The alien corn
John Michell
CIRCULAR EVIDENCE by Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews
Bloomsbury, f14.95, pp.192
THE CIRCLES EFFECT AND ITS MYSTERIES by George T. Meaden
Artetech Publishing, f9.95, pp.112
Something very weird is going on in the English countryside, and it is mostly hap- pening in Wiltshire. This is not surprising, since from the earliest times Wiltshire has been the centre of English mysteries. In it are Stonehenge and the great serpent temple at Avebury, and also in Wiltshire is Warminster, the UFO capital of England. Since 1965 the curious have been flocking to Warminster, hoping to see the strange lights in the sky or experience one of the odd events for which the area is famous.
To the familiar data of UFOlogy has recently been added a new phenomenon. For the last few years, and again this summer, cornfields around Warminster have been dotted with 'corn circles', areas of up to about 70 feet in diameter, where the growing corn has been swirled down to the ground and held there in a spiral pattern. Sometimes the markings are more elaborate, with one or more concentric rings around an inner circle, satellite circles at the four quarters and other symbolic figures.
Crop circles also cluster around Ave- bury, in fields below Silbury Hill and under the ancient earthworks at Westbury. Over the border from Wiltshire there are groups near Wantage and Winchester, and they are now being found more widely in other counties. They also infest alien corn: an outbreak of circles was reported this sum- mer from Italy. Yet they have hitherto shown a marked preference for Wessex, and their distribution there is further limited by their habit of appearing near ancient sanctuaries, stones and earthworks.
Many people would like to know what is making the circles, not least the Ministry of Defence. Also concerned is the Ministry of Agriculture, partly because Wessex farm- ers are unable to reap the flattened corn. The question becomes more urgent every Year as the circles increase in number, size and variety. 1989 has produced the all-time bumper. Public interest has also increased, and with it the discomfiture of the Govern- ment which, like all governments, fears lack of omniscience and hates to be in the dark about what is going on. Rumour has it that our Head of State has an informed interest in the circle phenomenon and that the Prime Minister has been sharply ques- tioned on visits to the Palace.
Two books on crop circles have just come out. Both are by seasoned investiga- tors, members of the select circle-study fraternity which has been active through the 1980s, but they reflect no consensus among the experts, and in fact they are rivals. Dr Meaden is the great authority on whirlwinds, waterspouts and ball lightning, and he would like to explain crop circles, as well as UFOs, in meteorological terms. He makes brave efforts at defining the sort of unknown natural force which might poss- ibly produce these effects, but crop circles remain impervious to scientific explana- tions. Another expert, Ralph Noyes, has pointed out that every time a new theory is put forward a new type of circle appears, displaying, as if purposefully, features which contradict it.
The systematic perversity of the circles is one of the many hints of an intelligence behind them. This notion is incompatible with the rules of science, so Dr Meaden is barred from considering it. Delgado and Andrews are not so inhibited, and their work is thus the more comprehensive of the two. Circular Evidence is a beautiful looking book. Its fine coloured photo- graphs of rings and circles etched upon summer cornfields give good reason for the authors' delight in their subject. They feel nothing sinister about it, but they have come to suspect that physical science is not equipped to explain it. Their approach is nonetheless impeccably scientific. Over the years they have inspected, measured, photographed, mapped and annotated hundreds of circles; they have considered all the theories, and they have taken advice from meteorologists, geologists, archae- ologists and other specialists, not forget- ting dowsers and UFOlogists. They have also listened patiently to the rustics with their tales of rutting deer and massed hedgehogs galloping round in circles. All this has been to no avail. Two main questions are posed by the crop circles, and both remain totally unanswered. No one has explained what causes them, and no one knows what they mean.
Everyone's first thought is that there must be hoaxers abroad. There have in- deed been cases of local jokers vandalising cornfields, but the mutilated results of their rolling bodies or flailing chains are quite different from the real thing. All our experts are agreed about this. One of the mysteries of crop circles is that neither the ears nor the stalks of corn have been at all damaged. The plants have been gently bent over near the ground, as if by a sudden, intense burst of radiation, and lie in neat swirls, some clockwise, some anti- clockwise, and often with alternating layers in different directions. They continue to grow and ripen horizontally. There is no known means of replicating this effect.
Delgado and Andrews say that the circles are formed only by night, and they give many cases where their appearance has been in association with aerial lights, humming or crackling sounds and other stock UFO phenomena. Since UFOs are by definition unidentified, this comparison is of no help in establishing the cause of crop circles. It may, however, be relevant to the more important question of their meaning. In his last and most prophetic work, Flying Saucers, published in 1959, C. G. Jung gave a solemn warning of dramatic events to come, presaged by UFO appari- tions. These prodigies, he said, are symp- toms of a radical change in the 'collective psyche' which must now be expected as the age of Pisces gives way to that of Aquarius. In other words, we are being influenced to think differently.
Bearing in mind that, long before the A single circle, 16 metres in diameter, which appeared in June 1987 on the Longwood Estate, Hampshire. rise of the Green Party, the first intima- tions of ecological crisis and the plight of the earth were given by UFO writers in the Fifties and Sixties, and allowing that crop circles are an extension of the UFO mys- tery, it may not be too hard to guess in what direction we are being asked to re-think.
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