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. 143 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 144 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 145 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 146 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 147 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 148 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 149 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 150 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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. 151 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 152 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 153 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 154 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 155 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 156 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 157 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 158 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 159 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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. 160 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 161 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 162 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 163 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 164 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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. 165 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 166 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 167 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 168 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 169 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 170 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 171 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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, 172 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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, 173 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 174 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 175 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 176 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 177 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 178 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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 179 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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. 180 ALIEN ENCOUNTERS 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. 181 ********************************************************************* * -------->>> THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo <<<------- * *********************************************************************