Posted by Michael Glickman on March 27, 2012

Fig.1 - A typical swirled crop circle centre

I want here to deal with some events of the mid ‘90s. It was evident from the earliest days that the crop was usually, though not inevitably, swirled down with a rotational motion [Fig.1]. The circularity of the phenomenon was an essential component. They were – most emphatically – crop circles. We had not yet experienced triangles, squares, pentagrams, hexagrams let alone fractals, even though all of these were based fundamentally on rotational swirl. It is curious that the swirl, and its occasional central tuft, is never at the geometric centre of the circle.

There were two telling occurrences of the mid ‘90s. I was working with Patricia Murray in California who in December 1995 rang (at an inappropriate hour) in a state of great excitement.

THE SPINNER FILM
She had been making Christmas cards for her family and was working on the floor surrounded by the black and white silhouette drawings of crop circles that I had sent her. Her story was this: looking around her at the crop circle forms she asked the empty room, “Just what is going on?” and a voice in her head responded immediately, “Spin us!”

In a corner cupboard in her kitchen she had a “Lazy Susan”, a round shelf on a central pivot that allows you, in awkward locations, to rotate the shelf to access its contents. She cleared it, took it out and then, carefully centring the drawings over the pivot, she started to spin them.

The results were startling. The spinning of black and white drawings produced impressions of colours, of vortices and of extraordinary shifts and movements. She was overwhelmed by the experience. Sadly I had no Lazy Susan. Eight thousand miles to the east, at 3.00 am, there was little I could do.

But the next day I borrowed a cake-decorating stand that turned easily on a pivoted base. I set several drawings spinning with the same emotional and almost hypnotic effect. I sent more drawings for Patricia to work with. As a result of these experiments we decided that we should put together a short video of these spinners for the 1996 Glastonbury Symposium. An ex-student of mine had a special effects company and he agreed to produce the film. Remember, the mid-‘90s were substantially pre-computer and pre-DVD. We used videotape! Five or six silhouettes were made to spin at three different speeds and the audience responded enthusiastically. One man wept.

ROTATIONAL SYMMETRY
The second significant event was our noticing that the formations were starting to exhibit a clearly graphic rotational character; they were in fact displaying rotational symmetry.

We have seen that the swirled lay is very much the identifying thumbprint of the crop circle phenomenon but before the mid ‘90s the formations had never adopted an inarguable, geometric turning shape. Yet here in the mid 90s they were emphasising the fundamental swirl of their manufacture in clearly rotating graphic symbols.

Fig.2 - A marine propeller

Fig.3 - A 4-blade aircraft prop

Fig.4 - An aerial turbine

Is there perhaps a metaphorical connection to the circles? Are they suggesting a need for careful balance and poise around a virtual axis that rises invisibly from the circle’s centre?

Fig.5 - The Triskelion

Fig.6 - Swastika – rotational symmetry

Fig.7 - West-Kennett

 
The gigantic paired twin external wings were laid crop on the outside and standing inside. As the standing pair curled inwards (black on the diagram) they ended in a short wall of single standing stems. The laid pair tapered to the width of a single plant. Sadly, neither of these miraculous achievements was respected by visitors. The delicate ends were quickly trampled.

Silhouette 4, the fivefold spinner at Kingsclere was on Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s land but, apparently, he was not too pleased with his exquisite gift!

Fig.8 - Four Spinners

 
Diagram [Fig.8] shows the developing sequence of formations based on rotational symmetry in the mid ‘90s. I do not believe that these were the only ones but they were rare. Rotational symmetry is now a standard feature of the crop circle programme. Some of the best-known formations of the last years have been spinners.

EAST MEON NESTED CRESCENTS
There was news of a particularly graceful formation in the Meon Valley in Hampshire. The Meon area is some distance from the Wiltshire heartland but it has received, and continues to receive, extraordinary crop circles. Close to Winchester Hill, site of an ancient hill fort, the River Meon wanders through an almost unbelievably picturesque part of rural England.

The East Meon nested crescents formation remains for me one of the most charming and elegant formations I have ever visited. Nobody was ever able to pinpoint the exact date of its arrival which is it is generally accepted as “early July 1995”.

The formation was assembled from a closely packed array of fine nested crescents organised around two thin concentric rings of standing wheat [Fig.9] and [Fig.10]. The first impression of the arrangement was astonishing in its delicacy and transparency.

Fig.9 - East Meon

Fig.10 - East Meon diagram

Although on the day we visited there were many visitors, there seemed to be an overwhelming sense of stillness and calm in the formation. It was the first of many clearly feminine crop circles I was to encounter, and it was as a result of East Meon that I started to refer, in conversations with friends, to the circlemakers as “the girls”. This was certainly jokey and perhaps ironic but it captured my growing sense that the authors of this phenomenon were, though not necessarily female, in some indefinable way, more feminine in their spirit than we are used to.

Fig.11 - East Meon showing axis

It also emphasised the idea that, in addition to the beauty of the formations, an important concern of the authors was the attention paid to their framing and placement in the landscape. The East Meon formation was centred on a tramline, which provided an almost ceremonial route into the very centre [Fig.11]. Looking at the aerial photograph, it is clear that the surrounding landscape celebrates and emphasises the entrance tramline. A farm track through the woods at the top of the field forms a break in the tree line and this is used to emphasise further the axis of the formation.

WHEATHILL
Towards the end of the day we left the charmed East Meon valley and set out to return to Wiltshire. I was not familiar with the area and within minutes we were lost. Both Patricia and I were still so dazed by our hours in the crescents that we were quite happy to drive aimlessly through the lovely countryside. Suddenly, Patricia shouted for me to stop. She had noticed a suspicious shadow on the hillside by the road [Fig.12]. It was indeed a formation and the combine harvester was at the top of the half-harvested field moving inexorably towards the crop circle. I parked the car while Patricia, clutching her camera, ran up the slope.

Fig.12 - Wheathill; approach of combine

Fig.13 - Wheathill

Combine drivers rarely stop. They are in charge of an expensive piece of plant and they need to finish the job and move on to the next farm. But, to my amazement, Patricia flagged the driver down and actually got his permission to climb onto the roof of his machine to shoot from there. I spoke to him briefly and learned (a) that the location was known as Wheathill, (b) that he was absolutely certain, though he had not looked at it, that young drunks from the pub had made the formation and that (c) we were barking mad.

It was another spinner, the six outer points of the star curving to signify rotation, and it was made with a precision and a fluidity, which matched anything I had seen. The laid wheat was swirled radially outward with a sweep to echo the form of the star-points. The central part of the formation, contained by a concentrically swept ring, was made of three broader forms, something like a ship’s propeller. Between these, too, the lay was radial and curved. There was a small flattened circular centre with a tuft of standing stems [Fig.14].

Fig.14 - Wheathill centre

The harvester, working relentlessly like a salami slicer, reduced the field to stubble and inexorably closed in on the crop circle. Finally, when we were forced to leave, we were to make a surprising discovery. As the photograph [Fig.13] shows, the formation was enclosed by a fine laid ring; so fine, in fact, that we had completely failed to notice it as we entered. The harvester leaves a standing stubble of four or five inches in height and, as I walked out, I found this slender golden thread of two or three stems of laid wheat, narrow enough to be imperceptible in the standing crop but now, in the stubble, a fine line of gold surrounding the rapidly disappearing formation.
There is a certain sort of Indian decorative craft, which uses the thinnest of copper, brass or occasionally gold wires, meticulously inlaid to form patterns on the surface of fine hardwood. I have never understood how this could be so precisely achieved. Ten years later this thin beautiful wire of golden wheat equally bewilders me.

Looking back, I have been privileged to experience many moments of magic and revelation. To have seen both the East Meon crescents and this fine seam of wheat let perfectly into the stubble on a single day was one of these.

We are told that there are no coincidences but the random synchronicity of our falling by accident onto this formation literally moments before its obliteration concentrates the mind. To find that this crop circle, a six-fold spinner, fell beautifully into our numerical order concentrates it yet further.

Acknowledgements and thanks
Photography: Steve Alexander, Michael Hesemann, Patricia Murray
Diagrams and graphics: Ofmil Haynes Jr