SUBJECT: ALIEN ENCOUNTERS FILE: UFO3230
14.THE CROP CIRCLES
The complex and impressive crop figures which have been appearing
in large numbers of recent years in several countries, but especially in
southern England, are quite different from the previously reported "UFO
nests" and other circles sometimes thought to have been produced by
landed UFOs. In the summer of 1963, for instance, an object was seen in
the sky over the Wiltshire village of Charlton and next day the farmer
there discovered in his field of barley a circle from which the topsoil
and the growing crop had both disappeared. Similar events had occurred
in the same year at Dufton Fell in Westmorland and at Flamborough head.
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There is no firm evidence linking any of these happenings with UFOs. The
earliest circles heralding the current wave of cereological phenomena
were quite different from the kind described at Charlton. Neither the
corn nor the topsoil was removed and the crop, although laid flat in a
uniform circular pattern, continued to ripen and was able subsequently
to be harvested. The circles, moreover, were not precisely circular
either, but in fact slightly elliptical, and the stalks were bent by a
force, not broken by the weight of a physical object, except of course
in the case of those few hoax creations made to amuse the readers of the
tabloid press.
Although crop circles of this new type cannot with any certainty
be dated earlier than 1980, there are accounts of circles of an
unspecified nature going back several centuries, but we cannot be sure
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that these were in any way relevant to the phenomenon which is currently
engaging the attention of so many students of the paranormal. Initially
there must have been many who, like myself, were reluctant to accept a
paranormal explanation while Dr.G.T.Meaden, founder of the Tornado and
Storm Research Association, seemed able to offer a plausible explanation
based on physical and meteorological principles. "My work," he wrote,
"suggests that circle formation involves the descent of an energetic
vortex of air which is ionised to the point at which it is better
regarded as a species of low-density cool plasma producing a high-energy
electromagnetic field." (Meaden G.T. in Noyes [ed.] 1990)
Though it seemed for a time that this might possibly be an
acceptable form of explanation for the actual mechanism involved, as
symbolic figures of increasing complexity began to appear, what no
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longer appeared tenable was Dr.Meaden's insistence that such phenomena
were either purely natural events or hoaxes. No one, hoaxer or
scientist, has been able to duplicate the bending of stems that occurs,
for instance, when circles have appeared in fields of oilseed rape. The
stems of this plant cannot be bent more than a few degrees from the
vertical without breaking, yet a circle found in the Isle of Wight had
stems bent at right angles.
The question of the direct involvement of UFOs in the production
of crop circle figures is more problematic, though it may indeed prove
to be the case that the same intelligence is at work behind both. George
Wingfield is a firm believer in the UFO connection, holding that "the
subject of the Crop Circles is encompassed by four quite distinct areas
of knowledge which often seem totally unrelated. These areas are
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Ufology, the physical sciences, dowsing (or 'Earth Mysteries') and the
realm of the psychic and metaphysical. I suggest," he concludes, "that
no solution can afford to ignore any of these four area of knowledge."
(Wingfield G. in Good [ed.] 1990) Let us therefore examine in turn the
evidence available in each of those four areas.
Wingfield (ibid.) is particularly impressed by certain happenings
at Warminster and Arthur Shuttlewood's description of a perfect circle
forming in grass there, accompanied by a high-pitched humming sound.
(Now! - 29 August 1980) He quotes an experience involving Shuttlewood
and an American journalist, Bryce Bond, also at Warminster, in August
1972. Having observed a number of triangular UFOs which "did a little
dance in the sky" and flashed back repetitions of Shuttlewood's Morse
code signals with his electric torch, they then found that the wheat in
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a nearby field was being crushed down counter-clockwise in a large
triangle shape. The pair experienced tingling sensations, a sweet smell
and an ambience of warm air. Similar anti-clockwise formations in the
crop nearby provided a circle and an elongated cigar shape. Luminous
shapes seen in the sky have since been found to correspond with others
appearing later in the corn, so that Wingfield infers that "the
depressions in the wheat were produced by just the same agency as the
UFOs", since "during 1989 ... circles were found precisely where
luminous objects had descended." (ibid.) It is worthy of mention that
Farmer Carson at Alton Barnes witnessed lights shining down from the sky
before the creation in his field of the giant pictogram there.
Obviously we cannot be certain that any of the foregoing
establishes the fact of UFO involvement in the circles phenomenon, yet
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in this context we are bound to ask what would constitute certainty and
whether there is any possibility of obtaining it. Let us therefore be
content to accept at least provisionally the likelihood of UFO
involvement, for while it is scarcely surprising that any untoward
happenings in the Warminster area should be linked in people's minds
with UFOs, it is perhaps significant that even on the Pacific coast of
Canada they have been making the connection. Under the headline "PRAIRIE
CROP CIRCLES BAFFLING", the Vancouver Sun of 1 October 1990 reported as
follows:
"More mysterious circles have turned up in Saskatchewan wheat
fields, leaving scientists baffled by the strange markings and people
thinking of visitors from outer space. The most recent markings,
discovered two weeks ago near Meath Park, Sask., are attracting a steady
flow of curious people to the fields ... 'It's more than strange that
we've been growing grain for centuries and it has only been in the past
three or four years these have appeared', said Herman Austenson, a
professor of crop sciences at the University of Saskatchewan.
"Clarence Brule, who discovered the Meath Park circles, and
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Austenson aren't buying explanations that the circles are the work of
pranksters or weird weather patterns ... the circles are considerably
larger - but of a similar nature - to one found by farmer Mike Shawaga
about two weeks ago near Alvena, 30 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.
And in late August, a farmer about 180 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon
discovered a series of neat, symmetrical patterns in his field. One set
of three concentric circles was about 18 metres across, with two
two-metre circles nearby. There were no tracks leading from the circles
and there were no depressions in the earth ..."
A circle appeared in long grass at Gulf Breeze in 1989, and in the
previous year a Marlborough woman reported a UFO near Avebury shining
down a light beam upon a field near Silbury Hill where two pairs of
quincunx (5-circle) sets subsequently appeared. In the same area a local
man is said to have seen a luminous orange sphere descend into a field,
bounce and then vanish. UFO sightings were reported in 1990 prior to the
appearance of circles at Bickington in Devon, also at Hopton in Norfolk,
and when the more structured patterns of circles such as triplets and
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quincunxes began to appear, people were struck by their similarity to
recorded aerial formations of UFOs. Such coincidences all tended to
reinforce the suggestion that there might be some connection between the
two classes of phenomena.
The appearance of the 1990 pictograms virtually demolished the
plasma vortex theory as an explanation which characterised the figures
as random products of the normal working of established physical laws.
The forces, whether atmospheric or electrical, acting physically upon
the crops showed in their complex construction of these aesthetically
appealing artefacts indisputable evidence of directed intentionality; no
one could any longer rationally suppose them to have occurred
accidentally, for the agencies which laid low the corn revealed the
artistry of the intelligence they served.
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An interesting comment on the relevance of the physical sciences
to any intimate understanding of the crop circles' reality was received
by the Circles Phenomenon Research (CPR) group, after eight days of
observation with TV cameras and infra- red facilities during Project
White Crow in June 1989 had signally failed to achieve their objective
of recording the formation of a circle. An anonymous piece of doggerel
received by the project organiser, Colin Andrews, on its final day
contained the lines:
"Your machines you have set up,
Whate'er they cost is not enough.
The human mind is what you need.
To me you can't see wood for trees ..."
The full excerpt, quoted by George Wingfield (in Good T.[ed.]
1990), is believed to have been part of a "channelled" communication
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received by a group in Rochdale, Lancashire; which is quite near the
celebrated witch country of Pendle. We shall return to further
consideration of this missive later, merely noting for the moment its
injunction not to suppose that "machines" will solve the enigma of the
circles.
It was Alfred Watkins whose re-discovery of the old straight paths
now generally known as lines of ley energy made possible the post- World
War II movement inaugurated by Tony Wedd and Aime Michel: the latter's
concept of orthoteny sought to establish a connection between UFOs and
leys, while the energy patterns around neolithic structures ensured that
such power centres as Avebury and Stonehenge, under whose aegis crop
circles have frequently appeared, have been extensively studied.
Whatever sceptics may say, anyone who is willing to devote a little
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effort to the venture can assure himself of the reality of ley lines.
Working with the Surrey Earth Mysteries Group, I have done so myself,
though I claim no great expertise in the dowser's art. Once a circle or
pictogram has been established, even though the corn has since been
reaped, patterns of force on the site correlated with the structure of
the former figure can be detected by dowsing and it seems that this
force which remains derives from that which originally created the
figure.
There exist a number of witness accounts of circle creation, such
as that of the naturalist Sandy Reid of Duntroon Hill, Dundee, who
claimed that in the early hours of an August morning in 1989 the dawn
chorus of birdsong suddenly ceased (the Cone of Silence or Oz effect,
projected from an invisible UFO?). In the ensuing quiet Sandy said he
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heard the heads of corn in a nearby field rattling together as their
stalks swayed in response to invisible forces. There was no wind, only
the deeply felt sense of a Presence, as the corn suddenly went down in a
circle some thirty feet in diameter. After about three weeks, Sandy
allegedly became aware of a strange, high-pitched whirring noise not
unlike that made by summer crickets in the sun-baked grasses of the
French Midi. This seems to resemble the "trilling" sound heard by
members of the White Crow project, described as an "electrostatic
chattering" of variable frequency, peaking at 5.2 Khz.
Richard Andrews, an experienced dowser, has described (in Noyes
[ed.] 1990) how distinct lines of force can be identified in all circles
and pictograms; for example, he shows how the intersection of two
four-line leys produced the quartered pattern of the famous Winterbourne
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Stoke swastika figure, which incidentally represents the positive male
version of that figure and not the one used as Nazi insignia. Andrews
also shows how the force lines of a group of figures appear to possess
intangible interconnections so that "each circle configuration, or group
of them, will have the same dowsable pattern as any other one of the
same grouping, and if one pattern changes, they all change." (ibid.) He
describes too how animals show by their behaviour an awareness of the
force fields and nodal points of the ambient ley system.
George Wingfield (in Good T.[ed.] 1990) describes how the witness
to the landing of the luminous orange sphere near Silbury Hill on 29
June 1989 reported that it produced for him the subjective experience of
everything moving in slow motion. This effect of time expansion in the
normal world, with its corollary of corresponding compression in the UFO
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reality, suggests that he was looking into his native reality from the
standpoint of the UFO, a rare experience. Though the witness, whose
request for anonymity has been respected, may well have been unaware of
it, it seems likely that he was briefly enfolded by a different temporal
dimension, since when he is said to have undergone a marked personality
change. "Ideas and answers to all sorts of problems come into his head
and he now spends much of his time recording these unexpected
inspirations".
In view of this psychic aspect of cereophanic experience, it is
not surprising that the circle-hunting White Crow team, aware of claims
by various psychics to have received "channelled" messages from entities
identifying themselves as Watchers, Elohim and the like, should have
included in their group the medium Rita Goold, since some of the
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channelled messages had been thought mildly prophetic. She doubtless
shared the group's disappointment that they had nothing to show for
eight tedious days of circular vigils, so that when the Rochdale
communication, clearly purporting to be from the circle makers and
marked "Read before Saturday" arrived, she joined in the final watch.
The doggerel verses had contained the lines:
"In your hands you have the key
To talk to us, we are so free.
One soul is there, they have signed in
Who has the mind to link within ...
And I will tell you what to do.
Get this mind and sit around
In quiet of dark upon the ground,
Listen hard for every sound.
Not white of bird? But us around..."
Wingfield and his companions naturally assumed that the "one soul"
who could provide the link was Rita Goold, who therefore made one of the
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six who went to sit in the large Cheesefoot circle just after midnight,
to attempt a contact with whatever agencies created the circle. It
seems, however, that she was not the only psychic present, nor yet the
one the unknown communicators had chosen. They apparently manifested
themselves as a "trilling" sound, like that claimed to have been heard
some weeks later by Sandy Reid. Rita attempted to communicate with the
entities, but without success, though all present had the impression
that something living, intelligent and non-hostile was with them. It now
seems likely that the "one soul" referred to was a member of the team
named Ron Jones who, having heard the strange trilling sound as he
walked up the hill, saw the six figures in the moonlit circle and above
it the vision of a "luminous object shaped like a pair of horns."
Whether the symbol related to goat-footed Pan or to the witch god
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Cernunnos one can only speculate, for when two more researchers arrived
the trilling moved away from the perimeter of the circle. Wingfield had
"felt that whatever was there in the corn was on the point of making
itself known to us. But the moment had gone". (ibid.)
Exactly one week later the powers - elemental air entities? - that
had given Ron his vision over the cornfield identified themselves to him
by their trilling noise as he lay in bed at his house near Andover, and
suddenly transported him, he claimed, in full consciousness to that
field at Cheesefoot Head to show him horizontal bands of light rotating
busily up and down in the corn. Moments later the experience, presumably
of astral travel or an OBE, ended and he found himself back in his own
bed. Next day it was seen that a new circle had indeed appeared at the
very spot where he had observed the luminous bands at work.
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It is reasonable enough to assume that the agencies responsible
for the physical production of the crop circles and pictograms are in
fact the air elementals, whom for obvious reasons one wishes to avoid
calling fairies or even sylphs, both words having suffered badly in
recent times from semantic contamination. But agents are, by definition,
acting on behalf of another and not the originators of the meaning of
the symbols they create, or even necessarily aware of it. Sylphs may
produce the pictograms, but who or what tells them what kind of
pictograms to create?
John Michell takes the messages in the corn very seriously. "The
impression grows," he writes, "that something is being deliberately
pointed out. It is something which seems to have become urgent around
1980, though with traces from before that date. Its symbols have been
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repeated with growing emphasis and elaboration ever since." (in Noyes
R.[ed.] 1990)
In Shakespeare's last play the elemental spirit Ariel was bound to
serve the magician Prospero, and accomplished swiftly the various tasks
he was given. Borrowing the mathematician's trick of giving to unknowns
a local habitation and a name, I propose to let Ariel stand for those
forces which actually create the crop figures and Prospero for the
hidden intelligence which decrees their shape and hence their symbolism.
Ariel seems to be in touch with human consciousness and the
possessor of a subtle sense of humour. It was surely he who, overhearing
Busty Taylor's unspoken wish for a Celtic cross symbol, obligingly
produced one; who refuted the suggestion that circles are formed by
helicopter down draught with a new formation precisely located
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immediately beneath electric power lines, and disposed of Dr. Meaden's
rash generalisation about the directions of corn swirling by promptly
producing an example to disprove it. Perhaps it was his mercurial whim
to send the channelled doggerel to the Rochdale group and puzzle with
his trilling the six seekers in the Cheesefoot circle. He is such an
engaging fellow that he has been for far too long the centre of
attention, causing people to divert their thoughts to how he works his
minor miracles, instead of first asking why.
A work of art can be its own justification, and certainly the
cereologists have been duly appreciative of the aesthetic content of the
pictograms. Prospero is undoubtedly an artist, but can it all be just a
matter of art for art's sake? From the initial simplicity of the single
circle to the convoluted complexity of the latest manifestations, the
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major designs all participate in a unity imposed by underlying
metaphysical themes. The symbols have the nature of mandalas, the
contemplation of which is held by many to be an aid to spiritual
development. The single circle, from which all subsequent patterns seem
to have flowed, is itself a symbol of infinity and much else besides,
while some later pictograms can be ingeniously related to the
archetypes, those structural components of the collective unconscious
which form the foundations of Jung's psychology.
Some symbols offer an obvious interpretation: the Christian
crucifix, the Celtic cross and the swastika have readily available
exoteric meanings, while the quincunx symbolised for Jung the five
essential elements of consciousness. The archaeologist Michael Green,
founder and chairman of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies, identifies
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pictograms referring to planetary ideograms for days of the week and
writes that: "The new class of phenomena represent, in my view, certain
cosmic principles of the Ancient Wisdom which was implanted in the
matrix of human consciousness millennia ago and were recorded by glyph
and symbol." (in Noyes R.[ed.] 1990) He has also suggested that the
glyphs of certain crop formations "appear to be related to Senzar, the
ancient sacerdotal language of Atlantis". (in Bartholomew A. [ed.] 1991)
According to H.P.Blavatsky, this was a language "known to the initiates
of every nation", but which is unfortunately inaccessible. The
mathematics of the Ickleton Mandelbrot and the remarkable geometry of
the Barbury Castle pictogram, however, address the modern mind more
directly and effectively refute their attribution to the mindless forces
of chance, though the hoped for apocalypse remains still unmanifest.
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There are two quite separate questions arising from the increasing
proliferation and complexity of crop field phenomena, namely the
physical and the semantic, and it is a mistake to suppose that a
solution to the first will necessarily provide the answer to the second.
Certainly Dr. Terence Meaden and those who associate themselves with his
line of research are to be congratulated on their willingness to risk
the disapproval of more orthodox colleagues by their advocacy of the
unproven plasma vortex hypothesis, despite the successive and ultimately
incredible convolutions their paradigm has been forced to undergo in
order to maintain the view that all crop field phenomena are of purely
natural origin and the result of the normal operation of physical laws.
A scientist driven to denouncing as hoaxes all examples for which his
theory cannot account is clearly involved with a hypothesis at the end
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of its tether.
On the mythical island of Shakespeare's last play, one recalls
that paranormal occurrences were brought about by the spirit Ariel at
the behest of his magician master Prospero. The playwright neglected to
tell us whether Ariel's exploits were achieved, let us say, by
concentrations of static electricity or even of Reichian orgone energy;
he offered no explanation because he found the question irrelevant:
magic existed and could be taken for granted. Now Ariel is certainly an
engaging fellow and no doubt he has had his fun with cereologists. It is
time, however, to forget about him for a while and ask instead what his
master is up to. For those like the plasma vorticists, who deny the
evidence of directed intentionality in the progressive development of
crop phenomena from simple circles through multi-structured pictograms
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to the marvellous complexities of the Barbury and Ickleton creations,
the question is of course mere nonsense. For them neither Prospero the
designer nor Ariel the executant can exist, and whatever cannot be
ascribed to the blind actions of chance forces must result from the
childish operations of Bill and Ben the hoaxing men.
It is not, however, just the plasma vorticists who see only what
they wish to find in the cereal statements with which successive summers
have bestrewn our fields. Astrologers find portents and occultists
symbols unheard of by any but specialists in the histories of long-dead
and pre-literate Celtic cults. If Prospero were really sending such
messages for our enlightenment, could he not have spoken more plainly,
or was he just teasing us? Hopi Indians confronted with the corn symbols
hint darkly at the revenge affronted nature will exact now that the
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buffalo hunt and the scalping sortie are no more, and have found an
advocate in Colin Andrews. Green parties and New Age groupies, agog to
welcome the dawning of the Aquarian age none of them will ever see,
concur. Everyone finds different meaning in the pictograms and possibly
Prospero intended that they should thus bestir their brains. Ariel,
meanwhile, like his alter ego Puck, looks on and laughs to see logic so
confounded - "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
Yet if we can restrain our personal preferences and desires so as
to look calmly and objectively at the evidence we possess, it requires a
specially dogged kind of obtuseness to maintain that the crop field
phenomena are not manifestations of an intelligence, and no ordinary one
at that. Many pictograms, in their line and symmetry, are quite simply
beautiful and have propitious atmospheres felt by all but the least
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sensitive. Prospero is more than mere abstract intelligence - he is also
an artist whose works are their own justification, requiring no pedantic
exposition or dubious attribution for their enjoyment. They appeal
directly, especially when seen in totality from an aerial viewpoint;
many can be appreciated only from above, as is the case with many of the
surviving artefacts of the ancient world. There is also a fascination in
observing that this technical mastery of the medium was not an instant
achievement, springing in perfection like Minerva from the head of Jove.
Over the years we can see the record of Ariel's prentice attempts to
embody his master's designs, misshapen and grapeshot bespattered,
ripening subsequently into the full glory of realised intent. This does
not strike us as the work of a god, for gods surely should be capable of
instant perfection in their works: we can postulate a great designer and
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a superb technician without the need to endow either with divinity.
At the end of the 1991 season of crop formations, five weeks and
some eighty miles separated the two most remarkable pictograms yet
created, the Barbury Castle figure of July 17th and the Ickleton
Mandelbrot of August 12th, each quite different in kind from any of
their predecessors. It seemed as if Prospero, not only an artist but a
mathematician too, had decided to leave cereologists something to think
about during the bare months of winter instead of merely befuddling
their brains in the smoke-filled back room of a Beckhampton hostelry,
for both figures possessed an undeniable intellectual content and their
proximity in time and space could suggest also a semantic link, if only
one of contrast. Each was also situated near an ancient trackway,
potentially a physical locus for the mental journey through the
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dimensions from Barbury to Ickleton.
The Barbury Castle figure is a geometrical demonstration of static
linear relationships between real numbers in two dimensions, while the
Mandelbrot set represented at Ickleton is a dynamic algebraic derivation
of non-linear relationships between a set of complex numbers in a
fractional dimension. Barbury typifies the stasis of an established
classical order, but the Mandelbrot depicts a dissolution of that order
into apparent chaos which can resolve through the Feigenbaum sequence of
bifurcations into a further order.
The set is said to be the most complex object in mathematics. "An
eternity," says James Gleick (1988), "would not be enough time to see it
all, its disks studded with prickly thorns, its spirals and filaments
curling outward and around, bearing bulbous molecules that hang,
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infinitely variegated, like grapes on God's personal vine." Though
complicated beyond the possibility of full description, this remarkable
object, which the cornfield pictogram could of course only symbolise,
can yet be generated by just a few lines of computer program - infinite
complexity generated from iterations of initial simplicity. It is known
that the figure appeared in the corn field overnight, and any who
believe this to be a hoax must be prepared to repeat it under identical
controlled conditions if they expect their claim to receive any kind of
serious consideration.
George Wingfield (in Bartholomew (ed.) 1991) sees Chaos Theory as
"an indication that even within chaos there is a natural order which
permeates both the natural order and the world of consciousness." Not
so, for there can by definition be no order in chaos. What fractals can,
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however, demonstrate is the breakdown of one order into total chaos
within which a new order than evolves, so that chaos is no more; but
this does not justify the assumption that the Ickleton figure is
modelling a process where social systems break down into a chaos from
which a new order and a new age emerge, though it might perhaps not be
wholly unreasonable to suppose the Mandelbrot may point up a new
approach to problems of turbulence, social and physical.
John Michell ("The Cerealogist", No. 4) finds "a world of
symbolism" in the Barbury Castle pictogram, and it is inevitable that
meaning will be sought for such phenomena. Observing that the area of
the central circle is the sum of the three surrounding it, Michell
claims that "it demonstrates the principle of Three in One"; does he
therefore mean that it asserts the validity of the Christian or even the
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Hindu trinity? If so, we have clearly moved from fact to speculation.
Similarly, the total area of all four circles is said to be 31,680
square feet, a number apparently significant in ancient cosmology,
theology and temple architecture. So is the figure a historical
referent, an embodiment of geometric universality or both?
Everyone seeking meaning in cereological phenomena naturally does
so in terms of his own ideological bias, so that we have plasma
vortices, pre-literate Celtic symbology, Christian numerology and
astrologically based prophecies of the new Aquarian age, to name but a
few. Though no one can disprove the validity of any, it would perhaps be
wiser to confine hypothesising to that area where there is most common
ground between theorists. This can be expressed by two propositions.
First, that pictograms show evidence of directed intentionality and
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cannot feasibly be ascribed to the random operations of physical forces:
and second, that this intentionality infers the operation of an
intelligence at present unspecifiable.
For several years Ariel has teased the proponents of vortex theory
by producing instances to disprove each modification of their basic
hypothesis and perhaps Prospero has been willing enough to indulge his
fun-loving familiar for the sake of the interest created by his antics.
Then suddenly comes the more serious business. No more insectograms or
curlymen, but instead the sparse Euclidean logic of the Barbury figure.
Prospero has perhaps some means of monitoring human response to his
cereal statement, but finds it regressive and medieval, not the effect
expected, for the geometry of the past is to be subsumed into the
Mandelbrot algebra of the future. Ariel is given five weeks to prepare
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the cereological manifestation of the ultimate masterpiece. The
aesthetics of his previous creations have already established Prospero
as an artist, who now appears also as a mathematician at or beyond the
state of the art. Will a further revelation take us into the realms of
relativity and quantum mechanics or is this to be, as hoaxers have
claimed, the end of the line for cereology?
The meaning of the Mandelbrot figure is complete in itself, a
testimony to mathematical truth derived from the infinite plane of
complex numbers, just as the Barbury figure may also witness to other
truths, without either necessarily being hortatory or prophetic.
Innovatory arts and sciences bear inevitable reference to the character
of their begetters; about whom, then, do the corn figures at their most
majestic speak? Can we from them hesitantly infer an identity for
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Prospero, some secret barely glimpsed at the heart of the labyrinth?
Corn, let it be remembered, is indisputably a plant which can have
had no natural origin. It can only have been created by genetic
manipulation and was said to be in this form a gift to men from the
ancient astronauts, the nephilim who came down to earth from above as
the biblical book of Genesis records. Nor was it only corn that,
according to the ancient Sumerian writings, was created by those coming
from above. Baked into tablets of hardened mud, their cuneiform
inscriptions recorded how Enki, to them a god, created the race of Adam
by artificial insemination, using his own sperm to fertilise the egg of
an African hominid. (Sitchin 1976). This seldom heard story was probably
unknown to the late Professor Allan Wilson, the biochemist whose work on
mitochondrial DNA led him to assert that the human race is descended
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from a single female ancestor who lived in Africa more than a hundred
thousand years ago. Nevertheless, his research seems to corroborate the
ancient Sumerian and Akkadian records, which claimed to embody what
their astronaut "gods" had told them. According to Michael Green (1991),
the agriglyphs traced in the August corn on Milk Hill near Stanton St.
Bernard in 1991 set forth the name of the Sumerian "god" Enki, together
with his Egyptian name of Ptah. Are then the ancient astronauts using
the medium of corn, their original gift to post-diluvian man, to remind
him of their continuing interest in the planet they populated?
We may not easily approach much nearer to Prospero, whatever his
true name may be, but speculation about Ariel and his works will
obviously continue. Does he perhaps drive a UFO? At Alton Barnes, for
instance, Farmer Carson bore witness that the appearance of each giant
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pictogram was preceded by lights shining down from the sky, and there
have been similar testimonies from other sites. Small spherical flying
objects among the corn have been recorded on videotape; they resemble
the "spy UFO" similarly recorded when flying alongside Concorde some
years ago. Perhaps, as has sometimes been suggested, the pictograms are
simply a development from the UFO phenomenon, each having a common
origin and the shared intention of awakening in the consciousness of
mankind a renewed awareness that the universe is not wholly revealed to
us in the fullness of its reality by the narrow perceptions given us
through our five senses. Individually ephemeral but collectively of
significance, the pictograms may yet be the medium for a message still
to be revealed.
The most radical hypothesis, however, still awaits exploration.
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It asks whether any of the phenomena embraced by the twin disciplines of
ufology and cereology can reasonably be ascribed to the continuing
activities of those ancient astronauts recorded in the Sumerian and
Akkadian chronicles as the creators and overseers of humanity on this
planet.
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