When I saw the Salinas/Chualar, California formation I was, like many of us, impressed. Out of nowhere the word “culmination” attached itself and stayed. The date seemed important; the crop circle phenomenon is aware of our calendar and has often made use of it. A huge and elaborate formation at the very end of 2013 and the insistence of culmination led me to believe that this was a powerful signal of an ending, a symbolic conclusion to the...

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The 1998 season was remarkable in many respects. Two formations, the Stingray at Beckhampton on 21st July and the Queen at Lockeridge on 8th August are of particular interest here. 1998 was a wonderful season that featured, among other things, the arrival of sevenfold geometry. Amid this excitement it might be said that the Stingray and the Queen, though certainly not unnoticed, did not receive the attention they deserved.

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The Cheesefoot Head formation will become, I believe, a true classic of the crop circle programme. It carries reminiscences of both labyrinths and fractals though of course it is neither. For clarity I will examine the four components of the formation separately. I move from the smallest to the largest and, while I have no evidence that this was in fact the sequence of construction, I believe it might have been.

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The Sacred Geometer took the square as the symbol of the World and the circle as the symbol of Heaven, of All-that-is. The geometric exercise, the Squaring of the Circle, served as a metaphor for a bridge between matter and spirit, the marriage of Earth and Heaven. For some years I have been intrigued, some might say obsessed, by these references to squareness in the unfolding crop circle narrative and so regular and persistent are these references that I feel they might have a purpose. 2012 was notable for its repetition of squares and cubes. This continues through the 2013 Season.

On 31st July there was a remarkable public relations coup, though for whom and by whom is questionable. Three national daily newspapers, the Times the Telegraph, and the Mail ran virtually identical articles on the crop circles. The most interesting feature was an interview with the ever-imaginative Matthew Williams (a vociferous though fast-fading hoax claimant) who stated that the dearth of formations up to then was due entirely to the fact...