Posted by Michael Glickman on February 27, 2012

Fig.1 - Honey Street completed

The two-phase formation of 4th & 5th July 2011 at Honey Street, though dismissed by many, is one of the most challenging crop circles we have ever received [Fig.1]. It was unique and I believe it was a test.

The first question we must ask is what do these enigmatic forms represent?

The two raised limbs seem to have a claw-like quality but the fan tail (or might it be a skirt?) leads us away from creatures. They have been called insects, scorpions, dancers, whirling Dervishes and inevitably, this being Wiltshire, Goddesses. We are, once again, confronted with the unanswerable. I choose here to call them lobsters. This is a working title only but I would not spend much time arguing for it.

TWO-PHASE EVENTS
The second pressing question is the significance of the two-hit arrival of this formation. The appearance of crop formations in two stages is unusual but no longer astonishing. The earliest, and perhaps best known, was the Spider’s Web at Avebury on 10th and 11th August 1994. I would guess that there have been about twelve transformers (expanders? augmenters? evolvers? sequentials?) since then and this includes the rare three- and even four-stage events. In examining these phased formations it appears that they have obeyed two rules.

First, the additional phase arrives quickly, usually within a day or two of its initiation. Second, and most important, after every phase, the design seems considered, poised and finished in its own right. There is rarely a sense that the formation is incomplete and awaiting an addition or expansion. This second rule is of course a central characteristic of the crop circle programme.

Why are some crop circles delivered in two or more episodes? There can be no doubt that the circle authorities could, if they chose, manifest the whole thing at once. Further, what determines the break point between phases? I feel there is significance here, too.

My position is well known. I have heard a hundred claims and a thousand boasts but I have never, in over twenty years, been persuaded that the hoax obsession is much beyond limp-brained hysteria. Despite the many senior researchers (who should by now know better) who treat crop circle studies as forensics and act like CSI operatives, there is never any real evidence.

Yet here, in the Five Lobster formation at Honey Street, the second rule was clearly broken. Phase 1 was obviously unfinished! What could this mean? In many respects this appears to be man made. We had no way of knowing that there would be a Phase 2 and many people assumed that this was an ambitious fraud abandoned, for whatever reason, before completion. Lobster Interruptus.

Fig.2 - Honey Street Phase 1

SOME DETAILS OF PHASE 1
Let us examine the first stage of this crop circle [Fig.2].
Phase 1 exists entirely within a 210-foot diameter disc of laid wheat. This dimension has been worked out by proportional extrapolation from photographs. I believe it to be reasonably accurate but if there are any ground measurements out there I would be grateful to receive them.

Within the main circle a pentagon, a five-sided figure, has been finely and accurately pressed into the crop [Fig.3]. To give a sense of scale the line forming the pentagon was 10 to 12 inches wide and the pentagon would fit into a circle of about 146 foot diameter.

Fig.3 - Honey Street with pentagon

There are four elements (lobsters) positioned immaculately on four corners of the pentagram figure. Here, in Phase 1, the fifth element is conspicuously missing. The fifth corner is unoccupied.

The four lobster components are complete but it is clear that the formation is unfinished. The crop has been carefully laid around lobsters 2 and 4 to frame them precisely while lobster 3 remains untrimmed at the front and lobster 1, untrimmed at the rear, is connected at the front to the large area of standing wheat. This is the location of the missing fifth lobster.

Another puzzle is that this area of wheat at the corner of the pentagon is clearly too small to contain a fifth element of the same size.

Fig 4 - Geometry of individual unit

THE STRUCTURE OF THE LOBSTERS
The form of the individual lobsters is based precisely on Vesica Pisces geometry [Fig.4], the diagram used by sacred geometers to symbolise the Division of Unity, the first act of creation.

A first circle is drawn, shown here in red. A second circle, in green, is drawn with its centre positioned on the perimeter of the red circle. This establishes the front curve housing the claw features and the rear curve containing the fantail components.
The overlapping of the two circles forms the leaf or almond shaped Vesica. Two further circles, of the same diameter, are drawn centred on the intersections of red and green. These two circles, in blue, define the body of the lobster.
The individual forms are placed on the corners of the pentagon, shown in pink [Fig.3]. Each spine is aligned with an edge of the pentagon and the 108° corner establishes the unexpected tilt of the tail.

It is interesting that this precise four-circle Vesica geometry served also to form the basis of the two “Cat’s eye” formations at Clatford and Furze Hill on 21st and 22nd June 1998.

A MOMENT IN CROP CIRCLE TIME
The crop circle does not exist and then suddenly it is there. We are not used to this type of magic in our culture. We have seen that buildings and bridges will take months or years to complete and films have shown us factory production lines assembling objects in minutes or hours. The unheralded instantaneous manifestation of a completed crop formation is almost impossible for us to digest.

In the real world the element of linear time is reassuring to us. We are comforted by the fact that B will usually follow A and a disruption of this type of simple logic is troubling. Faced with the perplexity of the crop circles we long to know how it is done. We want to view the method, the order, and the process. We feel that by placing the crop circle in a context of sequential time the mystery might, in part at least, be unlocked.

A phased formation offers less than a video but perhaps the appearance of separate stages starts to suggest a narrative. And perhaps the apparently incomplete Honey Street stage 1 offers glimpses through a tear in the veil.

A CLOSER LOOK AT PHASE 1
The incomplete Phase 1 might have been deliberately designed to offer succour and reassurance to the supporters of the man-made hypothesis. A closer gaze reveals more questions than answers.

Why were elements 1, 2, 3 and 4 perfectly completed even before 5 was started? This is such an eccentric approach to a project that it must be significant.

The sweep around element 2 appears immediately to be the path of a stomper board. The standing, untrimmed crop by its neighbours 1 and 3 makes this appear even more obvious. Yet this track is about 9 feet wide! For newcomers, the average board used by hoaxers is around 3 feet wide. A 9 foot board would be impractical to use and difficult to transport. Why were these wide sweeps so conspicuously displayed?

(It is interesting that Honey Street Sawmill, where boards of any size can be easily obtained, is literally a five-minute walk from the formation.)

Fig.5 - Concentric circles

The curvature through the standing wheat between elements 1 and 4 is a perfect arc of an incomplete circle of 105 feet in diameter, or exactly half the diameter of the formation. The outer 210-foot circle and the inner 105-foot arc shared the same centre [Fig.5]. The 1:2 proportion of concentric circles is suggestive of Euclid’s second theorem. They were concentric but there was no indication of their shared centre in the formation. Why was the radius of this arc exactly half that of the main circle?

BETWEEN 1 AND 2
At first sight, Honey Street 1 was bewildering and ambivalent. I have seen many unfinished man made formations but never anything as confusing as this one. An abandoned fake looks exactly like an abandoned fake!

Honey Street produced a public response as divergent as any crop circle I have known. Clearly it appeared unfinished and, equally clearly, it seemed to embody “mistakes”. And so, while many were charmed and convinced by this formation, an equal number were ready to dismiss it as a hoax.

For my part, I became increasingly convinced that this was real but a hoaxed hoax, a faked fake, a forged forgery. The four repeated lobster motifs were especially impressive. I have never seen, within the crop circle canon, such complex and detailed forms repeated so painstakingly. And yet (and this for me squelches the possibility of human origin) they contain within their almost industrialised similarities a number of oddities and inexplicable eccentricities. Why does the number of tail components vary from 12 to 15?
Why is the “red circle” of the lobster geometry incised into the wheat for an unnecessary extra arc of 90° in elements 2 to 5 but not in 1?

This wilful, whimsical and inexplicable spirit sits more happily with my experience of the real phenomenon than with what I know of the sad and limited hoax mob.

But there was yet another conundrum. Having set up a formation within which four elements were impeccably made and precisely located on four corners of the pentagon, why was the territory of the fifth reduced so obviously that it was clearly impossible to accommodate the final piece?

There was no doubt in my mind that there would be a Phase 2. But how – an insoluble question – would corner 5, and the fifth lobster, be dealt with?

Fig.6 - Honey Street Phase 2

THE ARRIVAL OF PHASE 2
On the following day, coincidentally the 5th July, Phase 2 located the fifth element [Fig.6].

The formation had been enhanced with five large arcs around its perimeter. Each of the arcs created a crescent of standing wheat. The centre of curvature of the arcs, at the central point of the lobsters’ front, is shown in [Fig.7].

Close to lobster 3, at the junction of two arcs a stepped temple, pyramid or ziggurat had been added. A small circle, with a standing central tuft, topped an arrangement of four increasing blocks or rectangles.

Fig.7 - Radius of Phase 2 arcs

This “temple” logo or trademark was a duplicate of the mark that came down [Fig.8], also as a Phase 2 addition, at the Sanctuary formation of May 28th and 29th. At the Sanctuary the symbol was doubled up, base to base, around a central pathway of Phase 1.

There have been several attempts to interpret the meaning of this small glyph. For me it suggests a stairway or passage through dimensions. We start at the dot or point and then rise to third, passing through fourth into the Lobster formation that is the embodiment of fiveness. Perhaps it is emblematic of the fifth dimension into which, many believe, we are now shifting.

How was it possible to shoehorn lobster 5 into the reduced and compromised space. Two strategies were employed.

Fig.8 - Detail of Sanctuary formation

First, lobster 5 was reduced in size, strictly in proportion, to about 86% of the first four. Second, diagram [Fig.9] shows how the inner 104-foot circle, which should have flattened the left claw feature of every lobster, affected only the fifth. [Fig.10]Shows a close up of the laid wheat at 5’s left claw. It has been reconstituted or repaired. Effectively the lozenge of flattened crop was made to stand up again!

Compare photos [2] and then [1] which show how the wheat was substantially restored. Images [Fig.11] and [Fig.12] are views of the restored crop. Clearly the wheat was not standing upright as it had been before; the transformation of downed wheat to its pre crop circle condition was a symbol and a gesture rather than a true resurrection. But what a symbol! What a gesture! Nothing like this has ever happened before.

Fig.9 - Impact of Phase 1 laid wheat on element 5

Fig.10 - Restoration of laid wheat

Fig.11 - Restoration of laid wheat

Fig.12 - Restoration of laid wheat

From the moment of its arrival this formation fascinated me. I have no “explanation.” I do not fully understand its layered signs and communications but I am convinced, somehow, of its real importance. I am certain of less and less but it is clear to me that those who profess certainties (especially in relation to this phenomenon) are at worst liars and at best foolish. After considering the Honey Street lobster formation in some depth and for some time I believe it to be real but uncharacteristically, a clever and knowing parody.

The true circle makers never give us the proof we seek. As teachers they are too wise for that. Instead, they give us crop circles which stretch us and act as mirrors; relentlessly requiring us to come to our own decisions, to form our own opinions and to embrace our own intuitions. The lobster formation challenges us more profoundly than ever.

The crop circles have got a new trick! After decades of their increasing mastery of the laid-down crop they now can stand it up again. I imagine they will do it even more convincingly next time.

TWO FOOTNOTES

Fig.13 - Alignment with script formation

Image [Fig.13] shows the relationship between the lobster formation and the neighbouring script formation that arrived on 4th August, the same day as phase 1. In the early ‘90s John Martineau’s seminal work on crop circle geometry noted that crop circle alignments tended to tangent an object rather than aiming for its centre. Thus I assumed that the script’s axis would lightly touch the circumference of the lobster formation. In fact as image [Fig.13] shows, the axis passes through the body of lobster 1.

Glenn Broughton is a dear friend who has been close to the circles for many years. He is a gifted dowser and energy worker whose work I hold in the highest regard. We disagree fundamentally on this formation and, in the interest of balance I will conclude with his view of it.

He tells me he that he, and several other colleagues, detected absolutely no energies in the lobster formation. He feels that phase 1 is clear evidence of a man-made formation gone wrong and abandoned while the phase 2 reinstatement of wheat was so crudely done as to confirm this hypothesis.

Acknowledgements and Thanks
Photography: Steve Alexander, Jineen Cronin, Paul Jacobs and Olivier Morel
Diagrams and graphics: Ofmil Haynes Jr
Field measurements: Joanna Barry, Jineen Cronin and Daniel Rozman