbury Castle formation 28th April 2012

The second formation of the 2012 crop circle season arrived on the 28th of April. Located by Yarnbury Castle hill-fort, it was just a stone’s throw away from Stonehenge along the A303. By the time we had managed to arrange to fly over it the circle was several days old, the inclement English weather had kept us at bay. The night the circle had appeared had been no better, heavy rain and strong winds had buffeted the British Isles. It has been the wettest April on record, according to the UK Met (Meteorological) Office. Paradoxically, almost the entirety of Southern England has a hosepipe ban in place; it would need to rain consistently until December before the ban could be lifted the water utility companies tell us, even though there has been widespread flooding. Such is our topsy-turvy world in 2012.

Yarnbury Castle (or Hill-fort) fig.02 and 03, is of course, not a fortification in the traditional sense. There are no buildings or battlements. Dating back to the iron-age these types of earthworks are simple enclosures with a bank and a ditch, which would have probably encircled a settlement. Apparently, the scoop shapes inside the formation are a mix of old quarry marks and 18th century sheep pen enclosures. Yarnbury Castle looks magnificent from the air it is one of the larger hill-forts in the UK with well defined banks and ditches. Alas, there is no public access to this amazing landmark on foot; the fort is on private property.

Fig.02 Yarnbury Castle Hillfort by the A303

The crop circle at Yarnbury, was on the opposite side of the road to the hill-fort in a field of yellow oilseed rape. We flew over the formation in the late afternoon/early evening and the light was a warm buttery gold. A stormy weather front had just cleared the southern half of the UK leaving amazing visibility, we could see all the way to the coast to Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower and the Needles by the Isle of Wight (50 miles or so away). It was hard to think we had driven up from the south coast just an hour before, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the visibility so crystal clear. The landscape beneath us was a patchwork of brilliant green and bright yellow fields. I noted how early in the year it still was, many of the trees we flew over had not yet fully got their leaves.

Fig.03 Yarnbury Castle by Sir Richard Colt Hoare

The circle itself was by the side of the field close to one of its edges, I would estimate it was in the region of 80-90ft in diameter. It looked as if the formation was on a bit of a rise. The design reminded me of the 2007 Oliver’s Castle formation fig.04, if for no other reason that it too was in oilseed rape and was a circle with a wide outer ring and concentric arcs inside. The 2007 formation had been on a much larger scale though, and remained pristine, as it was not ever subjected to the ravages of stormy weather. I had seen images of the formation on the internet before we flew, so I knew the field had sustained some wind and rain damage, but the circle surprised me as it looked much more

Fig.04 Oliver’s Castle formation 2007 – 300ft approx.

Fig.05 Geometry of the formation begins with a classical vesica piscis

Fig.06 C to B indicates the radius of the traditionally placed third circle to create an equidistant triquetra. A to B indicates the slightly different radius of the circle in the Yarnbury formation.

Black ink shows the finished design.

defined than I had imagined, and much neater too. Oilseed rape is a much coarser crop than say barley or wheat, and the smaller the formation, or the more detailed it is, the less defined it can look in this awkward, unwieldy crop.

The flight over, I wanted to get the design on the drawing board. I could see that we had a circle with a wide outer ring and that we had some intersecting concentric arcs. I could also see what appeared to be another arc intersecting in an opposite direction and that the concentric arcs had been flattened in an opposing pattern either side of this. As I began to draft out a preliminary drawing, I realised that what might be helpful would not just be to draw the formation itself, but also to draw in the radiating geometry. There are times when in order to see a fuller picture of a formation that it is informative to draw all the shapes that make up the design, even if they are not visible in the field. Sometimes it can reveal hidden aspects or explain the placement of certain elements. This particular formation makes much more sense when you can see the radiating shapes.

The design begins with a double circle, two circles in a Vesica Piscis relationship fig.05. To create the concentric rings, one of the circles is divided into six, a central circle with five equally spaced concentric rings. Then using the point at which the top arc intersects the large wide ring around the perimeter of the formation another circle of equal diameter is drawn, which connects with the bottom perimeter of the formation in the centre. What you realise is that although this formation appears to be about duality; the Vesica, the opposing flattened arcs, it has this partially hidden third element. Here was a pattern that talked much of duality, but which also had a mysterious third element – the third circle. This third circle was not in the traditional ‘third’ position that would turn the vesica created by the first two circles into a triquetra (or a tri-vesica if you will), but was placed in a slightly skewed position. See fig.06 We had a ‘irrational’ positioning of the third, rather than a logical progression of the design in to three equal parts. This is significant.

For anyone who heard the presentation I recently gave to the Earth Spirit Conference in Vermont, you will know that the idea of duality within the crop circles is something that interests me greatly. I have often talked at length in these blogs too, of the notion that something is beginning to change in human perception and that this may be symbolised in the use of duality, opposition, the vesica, interference patterns etc. in the design of many crop circles. During my Vermont presentation I showed a whole raft of crop circles whose design contained some element of duality, and those were the only ones I had time to show!

Adding colour shows the way in which the bottom pattern of the formation is divided.

Much is talked about of a shift in human consciousness in crop circle, circles. I think symbolically this prevalence of two-ness is directly related to this idea. Our current three-dimensional, mental/rational consciousness state, is based on duality. We define our reality – our worldview – through opposites; night/day, black/white, right/wrong, real/not real, left/right… the list is almost endless, but what the crop circles have also shown us, with uncanny regularity, is a progressive triangulation of duality. This is important because it complements what is going on in other worldview-shifting subjects. Quantum physics is a much-quoted subject by paranormal researchers, and it is, as often as not, misquoted too, but it does have something very interesting to say about duality, and the way in which the quantum world-view changes our understanding of the duality of reality. In the classic ‘Double Slit’ experiment it was shown that light can be both a particle and a wave. We hear this so often now that it is no longer surprising, but we should be surprised, very surprised, astonished in fact, if we are

The finished drawing - Pencil, drawing ink and watercolour on cartridge paper.

really engaged in thinking about the full implication of this fact. Quantum physics changes opposition to complementiarity, it says that something can be two-things at the same time, in other words, it transcends duality and unites seeming opposites into a new vision of unity. I think it is almost too fascinating for words that the crop circles seem to mirror this. We have had vesicas, mirror image opposites, interference patterns, yin/yang formations as crop circles, but we have also had triangulations, interference patterns with three points and even a triple yin/yang – surely a very irrational notion!

The fields beneath us were a patchwork of brilliant green & bright yellow fields…

Jung talked of a transcending third, he called it the ‘transcendent-function’. Jung said, “As a rule it occurs when analysis has constellated the opposites so powerfully that a union or synthesis of the personality becomes an imperative necessity…” However, the uniting third is not a logical synthesis, but an unexpected and seemingly irrational solution. There is something important here about how duality cannot be resolved through logic alone, it needs an ‘irrational third’ to transcend it, because to simply unite opposites is to cancel them out, or they annihilate each other! The key word here is ‘transcend’. If we are ever to move to a new state of human consciousness we have to find our ‘irrational transcending third’, to make that leap to a deeper more complete worldview. We have to understand how something can be two things at the same time without destroying, or cancelling-out the opposites.

In another uncanny echo of this stuff of consciousness change, the crop circles carry with them their own corrosive duality which seems to lie at the core of its being; that is the argument of real vs. not real. How can these two opposites be transcended? It is an interesting question. What could be a transcending-third?

It seems that we have reached a point, where just as Jung describes, our world-view and society has constellated the opposites to such a degree that it has become corrosive to ourselves and our civilization with extremism, materialism and over identification with the ego. A synthesis of sorts is fast becoming an imperative necessity! It is clear to me that this change is already been worked upon by our unconscious and perhaps collective unconscious, and is echoed in the crop circles. Finding our transcendental third could be our passport to a new and more harmonious reality, it is the quest of our age!

Phi as the Transcendental Third

Fig.07 Golden Section callipers laid over the Yarnbury formation. Does this suggest a Golden Section ratio hidden in the design?

I have recently been engaged in some playful speculation (as is my nature) with fellow crop circle researcher Jonathan DeVierville. As we have talked about the multifold symbolism of the crop circles, we have been discussing the triangulation of opposites and the idea of Jung’s transcendental third in relation to consciousness shift and the crop circles. So, as above, so below, as without, so within, we wondered if there might be a geometric model for the transcendental third and we have been wondering out loud (well over Skype) about the role, function, symbolism and philosophy of Phi (the Golden Section/Mean). Phi is essentially a ratio, but it is a three-way ratio. Traditionally ratios are two-way 1:2 etc. but Phi has three harmonious proportions.

Fig.07a The Golden Section. Is this venerated proportion a geometric model for a transcendental third?

In fig.07a, we can see the way this works: AB is to AC as AC is to CB, or the lesser is to the greater is as the greater is to the whole. The golden section is a way of ‘splitting’ or dividing something so that each part retains its own unique relationship to the whole, yet each part is not equal in the quantative sense. This is a fascinating notion as it is an irrational way of dividing something, unlike dividing by two, which is logical, practical and equal. Phi is known in ‘mathematical speak’ as an irrational number because it has no whole number resolution, its decimal points stretch to infinity. But I wonder if its irrationality is more than just mathematical?

Did you know Phi (capital P) is 1.618… and phi (small p) is 0.618…?!

As I looked at the Yarnbury formation, I was drawn to the relationship between the two sides of the linear curved line in the bottom section of the formation, I wondered if the unusual placement of the third circle which created that curve had some deeper significance, so I decided I would see if there was a phi relationship at work. I downloaded a blue print from the internet to make a golden section caliper. After I had made the caliper (cut out of card and joined together with a few split pins), I placed it on my drawing of the formation and fig.07 shows the result. I shared this with researcher and geometer Michael Glickman, who like me found it interesting, even if both of us agreed we didn’t fully understand it. But here is the picture, make of it what you will – are we being shown the transcendental third in the golden section? Is the Golden section at work in the Yarnbury formation? I guess only more playful, creative thinking and contemplation will tell!

KAREN ALEXANDER – MAY 7th 2012

“My God, it’s full of stars”

admin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:38:01 +0000

Jubilee Plantation 2011 & the last known words of Dr. Dave Bowman

Jubilee Plantation, nr Cherhill, Wilts. 15th August 2011

The Jubilee Plantation crop circle (August 10th 2011) was the last formation of the 2011 season, and was perhaps the most ambitious and complex of the year. It carries a small connection with the first formation of the 2012 season (Hill Barn April 15th 2012), in that it too was described as being messy inside and was written off as a piece of mindless vandalism. Whatever the Jubilee Plantation formation was, it could hardly be classified as mindless.

2010 had seen the first explicitly 4-dimensional formation, a Tesseract (4-D cube) at Fosbury Camp After years of showing us 2-D and 3-D images the crop circle phenomenon had evolved to another level. I must admit I had not expected that the crop circles would make another dimensional leap so soon, but then what do I know!

Fosbury Camp 2010 4D Cube (first 4D Image)

Allington Down 1999 3D Cube (first 3D Image)

The beautiful star-like pattern at the centre of the design is undoubtedly a Penteract (a 5-D cube), from fig.3 you can see how I have overlaid a penteract over a photo of the formation to show just how accurate it was. There are several ways to depict a penteract, the first thing we have to understand is that this image is what is called an orthographic projection, which is used to show the shadows cast by a higher dimensional objects in our 3-D reality. We cannot see a penteract as it would appear in 5th dimensional space, because we are limited by our 3-D existence, but we can calculate what it would look like. A penteract has 32 vertices, 80 edges, 80 square faces, 40 cubic cells, and 10 tesseract hypercells. Blimey!

Fig. 3 The Jubilee Plantation formation with overlaid Penteract (5D Cube)

The unfolding of dimensions in crop circle design has evolved beside the systematic unfolding of number in those same designs. The movement from one dimension to the next could be symbolically seen as some kind of ‘deepening’, or may signal the preparation in the ‘collective unconscious’ for an assimilation of a new depth. Often the unconscious can be seen to be working with material long before it is fully manifested into the conscious mind and into the world, I find this deeply interesting.

The evolution of human art has also followed a similar pattern, the development of dimension in paintings has often been remarked upon. The first truly 3-dimensional painting appeared in around 1455-60, a painting titled ‘The Flagellation Of Christ’ by Italian artist Piero della Francesca. It is generally accepted as the first painting to successfully add depth to height and width. It is interesting to note that the painter was also a mathematician and a geometer, and wrote much on proportion and perspective.

The Flagellation of Christ by Piero Della Francesca (1455-60). The first 3D painting?

He was a great influence upon Fra Luca Pacioli, and his ideas were illustrated in one of Pacioli’s books by none other than the great Leonardo Da Vinci. What this painting showed was that although we have always lived in a 3-dimensional world, and that humans have always seen the world in three dimensions, we had at that point in time only just began to assimilate that knowledge fully into our conscious minds – allowing us to project it onto board and canvas for the first time.

As we reach finally reach 2012, I wonder if that is going to happen again, only this time with an assimilation of other realities/dimensions into full consciousness? Perhaps the idea of the fourth dimension is symbolic of that. Clearly, we do not live in a 4-dimensional world and clearly we are not equipped to perceive fully dimensions beyond our own, but I think (as Holmes would say) that ‘something is afoot’ and that it has to do with consciousness, dimensions, perspectives, space and time.

Jean Gebser
Stages of Consciousness Mutation:

1. Archaic
2. Magical
3. Mythical
4. Mental
5. Integral

It was philosopher and linguist Jean Gebser who first tracked human art and it’s evolution through dimensions to describe ‘mutations’ (as he called them) in human perception and consciousness. He described four stages, through which we have thus far moved, and a further fifth stage that has yet to fully manifest. The ‘Mental Stage’, the 4th stage we currently inhabit, is firmly rooted in 3-dimensions, but about his fifth ‘Integral Stage’, Gebser said that another huge change in perception would occur that would trigger as bigger step as the one represented by Piero della Francesca’s painting.

I think it would be fair to say that our current ‘Mental Stage’ is deeply rooted in classical Newtonian and Cartesian physics, but I wonder how a general understanding of the relatively new ‘Quantum World’ would change our general perception of reality and our place within it. I think there is something interesting here to be looked at. Quantum Physics breaks almost all the tenets of traditional science (the greatest invention of three-dimensional thinking and Gebser’s Mental Stage) it violates our understanding of reality, locality, causality, continuity and determinism. We have yet to fully understand its violation of duality, where one thing can now be said to be two things at the same time. Large segments of the general population do not understand (or perhaps have never even heard of) the new tenets of quantum science; entanglement, non-locality and complementiarity.

These new tenets will not only shift the way we understand reality, but will also in turn affect our consciousness. How will consciousness look after these new ideas, perceptions and perspectives have been assimilated, how might we project them into the world?

Painting of the Jubilee Plantation formation 2011 by Karen Alexander Watercolour and Inks on Cartridge Paper

As I drew the Jubilee Plantation formation I was struck by two things; the first was its rotational (spiral like) properties, (this is self evident by looking at the five beautifully spinning crescents around the perimeter of the design), but the second was how the centre also had a rotational element. The centre pattern is drawn using a similar methodology to the drawing of a decagram star (ten-pointed star). There are in fact three (I think) different decagram stars, this particular one joins every third point around a circle divided into ten. If you follow this methodology (as I did), you end up drawing around the circle. The centre of the formation then contains two further smaller (nested) decagrams, each nested in the centre of the previous one, three iterations in all. If you follow the same method of construction for the next two nested stars you end up winding a spiral right into the heart of the penteract and the centre of the formation itself. It was a very satisfying synchronicity to find that the inner and outer parts of the formation complimented one another in this way. The crescents are not part of the penteract but they are rooted within its geometry. To me this is crop circle design at its very best, bringing together seemingly disparate components and entangling them in a complementary way. I see non-locality, entanglement & complementiarity at work here – symbolically of course. I think this is portentous and highly significant.

To look into the Jubilee Plantation formation is to fall headlong into another world, another reality, or at least to glimpse it. To me it is a embryonic projection of a new stage in human consciousness manifested in our 3-dimensional reality – it is therefore, in fact, anything but mindless, it is, in my humble opinion, filled with mind.

This circle reminded me of the final words of Dr David Bowman, the ill-fated fictional commander of the USS Discovery in Clarke’s and Kubrick’s mighty vision ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. As he approached the ultimate unknown, the mighty Monolith, he exclaimed “My God, it’s full of stars”, I felt like saying the same thing I as drew the centre of the Jubilee Plantation formation. Consciousness is the next great unknown, the metaphorical modern Monolith, are we about to transcend our current limitations of perception and, like Dave Bowman, become something entirely new?

KAREN ALEXANDER – APRIL 25th 2012

The First Formation of the 2012 Season…

admin — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:12:24 +0000

The End of One Great Cycle & the Beginning of Another

Drawing of the Hill Barn Formation 2012 – Reported 15th April.

The first formation of the 2012 Crop Circle season (in the UK) has arrived. It is located near Lurkley Hill in East Kennet. One popular reporting site has the location given as Hill Barn, East Kennet. It is a circular design, containing a simple twelve-petalled flower. The petals are standing, apart from an area in the centre where they all intersect, creating a flattened twelve-pointed star at the centre of the formation. The circle appears to be around 60-80ft – covering almost two sets of tractor lines. From the images available, it seems that the circle may have been there a couple of days, certainly the crop appears to not be very flat. This could be due to any number of reasons including; phototropism (if the circle has indeed been there a couple of days), or it could be an indicator that the immature plants are just not ready yet to hold the impression of a formation. A first report indicates the formation is messy inside, but there is, as yet, no other reports to compare it with. Certainly, rapeseed formations are prone to damage, I’ve never seen a truly pristine one. At this early stage we simply await more information.

The Flower of Life

The first circle of the season is almost universally greeted with elation and cynicism in equal amounts. Elation for those who love the circles and cynicism for those who are perpetually conflicted by the whole phenomenon and are unable to turn the cynicism they feel into action and withdraw from the subject entirely. It is one of the ‘greater mysteries’ of the entire phenomenon why those that deride the subject continue to engage with it so vigorously.

It seems perhaps appropriate that the 2012 season should start with a twelve-fold formation. It has already been labelled a ‘flower of life’, although I am unsure exactly what that phrase means in this context. I always thought that a ‘flower of life’ was a circular mandala of intersecting circles that had a distinct 6-fold geometry, although I readily admit that I am no expert on that particular branch of study.

However, all of that said, twelve is an important number in human culture. It is has also been a number that has pervaded crop circle geometry over the years. If you take the time to look back through the many forms the circle-makers have offered us, you find many twelves. Traditionally, twelve is associated with time and space. We divide our day into twelve hours and our night in to twelve hours. We divide our year into twelve months and our year is also ruled by twelve constellations that make up our zodiac. In the UK (as in some other cultures), twelve has been used as the base number of both counting and measuring systems. The UK’s currency was base-12, before our current metric (base-10) currency system was introduced in 1971. Imperial measuring systems also used base-12, for example there are 12 inches in a foot. Many cultures were organised into twelve tribes, and of course there were the twelve disciples of Christ’s inner circle. Almost all its associations pertain to the passing of time and the measurement of space, but it is also a traditional way of diving and organising cultural and social structures.

Twelve can be divided by, 2, 3, 4 & 6, it is often found in tiling and other ancient decorative arts. Triangles, squares and hexagons can be picked out of twelve fold designs, and often twelve is associated with imagery of the World as a whole. It can also be seen in our musical scales when we add in half-tones to a piano keyboard – seven notes, plus five half-tones. I think twelve is a ‘satisfying’ number. There is something about it’s correspondences and connections are edifying and harmonious, perhaps it has something to do with the relative ease by which it can be divided into further sub-components and constituents.

If 2012 truly is the end of one great cycle of time and the beginning of another, then twelve, would perhaps symbolise that transitional point, after all, thirteen (the next number) is the number of transformation.

KAREN ALEXANDER – APRIL 18th 2012

Some Historical Twelves…

Honey Street 2002 – classical division by 12

Stephen Castle Down 2000 – soap bubbles

Bishops Sutton 2000 – more soap bubbles

East Kennet 2005 – 12 paperclips

Windmill Hill 2002 – the relationship between 12, 3 & 4

Lurkley Hill 2005 – relationship between 4 & 12

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This…

admin — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:23:00 +0000

The Roundway formation, 23rd July 2011

1. The Roundway Melatonin Molecule
of 2011

Every now and again, there comes a circle that is really unique, original and inventive; the Roundway formation of 2011 was one such formation. Seemingly a long, cascading, daisy-chain of flowers, stems and petals, there was something rather unassuming about the design, yet it was soon obvious that something more serious lay beneath its pretty, summery exterior.

As I write it is February of 2012 and most of the crop circle community is already expressing its excitement about the 2012 season. But I am such a slow coach, I’m still trying to fully absorb the crop circles of 2011! To me there were so many fantastic circles last season that it’s taking time to get to grips with them all, to sketch the ones I’m ‘drawn’ to and to try to tease out some meaning from their magnificent forms. Perhaps it is a sign of growing older, but perhaps it is equally symbolic of my aversion to the stamp collecting and superficiality of some of the popular interest in the crop circles. I am of course, as excited as everyone else when a new circle appears, sometimes as giddy as a school girl (I know that may be hard for some of you to imagine!), but I prefer to savour my favourites, revisit them, not abandon them as soon as some new beau arrives in town. Perhaps, I sometimes wonder, this is some reflection of our modern consumerist society, in which every ‘new thing’ is fickly abandoned in favour of every ‘new thing’. We gallop hungrily through information and news at an alarming rate in our online travails, but I also wonder, how much of that sinks in, or how much is truly understood or appreciated? To simply consume information, is not the same as understanding it, or being able to see its implications.

To appreciate the circles is to want to spend time with them, much like a good friend. I like to look at them, listen to them, and even engage in a little play with them. I like to feel that I got to know them a little and that in doing so I might be able to understand them better. The internet may have brought us ever more speedy news and images of new circles, but what has been sacrificed is a deeper engagement with the formations and most importantly: considered comment. So much of the interpretive ‘work’ applied to the circles is instantaneous, literal and shallow. I am constantly flabbergasted that they are cursorily consumed and accepted en masse with not another thought. Once a circle has been seen and some ‘soundbite’ or hurried inference is made, the case is effectively closed. I find this incredibly sad. Perhaps we have become so accustomed to being spoon-fed information, that we rarely question it, or even give it a second thought?

2. The Melatonin molecule shown as a 2D diagram

The Roundway formation of 2011 was something new. We had not seen a design anything like it before. Within hours it had been rightly pointed out that the pattern was some kind of play on a molecular diagram of Melatonin. This was very curious, many had mistakenly assumed that it was perhaps some kind of psychedelic, and at first I thought it might be Seratonin (our happy hormone), Melatonin seemed an off-beat substance to be presenting us with.

While I contemplated this, I decided to draw the formation. It was fantastic to draw! It was one of those formations that just danced itself onto the page. It was also almost entirely self-generating, each part of the formation anticipated the next, so that practically no guess work or field measurements were needed.

3. The first circle, division by 6 then 12, allows the petals to be defined and drawn in.

I began with the six-fold round-petalled flower, dividing a circle into six, by creating an internal six-fold flower. This is achieved by establishing a straight line through the centre of the circle. Then keeping the compasses at the same diameter as the circle, you place one end of the compasses on the perimeter of the circle where the straight line intersects and draw a curve (which travels through the centre of the circle) until it intersects another point of the perimeter, then you place the compass point on the place where that curve intersects the perimeter and draw another curve – so on and so on – until an six-fold thin-petalled flower emerges. The diameter of each of the six circular petals in the finished formation was extrapolated by drawing a circle that fitted exactly into the space between each of the thin petals. The further division of the circle into twelve allowed for the compass to be placed at the precise centre between the two petals to draw the circle in. This small circle diameter was then used to create all the ‘round petal’ circles in the formation.

4. Here six and five make nine! Love, life and birth – or re-generation.

Before I had gotten around to drawing the formation out in its entirety I had already drawn the central component on of the formation – a six-fold flower conjoined to a five-fold flower. I was fascinated by this conjunction. It is quite unusual to see such a side-by-side marriage of two different shapes. Usually, the combination of numbers is more centralised, or overlaid in crop circle design. Six is the number of best economy, harmony and love, while five is the number of life and the self-generation of all living things. To see love and life hand-in-hand, so to speak, was beautiful – what a marriage indeed. Five and six equal eleven, the number that signals ‘access to other dimensions’, but in this formation the particular conjoining of these two flowers produced only nine petals. Nine is the number of birth or threshold – Love, Life and regeneration was indicated – here numbers are much more than mere quantities, they are sheer poetry.

5. The six petalled flower conjoined with another circle (left) divided by six, that places the arms and circles at one end of the formation, and on the other side (right) conjoined with a circle divided by five.

The rest of the formation was made from the conjoining of many more six-fold circles. Even the placement of the arms were guided by circles of the same size, which were similarly divided into six. In picture 5 you can see the six-petalled flower nestled between two circles, one divided by six and another divided by five. On the page, I used a straight edge drawn between the two petals that would be attached to the five-fold flower to draw a pentagon, using that line as one side of the five-sided shape – then enclosing it in a circle. This gave the precise size (diameter) of the five-fold flower, which was smaller than the six-fold flower and the rest of the circles used to underpin the formation. Rather than thinking about the formation as a series of circles, which the design seems to suggest, think about the formation as being underpinned by a series of several hexagons and one pentagon at it centre.

6. The entire underlying geometry drawn our on the page. The diameters and positioning of every element was self-generating.

7. A collage of shapes showing how this collection of hexagons and one pentagon underpinned the whole design

After I had finished the drawing I decided to make a collage to show the way the hexagons and the one pentagon fitted together. The traditional molecular diagram (picture 2) shows exactly these shapes at work. Now that the underlying skeleton was complete all that was left was to pick out the design in black ink.

8. Picking out the design in black ink from the geometric skeleton

9. Adding in the grapeshot circles by eye and then adding in colour finishes the sketch.

Quite unconsciously, I realised sometime later, I had chosen to colour the drawing with light and dark blue, the colour of the daytime and night skies. Clearly I had been meditating deeply on the significance of melatonin while I had been drawing!

So what are we to make of a reference to melatonin? Several things spring to mind. Firstly, melatonin is a hormone produced by the body that plays a central role in the regulation of our biorhythm of waking and sleeping. Melatonin is produced in the brain when the light coming into our eyes begins to dim and prepares the body for sleep. I think there are layers of meaning here; the first is the idea that the crop circles are made during the hours of dark, and are revealed by the coming day, so they too are part of our sleeping and waking cycle. Another idea was expressed by a friend of mine who proposed that it may be a reflection of how asleep we are spiritually, and how we need to “wake-up!” Another colleague suggested that it could be telling us to “watch our dreams”, or that it may symbolise the unconscious.

Finally, some weeks after making this drawing I began to see something else. The two-fold nature of this formation had been playing much on my mind; the idea of night and day, wakefulness and sleep, consciousness and unconsciousness, standing and flattened crop and finally the thought of it’s inherent geometry and number and also its symbolism and beauty. I realised something that I think is really important to my understanding of the crop circles themselves, and that is that their designs appeal simultaneously to our left- brain with their geometry and clever design, and to our right-brain with their symbolism and beauty. The circles are not just designed to appeal to our intellect, but also (if you will permit me) to our souls. I had an inkling of this idea earlier in the season, I think I even wrote about it in an earlier blog, but this formation brought this home to me in a very experiential, visceral way. For those that consider the crop circles to be messages of some kind, the fact that they are messages that are ‘directed’ at both hemispheres of our brains is fascinating to say the least.

I wonder, however, if the crop circles are a reflection of, and simultaneously a catalyst for, a re-balancing of our very left-brained western culture. For the last hundred years or more we have seen the rising dominance of the mental/rational consciousness state. We have seen the role of dreams, art and even the paranormal suppressed by a way of thinking that cannot quantify them. We have systematically rendered our world, if not our universe and our very existence, down to a set of numbers and empty space – we are in danger of falling in to a nihilistic stupor. That we have something manifesting in our world that marries the ‘rational’ and the ‘imaginal’ is, I have to say, quite amazing and the implications are nothing short of auspicious.

KAREN ALEXANDER – FEBRUARY 27th 2012

More… The number Nineteen and the nature of Synchronicity

Nineteen standing stems. Picture by JPDV.

A close colleague of mine has for many years had an uncanny relationship and fascination with the number nineteen. In fact this number has made itself known to my friend on many occasions through the crop circles, dreams and many synchronicities. So he was delighted to find that the Roundway melatonin circle had a relationship to the number nineteen too. By counting all the petal circles and the two smaller circles attached, one at each end of the formation, and adding in the two centre circles of the five and six-fold flowers, we get to nineteen. As he walked through the circle he was also delighted to find that in the centre of one of the circles stood a central tuft of exactly nineteen standing stems. I have often wondered if the experience of synchronicity is linked in some way to experiences of the mystical, or the paranormal, in that they are all of the same ‘quality’. It is a subject that I intend to give much more thought to. But what of nineteen? Nineteen is a number that is hard to interpret, as it is well beyond the familiar decad. It is of course a prime number and it is linked to lunar cycles – the metonic cycle to be precise. A numerical link with the moon and the unconscious carries a link with larger symbolism of the formation as Melatonin. I guess we might look at nineteen then as ten and nine. If ten is the number of new beginnings, but a beginning that is embarked upon with all the experience that the decad brings (all the numbers one to nine), and nine is the number of birth and threshold, then perhaps we might say that nineteen is the number of rebirth – it is a fascinating thing to meditate upon. The idea of a re-birth or perhaps more eloquently ‘paradigm shift’ is one that many intuitively associate with the crop circles.

Perhaps we might be allowed to make one further, final speculation? Perhaps this paradigm shift is to do with the re-acceptance of the soul; the role of the imagination, dreams, mythology and folklore as vital parts not just of the human psyche, but as the old hermetic sages would have had us believe, as an active and fundamental part of the make-up of reality.

Hidden Depths

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:28:34 +0000

The Temple Balsall formation, Warwickshire – July 21st (approx.) 2011

The Temple Balsall formation – July 2011

I have thought very long and hard about this blog and have wrestled with it over a prolonged period of time. There is a tale to be told about the reporting of this formation, but it is mired in the murky underworld of crop circle politics. I decided in the end to concentrate on the virtues of the formation rather than tell a story which if anything only distracted from the formation. Certainly, in the end, the tale added nothing to our understanding of it. I apologise to those of you that read this blog that enjoy a bit of intrigue and gossip, but I just couldn’t bring myself to write about it. All I can say in my defence is that I have saved you all from the temptation to use “Feet that are swift to run into mischief” (as King Solomon is said to have loudly decried), and have instead hopefully offered you something meaningful and much more interesting…

The Temple Balsall formation was one of a small number of crop circles to occur outside the usual Wiltshire/Hampshire heartlands where the phenomenon in the UK most often occurs. In fact, 2011 had seen two rather beautiful and impressive formations near Louth in Lincolnshire in the early part of the season, and the very first circle of 2011 had occurred near Chepstow in Gwent. Having said this, it is still relatively rare to find large and complex formations outside the usual stomping grounds, but I think it goes to show that not all the best formations happen within Wiltshire’s borders.

As its name suggests Temple Balsall has historical connections to the Knights Templar, the land there was gifted to the knights as a reward for their bravery in the crusades. They established a community there until their dissolution by Papal bull in the early 1300s. However, Temple Balsall still has a thriving Christian community to this day.

There is no reason to directly connect the Knights Templar to the crop circles. While it might be true that there might have been an awareness of the ‘Liberal Arts’ within such organisations – many see the Templars as the forerunners of the modern Freemasons – there is nothing much else that connects them. There is of course much land in the UK that once belonged to the Templars and that still bears their name. From time to time crop circles have occurred on that land – a circle appeared at Temple Farm on the Marlborough Downs for instance in 2011 – but I doubt that in itself constitutes a genuine connection.

Outline & underlying geometry. Division by thirty-two, Eight rings and four ribbons.

As far as I am aware, there have been no other circles at Temple Balsall or in that area before, so this was a first; I can’t help wondering what the locals made of it!

The formation itself was a classic mandala design, not unlike a gigantic rose window, but instead of the classical twelve-fold geometry so often found in church windows, this design was full of square numbers; four, eight, sixteen and thirty-two.

The encompassing circle is divided into thirty-two sections to create the design, then four criss-crossing ribbons (two sets of two) with reverse-point (V-shape) ends are placed at 90 degree angles to one another this creates sixteen points around the perimeter of the circle. It is this unusual V-shape that makes the pattern unique and interesting and also forms the octagram at the centre of the formation. Eight intersecting circles are then added which create the eight narrow oval shapes in the mid-part of the circle. The rest of the pattern is then picked out from the intersections of these combining parts.

The pattern is then picked-out from the skeleton geometry

It is the numbers that are most important thing about this formation. Eight, sixteen and thirty-two are all intensifications of the number four. I think this ‘intensification’ of number with in the circles is of great importance. Intensification of thought, or consciousness, brings about transformation. Anyone who has obsessively an intensely engaged with any subject often breaks through the mundane and the superficial; they delve into the deeper layers of meaning and connection not accessible in normal states of consciousness. To me, it gives them another dimension, where this intensification of number in the crop circles occurs, and a power that is very hard to quantify – a very deep power.

This idea is expressed directly by the numbers at play in this formation – particularly four and eight. Four (as I am sure you all know by now) is the number of ‘material reality’ – the physical world.

Finalised drawing with colour to imitate both a church window and the spiritual quality of the formation

In the Geometer’s creation story it is the first ‘thing’ to be born from the Vesica, it is also the first ‘square’ number. Eight, is an intensification of four in that it is the first ‘cubic’ number (two times two times two), it is therefore four, with an extra dimension. This is an intensification of the number four, a deepening of dimension. Eight has been called the number of ‘periodic renewal’ or the number of ‘resonance’ It is the number that sounds the octave, after the seven notes of the musical scale, it returns to the beginning, but simultaneously takes us somewhere new. Again the idea of an intensification (resonance) and ‘periodic renewal’ (a repetition adding depth, dimension, or scale) is also played out. The fact that this process carries on into sixteen, then thirty-two only repeats the whole pattern, to greater intensifications and we begin to see glimpses of a fourth dimension emerging from within the numbers. The tesseract (fourth dimensional cube) has sixteen corners…

Resonance, echoes, intensification, the deepening and addition of dimensions are all part of the geometry of this formation. It is truly remarkable. It speaks to me of the transformation of the world springing up from within itself – it is perhaps a dangerous, subversive formation, yet one that seems completely in tune with the transformations occurring in our world right now.

The beautiful central lay of the formation, showing an octogram shape.

It is a reflection of this shift in consciousness that is underway.

These ideas of intensification, the emergence of the fourth dimension and the interconnectedness of things are also part of Gebser’s idea of a new emerging state of consciousness which he called the Integral. We currently stand on the cusp between our Mental/Rational age of science and objectivity and a newly emerging Integral state. It seems that sometimes the crop circles provide an uncanny and a-rational commentary upon that process. Gebser also talked of the ‘concretisation of the spiritual’ in relation to the Integral state. What are crop circles, if not spiritual ideas made manifest and concrete on the face of the earth?

Drawing this crop circle was to dive headlong into the depths of this process of intensification and transformation. It required an intense concentration of mind, and was yet simultaneously a wonderfully spiritual experience. If the formation made the spiritual concrete in the field – the act of drawing it made the spiritual concrete on the page.

KAREN ALEXANDER – FEBRUARY 2012

Post Script
As I was searching the web I found these two images, one of a rose window divided into sixteen and another divided by thirty-two. The sixteen window is only shown as a diagram here, but the glass shows Christ at the centre with his twelve apostles and four saints and the thirty-two window is Christ at the centre with twelve apostles and twenty angels. Note the life-giving number five at the centre of each of these windows; Christ said “I am the way, the truth and the life”.

A City of Pyramids (part 2)

admin — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:51:53 +0000

Part Two – Spiders Webs: The East Kennet formation 22nd July 2011

After completing the drawing of the East Kennet formation, as pleased as I was with the result, it seemed something was missing. It was that big blackness in the middle of the picture that bothered me. Comparing the drawing to the actual photo, it was plain that the thing that was missing was the floor-lay.

1. East Kennet & 2. The Koch Snowflake 1997 – the floor-lay in each of these formations was an integral part of their designs.

Traditionally, crop circle drawings denote the laid crop as black and the standing crop was white, but when the floor lay is patterned, and is an integral part of the design as a whole, a simple black and white drawing means that this intrinsic element is missing (literally blacked out), and so it gives a false impression of what the formation actually looked like.

We first started to see elaborate floor-lays as early as the 1990s; the first time I remember seeing a truly sophisticated floor-lay was in the Koch snowflake of 1997. The design required a huge area of crop to be flattened in order to fill the interior of the formation. To simply flatten the crop in a big swirl would have perhaps been acceptable, even expected, but what took the Koch snowflake to a new level was undoubtedly its beautifully patterned floor-lay – it gave the formation an almost three-dimensional appearance.

The late, great, John Michell drew and painted this formation. His watercolour can be seen in our Crop circle Year Book 2000, or another version can be seen in his Magnum Opus – ‘How the World is Made’ (Thames & Hudson). John was fascinated and very impressed by the floor-lay in this formation; laid in distinctive, successive bands (from the outside inwards) until reaching a central swirl. These patterns are barely perceptible at all at ground-level; it is not until one takes to the air on a sunny day, with plenty of light and contrast, that they really come to life.

A rendering of the spider’s web floor-lay in the East Kennet circle. Created from a ten-pointed star
– or two pentagons.

While some floor-lays can seem to be a pretty addition to a design, others have evolved to become an integral part of that design. The floor-lay at East Kennet was definitely of the later category. Rather than just being an attractive way to fill space, this floor-lay had a design all of it’s own (separate to that of the rest of the design) and it was a recognizable pattern – a spider’s web. I decided that my exploration of this formation was not complete until I had made a drawing of the floor-lay. The pattern was picked from the integral geometric structure of the formation. In order to generate the pyramids around the perimeter of the design, the 360° of the circle had to be divided into twenty. The floor-lay tells us how this was done. Two pentagons are created, one placed over the other, to fashion a ten pointed star, then ten further points are created, where the perimeters of these two shapes intersect (see above). The pattern for the floor lay can now be picked out and flattened to create the distinctive spider’s web design.

I am no expert on the symbolism of the ancient Maya, and don’t know whether, or not, the spider’s web is linked to their culture in any way, but from a purely archetypal standpoint the web is a symbol for the interconnectedness of all things. The diaphanous nature of the spider’s web links it squarely to the realm of consciousness, where it symbolises the unseen patterns and pathways that underpin our reality. Just as the gossamer threads of the web are made visible in morning dew, the web is also linked to synchronicity – those strange connections where our unseen inner world meets the tangible outer world.

It was the Goddess Ariadne, who gave Theseus a silken thread of great strength that allowed him to venture into, and return safely, from the Minotaur’s labyrinth – her name is derived from the genus name for the spider, arachnid. She is therefore one who is a guide and protector in the realm of consciousness exploration. So as you can see, the spider’s web is of rich symbolic meaning.

An Iznik 'Spider's Web' pottery Dish.
Turkey, 17th Century

In the East Kennet formation, the position of the web is also important, as it connects the crowned alien-head at the centre of the formation (see previous blog) to the pyramids at its perimeter. Here the web shows us the connection between the old classical world of the pyramid makers to the ultra-modern world of alien-consciousness. I find this utterly fascinating. While there is much ‘popular chatter’ about ancient knowledge and its pertinence to our modern world, it seems that this formation symbolises a drawing together of these two realms. As I was researching this blog, I came across this picture of an Islamic pattern that reminded me so much of the crop circle, that I include it here. What interested me was the link between the number ten and the spider’s web. As I have scoured the internet and not a few of my own books, I have found that the spider’s web is often drawn as being ten-fold in nature.

The Spider’s web formation of 1994 was also ten- fold in its design.

This does not mimic the natural world, as webs vary from spider to spider and species to species, but symbolically, it seems, it is much associated with the number ten. Ten is the first of the dual digit numbers, it contains zeros and ones (like the binary of our modern computer and digital media language) and in our modern world zeros and ones convey information invisibly via the internet world-wide-web! The famous spider’s web crop circle at Avebury in 1994, also depicted the web as being divided into ten equal segments.

The number ten has some fascinating properties. For instance, it is the sum of the first four numbers 1+2+3+4=10. The Pythagoreans enshrined the number ten in the Tetraktys (a triangular pattern made from ten dots), which was said to represent the whole of the universe. Ten is five doubled, it is therefore an intensification of the life-generating number five and, as we shall see shortly, the pyramids of this formation each had five steps. Perhaps most importantly here, ten is a number of the new – but significantly – the new encapsulating the old. The number ten is made from the parental numbers of one and zero, but contains within itself all of the numbers of the decad. This echoes very much the link between the old and new worlds symbolised by the alien-head, the web, and the pyramids inside the East Kennet crop circle.

Finally, the East Kennet formation was surrounded by pyramids, the design looked like a gigantic ancient plaza encircled by ten pyramids, each with five steps. I saw the image (below) on the internet and have reproduced here because it gives a flavour of the kind of mental imagery that this formation evokes.

Throughout this formation we have found the numbers five, ten and twenty. To me, this formation is about the intensification of the number five and was the herald of the Jubilee Plantation formation (Aug 2011), where we finally saw the fifth dimension fully manifest for the first time.

The crop circles are of profound cultural significance; they contain within their designs an amazing amount of information about the current themes being played out in the collective unconscious and beyond. Those who would strip them down to their basest, lowest, common denominators do a great disservice to our culture and our world. Formations such as East Kennet serve to remind us how the circles, if we are respectful, patient and willing, can enrich our lives. And how they can be a reflection of, and simultaneously a catalyst for, change on a monumental level.

If the East Kennet formation demonstrates nothing else, it demonstrates just how dense the symbolism, number and geometry within the crop circles can really be!

Post Script.
Back in the summer just after the East Kennet formation appeared, I was drinking a coffee in my local shopping centre (and yes it was a boring decaf!), when I suddenly looked up and this is what I saw…

Five-step pyramids! Not that I am obsessed or anything, but I saw the patterns as a synchronistic intensification of my absorption by the crop circle designs! Long may it continue!

KAREN ALEXANDER – DECEMBER 2011

A City of Pyramids

admin — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:04:38 +0000

Part One – Egg Heads: The East Kennet formation 22nd July 2011

The East Kennet formation of 2011 was one of the wonders of the season. A circular design, its perimeter contained 10 thin pyramids and ten fat pyramids. At it’s centre, was the now familiar egg-head shape surrounded by some kind of headdress or crown. To me this was immediately a city of pyramids – a central plaza surrounded by pyramids with a crowned entity of some sort in the centre. There was also a spiders-web spun into the laid crop around the centre of the formation. The magnificence and power of this crop circle was very reminiscent of the Silbury Hill Mayan Headdress of 2009.

The circle married together three major design elements of previous formations – the egg-head, the web and the pyramid. In this blog I want to take a closer look at the ‘egg-head’, then in part two we can look at the pyramid, the web and the how the whole formation fits together.

We had first seen the egg-head during the summer of 2009 where it appeared as a stylised ‘alien-head’ with two slanting eyes swept into the lay of the crop. Two major formations appeared that summer that included this element, one under the White Horse at Alton Barnes and another in South Field, in Alton Priors. As well as containing egg-heads, both of these designs also included seemingly impossibly long strings of indecipherable, incomprehensible hieroglyphs. While both were undoubtedly linked, each seemed to have a slightly different emphasis, on the same theme, or perhaps showed a change or transition in emphasis from the first formation to the second.

Whilst some may have seen the alien-head motif in these formations as ‘corny’, I thought they were particularly intriguing. For those that read this blog regularly, you will know that I rarely take a formation at ‘face-value’, and that I think there are often hidden depths to be teased out of many of their designs. I also believe that most are symbolic, rather than illustrative or code-like (where there is only one easy interpretation). To me, the crop circles operate much more like dreams made manifest in the fields, they are mysterious, coy even, and have to be unravelled, or detangled – like carefully pulling a comb through knotted hair, it requires great patience, gentleness and positive regard.

These formations and their alien-heads tapped into some very popular (and in some quarters) quite deeply held views about the crop circles. The idea that ET creates the crop circles is one that has been around almost since the modern-dawn of the subject. For many, these designs powerfully confirmed those beliefs, made them manifest, gave them a physicality and therefore a reality and veracity that perhaps they had not had before. Here was proof that ET was talking to us through the medium of the crop circles – it said so in the fields! It is hard to overstate the power of these formations, but as obvious as they were to some they were also full of subtlety.

The egg-head alien, with its large slating eyes, is an image that now pervades our culture. It has become a modern icon, a contemporary archetype for the idea of beings or intelligences other than our own. The egg-headed alien has in fact become so integrated into the western psyche that it is almost universally and instantly recognisable to the vast majority of people. What makes it all the more fascinating is that the vast majority of those people do not believe in the reality of extraterrestrial beings in way, shape or form! Yet the ubiquitousness of this image gives it an archetypal presence, or psychic reality, so much so that it has become an integrated part of our collective consciousness.

The egg (or alien) head shape has an important geometry. When I set out to draw the East Kennet formation I started with the central motif. I decided that as the formation was complex I would make a separate drawing of it. From looking at the formation as a whole, it was apparent that the formation was divided into twenty equal segments, these were needed to create the outer pyramid shapes. As it turns out, twenty was an important number to the ancient Maya, their counting system uses base twenty, just as we use base ten in our society. Beginning with a small central circle, a line is drawn at its widest point to denote the diameter. This is most easily done by opening the compass so that each arm touches the widest points of the circle and then drawing in two arcs; these create a Vesica around the original circle, and by connecting the apexes of this Vesica, a line is drawn through the circle to denote the diameter and a central line through it. By outlining the top of the circle and one side of the Vesica, you create an egg-head shape. A surprising amount of crop circle geometry is based on variations of the Vesica and I find this symbolically interesting (the Vesica is the birth channel through which all is created) that so many crop circles also spring from the Vesica gives the designs a congruence with everything else created and birthed in the universe.

In 2010 another similar design appeared at Stanton St Bernard (6), this time the egg-head had no eyes but wore a headdress, or crown. Are the disappearing eyes a movement from entity to pure consciousness? The relationship to the Vesica is much more obvious here. This version also includes a crescent moon as part of the headdress, with a row of fine segments stemming from the top, which looks a little like a tiara. Looking at the central motif of the 2011 East Kennet formation (8), we also see the egg-head, the crescent moon, and rays emanating from the crescent, although this time they look like points of quartz crystal. At first it seemed that these crystal-like points would slot in to the 20-fold division of the outer circle, but looking at the picture it did not fit. In the actual formation seventeen of these points are spread around the top of the crescent, I drew this central motif several times and nothing seemed to fit. In my first attempt I split the top hemisphere of the circle into twenty equal parts (8), but it didn’t look right. I tried again, augmenting the pattern, I found a geometrically satisfactory solution, but it did not marry the original perfectly. I drew twelve standing segments, not seventeen, by splitting the circle into ten; it was an elegant solution to an impossible conundrum (9). I did note however, that in the original formation the centre motif contained twenty standing segments – seventeen points, one crescent and two partial crescents – so there was a kind of numeric symmetry to the original design, if not a geometric one.

I have come to see these egg-heads as being symbolic of an ‘other’ consciousness/es, and the birth of our conscious awareness of them. To me all these designs offer a commentary of the role of the ‘alien/other’ in human consciousness at this time and also our growing awareness of its connection to the human spirit.

The spooky days of the X-Files in the 1990s seemed to be the zenith of our growing awareness of the ‘alien’ in our consciousness. Although the UFO subject had been around since time immemorial in folklore, the 1950s saw the rapid expansion of the subject in our awareness. By the 1990s our media was saturated with the UFO and the paranormal, but ten, or so, years later, it seemed this subject was beginning to touch upon our sense of spirituality.

This deepening of our sense of ‘other’ was beautifully expressed by the two 2009 alien-head formations. The first circle at Milk Hill appeared in three stages (1, 2 & 3), the first stage has an almost mechanical feel to it – an alien head wearing some kind of mechanical-helmet (sexton?) or headdress with what could be curved wires with plugs coming from one side. In stage two, these curved wires are extended and boxes and more circles are added, softening the image – the circle as well as being symbolic of heaven and deity also symbolises the spiritual, or spiritual consciousness. The long threads of glyphs appeared in stage three are perhaps a stream of communication, or an open stream of consciousness.

I admit openly here that I do not take this image too literally, I think the crop circles are much too subtle for that, but I do think that this image resonates very deeply with something that is going on deep within the collective unconscious – it could even be a reflection (or a projection) of an intense desire for, or an actual connection to a stream of consciousness from ‘elsewhere’ of which we are only barely aware. The second formation at South Field, Alton Priors, also had an ‘alien-head’ with long threads of glyphs, but this time they were connected to a bird design. The bird is symbolic of the spirit, the movement through these two circles moves the ‘alien’ away from technology and traditional investigative ufology and moves towards the psycho-spiritual. The crown of the 2010 formation is halo-like connecting the ‘alien’ with higher forms of spirituality, and the body of the formation is more bird-like. Finally in 2011, the ‘alien’ is placed at the centre of a formation for the first time. There is an enormous shift in awareness connected with other forms of consciousness being played out in our fields…

Coming up in Part Two… With the ‘alien/other’ finally arriving at the centre – what else can the East Kennet formation tell us about the state of this shift in consciousness? And what of the pyramids and the spider’s web?

KAREN ALEXANDER – NOVEMBER 1, 2011