Wheat Graffiti

[daniel]

Of course, like everybody else, I was highly skeptical of crop circles - until I wrote about them for Wired ("Wheat Graffiti" Aug 2002), interviewing many sober-sounding researchers, and then went to see them in the UK this summer. From my current perspective, many of them are a legitimate communication from a non-human intelligence using shape, geometry, and complex intellectual puzzles to "activate" our thinking. Because they are usually connected to ancient Neolithic sites, crop circles also seem to be part of McKenna's "Archaic Revival." Check out www.cropcircleconnector.com (http://www.cropcircleconnector.com) for recent images, or www.lovely.clara.net (http://www.lovely.clara.net) for a description of the phenomenon's evolution over time, then post here to discuss the possible meaning of these beautiful and extraordinary forms.

[nicholas]

I'm glad to see you are taking them seriously Daniel, I have been following their incredibly complex forms for years, have seen a few live in england and agree completely, some are real, created by other forces we havent yet understood, very fine wisdom being sent in cryptic symbols, perhaps warning messages from the planet itself, or ourselves in the future or from another time dimension, but certainly nothing like that crap film with jolly green giants attacking the planet. I hope few more minds will be cracked open by their deeply holy resonances.

[Julian]

also check out

http://www.circlemakers.org/totc2002.html

[daniel]

This is from a friend. I have one of Martineau's books on sacred geometry and the planetary orbits. It is beautiful and exquisitely well-presented.

* * *

Robin Heath and John Martineau are visionary geniuses in England, who have done some of the most amazing work on the mathematics of the crop circles and then on the mathematics of the solar system. I have been smitten with Martineau since his astonishing geometry work on the circles early on, before moving into working on the solar system -- I have some 12 year old stuff of his in my crop circle show because no one ever has surpassed it. I'd love to help get attention paid to his breakthrough current work, which I gather will set science on its ear. Any thoughts about how to help him?

Here are some things John says:

I recently authored A LITTLE BOOK OF COINCIDENCE, published by Walker and Co, New York. It contains, I believe, the single most important conceptual breakthrough in the study of the orbits of the solar system since Kepler. My partner-in-crime has been Robin Heath -- author of SUN, MOON and EARTH, also published by Walker -- who has particularly been looking at the Moon and the calendar. We are making large claims. We believe we have cracked the solar system, and the 'secret' of life of earth -- something truly paradigm-shifting. The spacing and the timing of the planets and moons of our solar system hide a simple set of relationships, and we are confident that our technique could be used to accurately identify other planets which harbour conscious life, given their and their neighbours' orbits. Liquid water is only part of the story. What we have found doesn't fit in with the Newtonian-Einsteinian worldview. We think we have found the black monolith.

John Martineau
le.dod@virgin.net

[michael heany]

What is the best current book on crop circles?

[daniel]

From a science perspective, it is "The Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles" by a Dutch physicist, Eltjo Hasselhof (I think that's it).

There are several others - don't have the titles in front of me but three authors are Lucy Pringle, Andy Thomas, and Colin Anderson. Probably a search for "crop circle" plus their name would pull them up.

[bebeto]

Secrets in the Fields by Freddy Silva is actually pretty good. I'm working my way through it right now. It was published this year. It contains many diagrams and plates.

[creation_in_us]

I'm sure You all have heard of Art Bell right?He has a radio show on A.m. radio.
Any ways I got this address from his site http://www.earthfiles.com/ His website is http://www.artbell.com/ also I don't know I f any of you have read or heard about "the golden ratio" and its implications to crop circles.There is a book out on it by a Dr. Mario Livio that covers the whole subject.
I also wanted to express my interest in comunication with the aliens residing at the control panel of the universe via psychedelics or O.B.E's.Well I've read experiences of people seeing such things under the influence of ayahausca and or in the midst of sleep paralysis episode.Well they say they are paralized usually, and they see aliens enter thier room and so on.Iv'e also read of people being attacked by evil alien creatures while on Salvia Divinorum.I've only seen subtle figures of aliens while chewing the leaves of Salvia.I got too scared and spit it out when i saw that!

Thanks

[creation_in_us]

Um..Sorry..I realize I havn't read dr.Livio's
book and dont know If he touches on the subject of crop circles..But it seemed the two subjects may be related in some way.Right!Well I dont know.Im not really interested in crop circles in particular..but I am mystified by the idea of Aliens as anyone else, Bla la yup.

Thank you

[daniel]

creation-in-us,

So if you could communicate with the aliens sitting at the control panels of the universe, what would you say to them?

[StSimon]

A friend of mine has a theory about intelligent locusts that always makes me chuckle.

A bit more seriously, I think a good challenge for anyone attempting to debunk crop circles would be to try to make their own. OK, it's so easy to imagine some practical joker out in the fields at midnight with a flashlight and a board flattening down grass in a circle? Let's see you do it, and make it as artisitcally precise and beautiful as the pictures I've seen in books.

Until someone can demonstrate how to pull that off, I suspend judgement.

[Anita]

This forum is turning me on to some new and interesting stuff,have not given cropcircles much thought but came across these pictures and article last night.
http//www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=443&category=Environment
There is a link at the surfingtheapocalypse website.
Flashlights and boards?

[skeaya]

I am looking for a link online to a concise explanation of why the hoaxers can't have created all the crop circles. I.e. say you want to begin a conversation with someone about crop circles and they say "oh those were hoaxes" and you can say Boom go read this re hoaxes and then the conversation can continue.

Any suggestions?

[daniel]

http://www.lovely.clara.net/biophysical.html#anchor631469

the whole website, www.lovely.clara.net, (http://www.lovely.clara.net,) is really good.

[seascott]

I would really like to think that our future or alternate selves are still playful enough that they would tear through space & time just to prank us.

[sire_012]

has anyone seen the documentary "crop circles:quest for truth"? it played here in chicago a few months ago and got quite good reviews, unfortunately i was busy that weekend and missed it. the site is fairly informative
http://www.cropcirclesthemovie.com/ if not a bit overbearing in its design. would love to hear what anyone has to say on this.

[lb]

I have tried to be a skeptic, but I can't find any. I do not see how a person can be skeptical about these phenomenon. It is obvious the symbols some of them come from the human imagination, there seem to be questions in them for us and information, they are so astounding. What is interesting is the media that does not report or seem to care about it, but I think that is a huge statement from the media, that if these are real there goes the deodorant sales!

[daniel]

I highly recommend the new book "Secrets in the Fields" by Freddy Silva. It is an amazing, multi-level effort to understand the circles and place them in a larger context. I will post more on it later.

[julonred]

http://radio.atlantisrising.com/HillyRose
there are some interesting prerecorded interviews that you can listen to, covering many topics including crop circles. listened to daniel's interview with hilly rose, enjoyed hearing him defend himself somewhat.

[Proteus]

Hey everyone: Lately, i've been taking Daniel's recommendation to read Freddy Silva's "Secrets in the Fields" and it is an impressive book in many ways. i've only recently even considered the possibility that these phenomena are anything other than hoaxes by our fellow earthlings and find myself pretty well blown away by the numerous images and history of the phenomenon.

Silva's book does for crop circles pretty much what Daniel's does for psychedelics: that is, it presents a historical overview of the phenomenon in question and then presents a variety of modest conclusions and a few shoot-for-the-moon speculations about the origins and significance of crop formations. And while Silva is not quite the wordsmith that our man Pinchbeck is, it's an enjoyable read with more than a few laughs to be had amongst the many pauses that one will take for sober thought.

But these are only half-baked impressions. i'm only at the half-way point, which is neatly marked by some amazing color aerials of crop formations that are so next-level in design and apparent symbolic significance that i find myself thinking about how to arrange a trip to the English countryside to see for myself. (Yeah, right after i rob that bank!) So, i've just begun to get to the number-crunching, symbol-slinging guts of the book.

One glitch has given me pause, though. Silva says unequivocally that the word "myth" derives from the Greek word "mutus"--i.e. "mute." He's completely wrong about that. i don't think i've read anyone who agrees with that etymology. Rather, all the Classicists i've consulted say that our word "myth" derives from the Greek "mythos," meaning word or story--more or less the opposite of the point Silva is laboring to make. That point, by the way, is that the Circlemakers are using timeless and "transparent" symbols to communicate with us. He wants to say that myths are essentially static symbol systems, universal and changeless.

He's only partly right about that last claim. Myth provides us with our basic orientation to the world--our sense of self, our obligations, and our "place" in the cosmic order--and does its work through living and active narratives. The Judeo-Christian mythos, for example, orients us to a code of behavior that assumes, among other things that all actions have a moral content and are open for judgment by an omniscient and omnipotent divinity. We adapt constituent elements from our culture's dominant mythoi into a personalized narrative that grounds us in what we call reality. Modern Americans, like the members of cosmopolitan cultures as far back as the Babylonian, the Greek, and the Roman, not only work with the mythic materials of our dominant culture but also incorporate imported elements into our personalized myth systems. A number of us on this board, for example--and for compelling reasons--have taken elements of myth and ritual from a variety of shamanic cultures and worked them into the narratives that give our life a context and purpose.

For these reasons alone, one were wise to be cautious about saying that myth's symbols are universal across vast cultural, linguistic,and historical distances. That "mandala" out in the rape fields of Sussex might be referencing Buddhist religious thought--or might be referencing something, well, ALIEN to human religious thought. Symbols, whether they are the so-called paleolithic "Venuses" that added considerable momentum to the modern Goddess Movement or cylinder seals from the sands of Iraq do NOT speak for themselves. They must be interpreted and all interpretations are influenced by the idiosyncracies of an individual person's education and cognition as well as by the "givens" of the socio-political moment in which the interpreter lives.

But, to be fair, my quibble is based upon a passing remark in Silva's book. He doesn't claim to be an etymologist or mythographer. What i've read so far certainly has when my appetite for reading the rest of the book.

[steve]

Interesting post, Proteus, as usual. Having studied the art of several temporally and culturally dispersed traditions, I strongly agree that by and large ‘symbols’ are culturally acquired and subjective. But something I have wondered about, but also know next to nothing about, is if there really exists a level of archetypes (Jungian or whatever), a kind of substrata of symbolization which really may cross cultural and linguistic boundaries. Any thoughts? By the way, in order to make this more of a crop circle entry, I might add that I too was totally taken in by the few proven or admitted fakes to think that they were all such hoaxes, (what a media sham that was!) and it was only with links from Daniel that I realized it ain’t so simple.

[paul]

visiting a crop circle - near avebury last summer- that i had been informed in the village was man made - i found it very interesting that it still contained v definate energies.
ive provisionally concluded that the power may be in the form rather than the manner of creation. smile.gif

[Proteus]

Steve, Paul, and other friends: i’m anything but an expert on Jungian archetypes, but i believe that Herr Doktor sees these mental formations as the inaccessible substrate of materials that he and Freud called the Unconscious. In Jung’s case, the Unconscious was collective—as opposed to Freud who tended to view it as a phenomenon common to all but nevertheless uniquely configured in each of us. i have the idea, then, that for Jung, symbols tend to be universal because the archetypes that inspire them are indeed part of a collective Unconscious. Freud might have been more comfortable with the idea that symbols tend to be culture-specific and less universal. Anyway, i think that for Jung—and this is definitely getting down to technicalities that most of us don’t pay any attention to—any visible symbol, like one you might find a field of wheat, isn’t, strictly speaking, an archetype but a culture-specific "elaboration" of archetypal material. In ARCHETYPES, Jung says that these elaborations are "eternal images"

… meant to attract, to convince, to fascinate, and to overpower. [These images] are created out of the primal stuff of revelation and reflect the ever-unique experience of divinity. That is why they always give man a premonition of the divine while at the same time safeguarding him from immediate experience of it. Thanks to the labors of the human spirit over the centuries, these images have become embedded in a comprehensive system of thought that ascribes an order to the world, and are at the same time represented by . . . mighty, far-spread, and venerable institution[s like] the Church.

So, i guess our contention that what the layman calls "archetypes" (i.e. what Jung might call the symbolic elaborations of Archetypes) are not necessarily universal and timeless is sound if we figure that individual genius, historical forces, and casual reception and transmission can influence the interpretation and representation of any symbol. One can think of the swastika, a relatively common symbol for the four directions among some Native American and Asian cultures, and the way in which it re-emerged in reverse form in the early 20th century as a Nazi totem. Hard to think of a more dramatic example of how NOT universal and how NOT transparently meaningful symbols are than this.

Anyway, i finally managed to finish Silva’s book while i was away for a conference last week. On several occasions, i found myself filled with the same staggering wonder that, when i was reading BOTH, kept me asking, "Man! What world am i living in i, REALLY? i’m 44; where have i been while all this was happening around me?" Guess i've gone from bland media-produced consensus skeptic, to curious skeptic, to confirmed believer that these phenomena are for real and that they bear us an important message. i still have some questions about Silva’s abilities as a scholar, particularly when it comes to the matter of word origins. But, even if one discounts everything he says about word origins and the points he makes from those shaky premises, the book has much of interest and value to say. i came at this with little faith in the other-than-human origins of crop circles and have completely changed my mind.

The photos of the most complex crop formations struck me as compelling evidence against there being human origins for at least some crop formations. They are too complex and some are WAY too large, particularly because in order to escape civil and criminal penalties for damaging a farmer’s crops, hoaxers would have to do their work quietly under the cover of darkness to avoid detection and to maintain the "joke" behind this large-scale and on-going prank: that these circles are made by other-than-human forces. By the way, Paul, i think Silva would in part agree with your conclusions about the power that many have felt inside the genuine circles is in part a product of their making and in part an effect of their design. He thinks they're made by a combination of energy waves, part electromagnetic and part sonic that lay the crops down in predetermined patterns, but that that patterns themselves are based on sacred geometry and "tune into" a certain kind of harmonic frequency that can bring healing, enhanced telepathic effects, and psychic changes. From the sounds of it, you were in a genuine circle that was mistakenly or perhaps wilfully attributed to hoaxers.

For those who haven’t read the book, Silva concludes with the idea that the Circlemakers are entities that call themselves "the Watchers," whose self-described role is to shepherd and guard human beings as we make our painful way to maturity as a species. They are sending us all kinds of information (visible and encoded as electromagnetic energy inside these formations) in an attempt to wake us up to our collective responsibility to the planet and each other (and, it seems, to an even higher calling than simply doing right by each other and Gaia). Apparently these beings are accomplishing several things at once with these formations: they are providing visible proof of their existence, encoding vital information into the Earth itself through the high-energy electromagnetic and sonic waves they use to create these phenomena, encoding certain genetic and psychic information into some of those who step inside these formations (maybe you’ve been partially programmed, Paul!), and to activate some kind of power grid that the world’s various megaliths, tumuli, dolmens, menhirs, etc. are currently marking. Like Arguelles, Silva believes that the watchers are preparing us (both physically and mentally) for an impeding evolutionary shift.

I’m not doing his ideas justice, but I found him generally convincing and his view of where this is all leading quite hopeful. Oh, and another little tidbit. That term, the "Watchers," I’ve seen it before. In the Book of Daniel 4: 4-37, a story is recorded of the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, who consulted the prophet Daniel about a troubling dream. In that dream he saw a tree growing tall, eventually spreading out and providing shelter and shade for all kinds of animals and birds. At some point in the dream, a "watcher" (apparently a heavenly or angelic being) declares that the tree should be cut down, it’s foliage stripped, and that it’s stump should be bound with a band of iron and bronze and left to the elements. The prophet interprets the dream saying that Nebuchadnezzar is the tree and that if he doesn’t humble himself and recognize that the god of Israel gives temporal power to kings—even the great Nebuchadnezzar—that he will lose his mind and wander like a beast of the field for seven "periods of time." Nebuchadnezzar attempts to avoid this fate, but "Twelve months later he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon. The king reflected and said, ‘Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?’ While the word was in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: sovereignty has been removed from you, and you will be driven away from mankind, and your dwelling place will be with the beasts of the field. You will be given grass to eat like cattle, and seven periods of time will pass over you, until you recognize that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind, and bestows it on whomever He wishes." (Dan. 4: 29-32) Interesting that Silva’s watchers are also described as heavenly beings of light and, like the Watcher in the Bible, use their powers to instruct rather than destroy.

[Woodpecker]

According to the Book of Enoch, which I went on about in another thread recently, the original Watchers--angels posted by God to watch over the world--were punished by being bound in chains and buried alive, face down in the desert, unto eternity, for crimes that included sharing information with humans. But as one appears in the Book of Daniel, perhaps "new" ones have been appointed.

The original Watchers' story parallels somewhat that of Prometheus, who gave the technology of fire to humans, and ended up chained to a mountainside having his liver torn out and eaten every day by a vulture.

Re: the idea that nonhumans might be interacting with us now, I think it's likely. I'm not sure if it means what Silva hopes it means, though. Recently I've been playing with my cats using a laser pointer, which turns out to be one of the best cat toys imaginable. They're crazy about that little unkillable spot of dancing red light. Do you get where I'm going with this? Maybe human religious experience (including crop circles) can be understood as some "higher being" playing with a "laser pointer" just because it's fun to watch how we react to it.

[ March 25, 2003, 06:33 PM: Message edited by: Woodpecker ]

[daniel]

These days, I am thinking of the crop formations as a "Chapel Perilous," to use a phrase from Robert Wilson's book Cosmic Trigger (which I just read and enjoyed). The Chapel Perilous is the invisible place where synchronicities, cosmic meanings, and paranoias seem to multiply exponentially before collapsing into a black hole leading to belief, madness, or agnosticism.

But this may be part of the "teaching" - to make all "belief" provisional and theoretical.

Even some of the most impressive and seemingly significant designs are, it would seem, hoaxes - such as the August, 2001, one of 409 circles in a spiral pattern. There are three "expert" circlemaking teams at work in the UK each summer - yet they can't account for the hundreds of formations that appear, not to mention the scientific findings and witness accounts of strange happenings. However, they probably account for some of the ones in Silva's book. Some of them may have an occult background and do some rituals to "charge" the glyphs, or believe they are channeling messages from higher intelligences.

I will post a few articles giving the other side of the story.

I am planning to spend some time around there next summer and will hope to develop a deeper perspective. My own experiences visiting them were entirely convincing. However I have met people involved with the human circlemakers who are entirely convinced they are all human-made.

[daniel]

One thesis is that the hoaxes actually serve the phenomenon and are necessary to it.

Another thesis comes from researcher Colin Anderson who says he feels the CCs are "A program that is running." The program has an intentionality and a limited life span. It is synched to human scientific and technological development - the Net and the Mandelbrot Set. Its purpose is linked, perhaps, to "2012" as a threshold of transformation for the species.

I recently met the Scottish comic book writer and chaos magician Grant Morrison ("The Invisibles"), who told me about an abduction experience in Kathmandu. 6 dimensional "aliens" explained to him that we were currently in a larval stage of development, and like caterpillars eating a leaf we were devouring all the material around us to prepare for the next transformation. They explained that they "grew" universes by planting them in space and time. They also showed him the nature of time - he could look back and see himself as a kind of billion-legged millipede going back into his mother's womb, then following her back into her mother's womb, ad infinitum, to the point where he realized all life on earth was one single organism connected, rhizome-like, evolving as one.

[sire_012]

Yes! Morrison is a bright one indeed and the 'Invisibles' should be read by anyone who may find interest in some and all of the subject on this bulletin board. There's a really wonderful interview with him available on the disinfo.com site. One of the things he discusses in that interview is his belief that the pervasiveness of 'evil' that appears to some to be overwhelming the planet presently is present because this evil is presenting itself to the earth to act as a kind of anti-body to innoculate us from evil and negativity as we step into the new aeon. Think of all the processes and pain that must endure by a woman birthing a new child and all of this madness surrounding us presently takes on, in some light, a more understandable level of absurdity.