WHAT DO MODERN CROP PICTURES MEAN?

Table of Contents

I.   A scientific overview for the end of 2008

II. Mayan calendars and Mayan binary codes

III.       More clues of various kinds

IV.       Jaime Maussan and the Quetzalcoatl hypothesis

V. Some crop pictures have predicted the future

VI.       Quetzalcoatl, Jesus and the year 2012  

What do modern crop circles mean? Part I: a scientific overview for the end of 2008

The modern crop-circle phenomenon has been strongly ongoing now for about 18 years, from 1990 to 2008. Fifty or more complex and apparently authentic pictures appear every summer in southern England near Wiltshire, or sometimes in other places. Since 2002, there has been reasonable and undeniable evidence that most large or complex crop pictures might be non-human made, at least in the sense of local human fakers with rope and boards (see for example www.ufoevidence.org or ourworld.compuserve.com or video.google.com).

During the summer of 2008, there was even more rigorous evidence for their authenticity, concerning a “pi to ten digits” crop picture that appeared on June 1 near Barbary Castle, and which was later publicized worldwide in mainstream newspapers (see www.dailymail.co.uk or www.timesonline.co.uk). Despite its amazing mathematical form, there was no trace whatsoever of possible human involvement in its construction, as evidenced by detailed inspection of the field where it appeared, before large crowds of interested people had arrived (see www.earthfiles.com).

So why are not more people excited? Why isn’t everyone on Earth jumping up and down in glee, that we have finally made some form of indirect contact with friendly or benevolent extra-terrestrials? 

Psychological aspects of the crop-circle phenomenon: most people tend to agree with group opinion, even over what they can see with their own eyes

One reason may have to do with a strong psychological tendency among Earth humans to conform with whatever group opinion might be expressed at the time, by their peers or by governing authorities. This tendency was measured quantitatively back in 1951 during a famous experiment by Solomon Asch. He placed a small group of individuals who did not know one another into a room, then asked them to say which of three black lines on a sheet of paper---A (short), B (medium) or C (long)---matched the length of another line held by an assistant nearby? All of the individuals except one had been instructed beforehand to give the same “wrong” answer. So the question became: what would the remaining individual do? Report truthfully what he or she could see plainly with his or her own eyes, or conform with group opinion?

 

slide 1:

The result surprisingly was that 80% of the individuals tested would agree incorrectly with group opinion in at least one case. And one-third of those individuals would agree falsely with group opinion most of the time! When they were interviewed later, to ask why they had conformed so readily to a clearly false answer, most of the test subjects admitted that they did not really believe in their conforming opinions, but had simply gone along with the group: for fear of being ridiculed, or being thought peculiar (see www.age-of-the-sage.org or WATCH or WATCH).

A persistent debunking of crop circles by the international media has successfully influenced group opinion, so that most people have no idea about the true phenomenon as it may been seen visibly in Wiltshire each summer

Now that is one good reason, at least, why most otherwise intelligent people on Earth today do not believe in the paranormal reality of modern crop pictures! The international media have persistently refused to inform the public truthfully about this important phenomenon, although good reports are sometimes written in local newspapers from Wiltshire, or other regions of England or Italy where new crop pictures sometimes appear (see www.gazetteandherald.co.uk or Stambridge or Lizzano).

Few if any of our world’s scientists are paying attention to it either, perhaps due in part to a continual debunking of the phenomenon by large media organizations such as Wikipedia, National Geographic or the Discovery Channel. Some unknown contributors to Wikipedia write for example:

“The main criticism concerning a non-human creation of crop circles is that evidence for their origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is scant. Crop circles are usually easily explicable as the result of human pranksters” (see wikipedia.org).

Of course, that is not true at all. No honest, intelligent or informed researcher of the subject has ever reached such aberrant conclusions. Nor could they, since one very large crop picture was photographed during its formation two years ago in East Field at 3 AM, in the presence of multiple witnesses (see www.gazetteandherald.co.uk).

Likewise in 2007, Lucy Pringle (an experienced investigator) became so frustrated with the apparent lack of integrity among National Geographic staff, who were preparing a TV documentary about crop pictures, that she wrote:

“There was a time when programmes produced by National Geographic were based on scientific integrity and fact. They were a scion of truth. Sadly this is no longer the case. They are now as bad as the worst tabloids, pandering to what they consider the public wants to see and hear” (see www.lucypringle.co.uk).

Meanwhile, the Discovery Channel argues in a far more abstract fashion: “Rational explanations postulate that crop circles are man-made hoaxes. Why would aliens travel all the way to our planet just to flatten a few wheat fields? Why not make contact in another, more easily recognisable way?” (see www.discoverychannel.co.uk).

Well, it has seemed clear for many years now that modern crop pictures are made by small robotic probes, and not by any visiting extra-terrestrials who are located here in person. If NASA were to send small robotic probes to some other planet under a distant star, and then try to bring about a preliminary form of open contact with the natives there, without having any access to their formal systems of communication, or leaders in government, what would they do? 

Would they perhaps instruct those probes to carve out easily visible messages in the fields or deserts, so that everyone on that world could see such messages, and come to terms with the idea of open contact while not being afraid? Then when millions of people on that distant world saw such messages, and began to consider their implications, what would their governments do? Confirm the authenticity of such pictures, and advise everyone to pay close attention? Or simply debunk them out of an irrational fear of what the future might bring? Apparently our local governments on Earth have chosen the latter.

Arguments against the reality of modern crop pictures by the sceptics show no detailed knowledge whatsoever

Now in addition to this persistent debunking of modern crop pictures by most large media organizations, probably at the behest of governments, there have also been supplementary if somewhat superfluous criticisms by a loosely organized collection of people who call themselves “sceptics”. A great many of those sceptical websites can simply be ignored, especially if they cite Wikipedia or the 1991 Doug and Dave story (see below) as proof of their intellectual correctness. Nevertheless, in order to give them a fair hearing, we tried to find the best possible website that advocates pure scepticism regarding modern crop pictures, and came up with the following:

“This is one of the three best sceptical websites, written by Professor Rory Coker of the Physics Department at the University of Texas. Believers in the supernatural wonder of crop circles never bother to take a clothesline and a broomstick, to see how simple it is to make a circle precisely like the ones they find inexplicable” (see www.skeptically.org). As proof of their their theory, they next cite this explanatory diagram of how all modern crop circles are made (see www.unmuseum.org):

slide 2: explanation by a skeptic

Well, there is still nothing there to be concerned about! Professor Coker seems not to have put nearly as much time or effort into studying crop pictures, as for his regular and respected research into particle physics. A little more intelligent argument (intended to debunk Milk Hill of 2001) was given on WATCH, but see time2007j for the true facts of the matter.

Other sceptics have made fairly rudimentary attempts to create authentic crop pictures as a test of the human faker hypothesis. Yet they have never apparently examined the real ones in Wiltshire, in order to understand what they are trying to replicate. Thus all such efforts appear lame at best (see http://web.archive.org). Likewise, the Committee for Sceptical Inquiry proposed four testable hypotheses concerning modern crop pictures in 2002, but none of those seem to be even remotely supported by new field observations as of 2008 (see www.csicop.org/si/2002-09/crop-circles.html).

Trying to find a more recent comment from those sceptics, we found this rather emotional outburst in the Bristol Daily Press on July 30, 2008: “Your researcher has no scientific background, and the same counts for all of that other so-called scientific research on crop circles. Researchers like them are only interested in two things: money and attention” (see  www.thisisbristol.co.uk). Yet the primary author of this review is a well-respected professional scientist, who has never taken even one cent for his lengthy research into the subject, nor has ever sought any public attention.

One is reminded here of the adage: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a ditch?” In other words, unless someone actually (a) observes the experimental phenomenon first-hand for themselves, or (b) gains a sound idea of the concepts that are being expressed there, then their opinions are essentially worthless: especially if swallowed whole from another third-party source, without applying any critical evaluation as to whether that third party might be telling the truth?

We can use evidence-based empiricism to find out the real truth concerning modern crop pictures

The best approach for finding out the truth, concerning any difficult or controversial matter, is known as evidence-based empiricism. It was discussed cleverly by John Locke in his famous Essay on Human Understanding (1689), by using the analogy of a king from the tropics who did not believe that water could freeze in far northern latitudes on Earth (see oregonstate.edu):  

“A Dutch ambassador was entertaining the King of Siam about certain peculiarities of Holland, and told him among other things that the water in his country would sometimes become so hard in cold weather that men could walk on it, and that it would bear an elephant if he were there. To which the King replied, ‘Until now I have believed the strange things you told me, because I look upon you as a sober fair man. But now I am sure you are lying.’ “

Well, the pond water does freeze hard in Holland or England during winter, no matter what some king from the tropics might think! And there also are plenty of non-human-made crop pictures that appear mysteriously there in summer. We have seen or studied many of them ourselves, in close experimental detail. Furthermore, we can now understand most of the concepts that they express. The insightful reader may therefore peruse this essay empirically, with regard to detailed experimental facts, in order to decide whether we are telling the truth, or else those sceptics and his TV?

Most academic scientists are sincere, honest people, and not accustomed to dealing with intellectual fraud. Hence the prospect that some ill-defined group of international media organizations might be conspiring, to keep the truth from being publicly known about modern crop pictures, simply terrifies them. Even English scientists who live near Wiltshire are often afraid to go out into the fields to inspect some new crop picture, for fear that the opinion of their peers will turn against them: leaving them unable to obtain research grants, or to publish papers in major journals. That is just what Asch found back in 1951, during his famous conformity experiment!

In any case, since this subject is of great importance for the people of Earth, we will provide below a new and updated synthesis of field data and plausible interpretations for the end of 2008. There should be no need for the casual reader to go back and read lots of earlier work on the subject, although many useful references will be cited wherever relevant. This new synthesis should not be construed to represent anymore than our own considered opinions, having studied the subject jointly for many years, although it seems to be increasingly accepted by others in the field.

General aspects of the phenomenon

Beginning in the late 1980’s, or especially during the summer of 1990, modern crop pictures began to appear mainly in five European countries: England, Germany, Italy, Switzerland or the Netherlands, although sometimes in other places (see for example www.youtube.com or WATCH or WATCH). By the year 2008, a spectacular crop picture had even been reported in South Korea, and showed the monthly analemma motion of our Moon (see South Korea) Still, most of the large, complex crop pictures tend to appear in southern England near the ancient megalithic sites of Avebury Ring or Silbury Hill, between April and September of any year when field crops (oilseed rape, barley or wheat) are most suitable for patterning.

Thus in every past year from 1990 to 2008, with only a few exceptions, fifty or more authentic crop pictures have appeared during the summer months all across Europe, or sometimes elsewhere (see www.dailymotion.com). It would require a literal army of local human fakers with rope and boards in many different countries, to produce such a prodigious output of crop pictures! Furthermore, the vast majority of those pictures never show any kind of errors in patterning. Hence to any informed observer, the probability that all (or even most) of those complex pictures could be made by local human fakers, is about the same as for Santa Claus leaving lots of presents under everyone’s tree on Christmas Eve.

Two fairly simple examples of modern crop pictures are shown below, taken from the years 1999 or 2004. The one on the left shows an ancient Celtic “triquetra” symbol for mind, body and spirit (see 1999). The other one on the right shows a schematic map of the seven spiritual centres or chakras in the human body: namely crown, brow, throat, heart, solar plexus, sacral or root (see 2004).

slide 3: Barbary Castle 1999, Pewsey 2004 (photo credits to Colin Andrews and Francine Blake)

Who are those unknown crop artists, and why are they showing us symbols of a spiritual nature in the fields? Two somewhat more complex examples are shown in the next diagram from the years 1996 or 2001 (see 1996 or www.lucypringle.co.uk):

slide 4: Windmill Hill 1996, Milk Hill 2001 (photo credits to Lucy Pringle, Steve Alexander and Karen Douglas)

Each of these pictures seems to illustrate in symbolic form the monthly phases of our Moon as seen at far northern latitudes on Earth, or at the latitude of England close to midnight, although other people have interpreted them in terms of Mandelbrot-type fractals (see The Stonehenge code).

If you have watched some entertainment program on TV about crop circles, or read some frivolous story in the international newspapers, to the effect that teams of fakers with rope and boards are going out late at night into the fields of England, and making complex pictures when no one is looking, then please take the time to realize that you have been lied to! In very important matters such as these, involving possible or even likely extra-terrestrial contacts with Earth, we simply cannot expect our governments or international media to be telling the truth. That would require a governmental policy decision at the highest level, which apparently has not yet been made.

Those mysterious crop pictures appear mainly during the four to six-hour darkness of a northern-hemisphere summer night, in England or other European countries. Sometimes however they appear in late afternoon or early morning during broad daylight: as was the case for a famous late-afternoon “fractal” picture which appeared quickly and silently near Stonehenge in July of 1996 (see crop circle history, or for a two-part “swallows” picture which appeared in early morning at South Field in July of 2008 (see south field). Nor does good weather seems to be a requirement: they appear equally well under a clear sky or during pouring rain.

Furthermore, the typical appearance of any crop picture tends to be incredibly silent and stealthy. Usually no one sees or hears anything, even if some large picture appears directly next to a crowded housing complex or public road. Many of those Wiltshire fields are literally filled all night during summer with young people from Europe, all equipped with modern cameras, and keen to get a good picture of a new crop circle forming. Yet fifty or more silent pictograms still appear each year in the fields, while only a few have been caught while forming on film.

In one case, a well-known daylight video from Oliver’s Castle on August 10, 1996 seems convincing at first glance, but remains controversial (see ilyes or www.cropcirclesecrets.org or WATCH). Yet in another more recent case, a series of night-time videos that were taken at East Field on July 7, 2007, in the presence of several reliable witnesses, seem conclusive beyond any reasonable doubt (see www.bbc.co.ukl or www.gazetteandherald.co.uk or thecropcirclewebsite.50megs.com or www.galactic2.net).

The highly international character of modern crop pictures: England, Italy or Germany in 2008

The symbolic content of such crop pictures seems to be an international phenomenon, and not limited to England alone. For example, a large and spectacular Moon-Sun picture appeared at Lizzano, Italy on June 12, 2008, referring to an upcoming solar eclipse on August 1, 2008 (see www.faenzashiatsu.it or Lizzano):

slide 5: Lizzano 2008 (photo credits to Bruno Tommasini)

Then one month later, many eclipse-type crop pictures began to appear in southern England: for example at East Field on July 9, 2008 (see east field) or at South Field on July 22-23, 2008 (see south field). When studied carefully, all three of those new crop pictures showed nearly identical “lines” or “pointers”, to indicate where on the horizon our Sun would rise on August 1, 2008 at high northern latitudes on Earth, just before it would be eclipsed by our Moon. Any insightful analyst would conclude that they were all made by the same artist, or same group of artists.

As yet another example, a four-armed serpentine motif appeared in England at Pewsey on July 20, 2004 (see www.lucypringle.co.uk). A similar motif then appeared four years later in Germany at Edendorf on June 23, 2008 (see Edendorf), except showing twelve serpentine arms rather than four:  

slide 6: Pewsey 2004, Edendorf 2008 (photo credits to Wieland Werhahn and Steve Alexander)

In fact, four separate and highly detailed crop pictures appeared all across Lower Saxony on that same night of June 23, 2008 (see germany 2008), thereby making the possibility of human fakery in this case somewhat remote.

What physical evidence have we collected so far?

After so many new crop pictures have appeared over the past 18 years, in five countries mainly (England, Italy, Germany, Switzerland or the Netherlands), but at other times all across Europe or even in South Korea or the USA (see  www.cabiz.net), what kinds of physical evidence might we have collected so far, to suggest some kind of paranormal, non-human origin for such pictures? 

Only a few scientific laboratories have devoted any real effort to studying this phenomenon as of 2008 (see www.bltresearch.com or www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/blt1.htm or www.ufoevidence.org/books/book14.htm or www.swirlednews.com). Yet there are a large number of competent and experienced field investigators
 (see for example www.lucypringle.co.uk or www.kornkreise-forschung.de
 or www.silentcircle.co.uk or www.bertjanssen.nl or www.circularsite.com or www.cropcirclesecrets.org or researchers). The collective results from all those laboratory or field investigations seem rather interesting, even if little known to a mainstream academic audience, say the readers of Nature, Science or Cell.

The general consensus seems to be that a few simple crop pictures could perhaps be made by small teams of local human fakers without detection, using rope and boards in isolated fields, so long as those patterns remain fairly simple and require only a few hours to produce. But most recently-formed crop pictures (especially from the years 2001 to 2008) have become so large and complex with respect to the images they encode, that any “human faker hypothesis” has become completely untenable for the subject as a whole. Not one competent or honest researcher seems to believe in it anymore, to our current knowledge. Nor has any known team of skilled human fakers been able to construct a large, complex crop picture, even in daylight over two full days, without making occasional errors of flattening under the best of circumstances (see for example magic numbers 2006 or time2007j).

These comments are not intended in any way to disparage such excellent efforts to create “authentic but manmade” crop pictures. Every kind of hypothesis should be tested logically and objectively, to see whether it can stand up to critical scrutiny? The current consensus however, among practically all honest and knowledgeable researchers of the subject (with no exceptions to our knowledge), is that local humans with rope and boards cannot do such a thing: especially fifty or more times late at night in England every summer, and also in other European countries.

Certain websites (which cannot be named specifically here) do of course favour a “human faker hypothesis”, yet they seem purely disinformational in character. Thus, the authors of those websites seem to be deliberately lying to the public, in an intentional sense to mislead. One can only speculate as to their motives. Could they be implementing some kind of official policy perhaps, to cover up any possible contacts between extra-terrestrials and ourselves, even of the most innocuous kind?

The next question to ask is this: if most complex crop pictures are not made by local humans, then what physical evidence have serious researchers collected so far, that could indicate a highly unusual, paranormal means of construction? First, most authentic crop pictures show “bent nodes” or “expulsion cavities” in their patterned plants, not consistent with a mechanical means of flattening (see www.bltresearch.com or www.astraltraveler.com or www.greatdreams.com):      

slide 7: bent nodes, explusion cavities (photo credits to Janet Ossebaard)

In other words, those plants have been subjected to highly localized, microwave-type heating that makes the water inside their stems either expand or explode, through neighbouring plant tissues nearby. By analogy, those plants have been patterned into some particular shape just as for heating a stiff iron bar until it melts locally, then bending it while hot and pliable into a sharp curve, and letting it cool again.

The silent and stealthy nature of this process is in some way its own worst enemy. For example, if a large disc-shaped flying saucer were to appear every time a new crop picture appears, then most people would be immediately convinced. Instead, even the most careful observers usually see no more than strangely moving lights above a newly forming crop picture, or sometimes small metallic probes, or at other times small coherent balls of light (see video.google.com or www.science-frontiers.com or WATCH or www.thetruthseeker.co.uk or WATCH or WATCH). 

Yet those witnesses are not imagining anything, because British military helicopters can sometimes see them too! Consider for example the dramatic pair of photographs shown below (left and upper right) which were taken at East Field on July 7, 2007, the very morning after a large crop picture appeared:

slide 8: metallic orbs, balls of light (photo credits to Winston Keech and Charles Mallett)

Other photographs have been taken of strange “balls of light” at night, as also shown above (lower right). Perhaps those are the same kinds of object as seen in daylight, except imaged differently?

In addition to occasional photographic records of those objects, we also have many reliable eyewitness testimonies. David Kingston recalls for example from 1976: “I was on a night watch for UFO’s at Clay Hill near Warminster. Three separate orbs of coloured light, each approximately six feet in diameter, had been weaving around and above us for three hours, merging at times into a single globe then separating again. Suddenly one of those orbs descended to thirty feet, then flew down into a field at the base of Clay Hill. As dawn broke, I noticed a flattened circle in a field of wheat. On further inspection, there were no broken stalks, just a perfectly flattened circle thirty feet in diameter” (see www.bbc.co.uk).

Charles Mallett reported similarly in the 1990’s: “No more than ten minutes past sunset, we spotted a luminous sphere of orange light hanging in mid-air, half a mile across the valley. As darkness set in, it grew to the size of a soccer ball. A second light then appeared next to the first. Military helicopters soon arrived at high speed, heading straight for the first light. When they got close, it blinked out and re-appeared five miles away. After they left, the bright orange light returned to its original location, and remained there for several hours, moving in subtle arching motions. We went to sleep and woke at 4:30 AM in the hope of finding a new crop picture? No new pictures arrived that night, yet on the following night, just where we had seen those lights, a small flower-of-life formation appeared” (see www.thetruthseeker.co.uk).
Again last summer, three metallic orbs were photographed at South Field on July 27, 2008, while they were being pursued by a British military helicopter (see southfield2008.html). There have been many independent reports of that kind, too many to list here. Perhaps that is not much to go on after 18 years of studying crop pictures, but then large, mainstream scientific laboratories have refused so far to study this phenomenon with any kind of sensitive, sophisticated camera equipment such as they use in their other endeavours.  

Nevertheless, using standard commercial cameras, a few dedicated investigators have captured on film what appear to be space time portals or wormholes opening up in the sky next to a newly forming crop picture (see “Crossovers from another dimension” by Terje Toftenes on Crop-Circles-Crossover-Another-Dimension or www.toftenes.no).

Others such as Winston Keech, Gary King and Paula Presdee-Jones have photographed a brief flash of “sheet lightning” at 3 AM, followed quickly by a new 300-meter crop formation in the field below, when no human fakers were visibly present (see www.galactic2.net or thecropcirclewebsite.50megs.com or www.disclose.tv/ or http://exopolitics.org.uk):

slide 9: East Field 2007 before-after (photo credits to Lucy Pringle, Winston Keech and Gary King)

The sudden and mysterious appearance of that large, 300-meter East Field formation appears to have required no more than 10 minutes, and was not accompanied by any detectable human presence in the field below. Those are the experimental facts, not the wild speculations of hoaxers or debunkers which you hear commonly on TV. Do they have any detailed facts to report? No, none at all. Over the next few years, the placement of improved cameras with greater night-time sensitivities in those fields, where crop pictures commonly appear, may reveal more of the detailed processes by which they are made.

After this review was written, we became aware of a new and amazing report of multiple balls of light close to the Westwoods formation of July 17, 2008. Over twenty balls of light were captured reliably on a 40-second videotape, dancing over that formation in daylight one month later (see www.medwaycropcircle.co.uk):

slide 9b: balls of light over Westwoods (photo credit to Andy Fowlds)

 
If this new report is confirmed by careful forensic inspection of the evidence, then it will be very significant indeed.

Three classes of hypothesis have been proposed to explain these data, only one of which still remains plausible in 2008

Based on the general facts presented so far, which are accepted by practically all knowledgeable researchers in the field, one might conclude that the unknown creators of this strange crop-based messaging system possess a level of advanced technology, which is far beyond anything that ordinary humans on Earth today possess. For example, they seem to have no need for large flying saucers or UFOs, since their technology has evidently advanced beyond that point. Instead, they seem to be sending small, gravity-insensitive robotic probes across large distances of space and/or time, in order to create such amazing pictures. Those devices have been evidenced numerous times by the sighting of a small metallic orb or ball of light near a newly-formed crop picture, whether by eyewitness account or on camera (see above).

Where exactly might such probes be coming from? Another star? Another planet in our solar system? Our future or maybe even our past? Three overall classes of hypothesis have been proposed to account for these strange data, but only one seems to remain plausible as of 2008.

(i)  The “human faker hypothesis”. No one is seriously promoting that anymore, even the BBC who are well known for their debunking efforts. In the light of many complex crop pictures that have appeared during the years 2001 to 2008, the human-faker hypothesis now seems far beyond the possibility of honest belief, right up there with the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny. The mainstream media, perhaps to satisfy nervous governments concerning this greatest story for the past two thousand years, now write sceptical, humorous stories or else remain completely silent, with rare exceptions (see www.dailymail.co.uk or www.timesonline.co.uk).

(ii) The “natural forces hypothesis”. The idea that wind or other natural geomagnetic energies could create crop pictures was once plausible for some simple round shapes during the late 1980’s (see www.newscientist.com), but seems completely untenable today in the light of many complex crop pictures from 2001 to 2008.

(iii)       The “extra-terrestrial hypothesis”. This last hypothesis now seems highly favoured, in the light of many highly coded, astronomical or mathematical crop pictures which have appeared in recent years: for example the Chilbolton “Arecibo” formation of 2001 (see arecibo), the Crabwood “alien face” formation of 2002 (see www.cropcircleresearch.com), or the Barbary Castle “pi to ten digits” formation of 2008 (see www.earthfiles.com).  

Such new pictures are just what one might expect from highly intelligent starfarers, who might be trying to communicate with the current inhabitants of Earth using universal symbols taken from astronomy or mathematics. For example at Barbary Castle on June 1, 2008, we saw the now-famous image of a rotary encoder that expressed a value of the universal mathematical constant pi to ten digits of accuracy as 3.141592654 (see barbury):

slide 10: pi to 10 digits (photo credits to John Montgomery)

That amazing picture appeared during poor weather in fresh green barley. Upon early inspection of the wet field before anyone else arrived, experienced investigators such as Charles Mallett or Lucy Pringle found no footsteps or board marks anywhere, to suggest a local human means of construction (see www.earthfiles.com). Furthermore, many of its patterned plants showed “bent nodes”, meaning that they were seemingly exposed from the air to some kind of microwave energy, that produced local heating in the plants as a means of careful and precise patterning (see barbury).

For a week or so after it appeared, detailed images of that formation went out around the world via the Internet (not the mainstream news), and were seen by thousands of interested people. Yet no one could figure out what the new picture was trying to tell us. Finally on June 5, a skilled physicist-engineer from North Carolina by the name of Mike Reed (see www.reedev.com) realized by simple inspection that it encoded the fundamental constant pi = 3.141592654 to ten digits of accuracy:

slide 11: pi to 10 digits (photo credits to John Montgomery)

Each individual digit from pi 3.14..... was drawn in the field with 36 degrees of rotation, in order to specify a full ten-digit number over four spiral turns. For example, its first digit “3” was drawn with 3 x 36 = 108 degrees of rotation, while its second digit “1” was drawn with 1 x 36 = 36 degrees of rotation, then its third digit “4” was drawn with 4 x 36 = 144 degrees of rotation, and so on. There was even a small decimal point placed close to the center between digits “3” and “1”, to tell where the fractional part of pi began.

Really, could anyone in their right mind imagine that some invisible team of local human fakers, armed with microwave patterning devices, and not leaving traceable footprints, went out late at night in poor weather near Barbary Castle: to lay down the value of pi to ten digits, without making a tiny mistake anywhere; and thereby setting out a great intellectual puzzle that took everyone in the world a whole week to solve? Or more plausibly, could it have been an open message to the world by friendly extra-terrestrials of the kind: 

“Here we are, and we use the same value of pi that you do. There is nothing to be afraid of.”  

Why won’t such friendly extra-terrestrials simply “land on the White House lawn”? Well,  there have been suggestions that they already tried to do so but failed (see www.ufoevidence.org or WATCH or WATCH). In which case, all of these English (or European) crop pictures might simply represent a back-up strategy, to make open contact with ordinary people on our troubled world, before some critical time in the near future.

Finally, if anyone wishes to read the comments by UK Skeptics concerning that amazing crop picture, they may do so here (see skeptics).

Other crop pictures show long-forgotten symbols from our distant past, especially from ancient England or central America

So we have made some progress at addressing this difficult problem, by eliminating the “human faker” and “natural force” hypotheses. We are left therefore with some kind of “friendly extra-terrestrial” hypothesis, especially in light of the remarkable pi-to-ten-digits crop picture that appeared at Barbary Castle in 2008. Unfortunately, a definitive answer does not come that easy. Most humans on Earth today imagine that they are completely alone in the universe, and are just waiting for some friendly group of extra-terrestrials to invite us to join an interplanetary federation. Others perhaps are fearful that unfriendly extra-terrestrials will wish to take over or invade?

Given a more thorough study of the crop circle phenomenon, neither of those two commonly-held human attitudes toward extra-terrestrial life seems accurate. We just saw that one particular crop circle from Barbary Castle on June 1, 2008 supported some kind of friendly extra-terrestrial hypothesis which could lead to open contact in the near future. Yet many other crop pictures from the same year 2008, or from earlier years, have shown quite different kinds of symbolic content. Thus, a large number of modern crop pictures seem to show, not alien or mathematical symbols, but rather symbols from our own distant past on Earth, especially from ancient England or central America.

Could there have been a more advanced human race than ours, living on Earth sometime in the distant past? Or might visiting extra-terrestrials have been with us for a long time now, say for the past 2000 to 4000 years, as the human-like gods of ancient legend? In order to address these important questions in a systematic and factual way, let us examine the detailed data further. Crop pictures which show symbols from our distant past may be sorted into four general categories:

(a)        Dumbbell-type pictograms from the early 1990’s. Most of those appear in retrospect to show long-forgotten symbols from the ancient science of Ptolemaic astronomy, which illustrate the common processes of planetary conjunction, planetary opposition, or lunar and solar eclipses (see time2007f). Some of those symbols are still used today in modern astrology, because Ptolemy was an expert at natal astrology, as well as his Earth-centered system of epicycles (see astrology-aspects). For example, looking at the crop picture shown below from Alton Barnes on July 11, 1990 (see 1990), one can see several ancient astronomical symbols for a close approach or conjunction in Earth’s sky between the two planets Venus and Jupiter, or between Jupiter and our Moon:  

slide 12: Alton Barnes 1990 (photo credits to Lucy Pringle)

On August 12, 1990, precisely one month after that crop picture appeared, the two bright planets Venus and Jupiter made their closest approach in Earth’s sky for perhaps 100 years. Their sky coordinates at that time were Right Ascension Venus 8 hours, 4.3 minutes versus Jupiter 8 hours, 4.1 minutes, and Declination Venus 20 degrees, 42 minutes versus Jupiter 20 degrees, 40 minutes (see almanac). Our Moon then passed closely by both Venus and Jupiter on August 17-18, 1990. One month later, our Moon eclipsed or occulted Jupiter on September 15, 1990. How could anyone have not noticed?

Those crop artists must have imagined that their first attempt at sending a complex pictorial symbol through space and time would be wildly successful! Probably they expected everyone on Earth to become very excited, once someone made the simple and logical connection between two bright planets joining together in Earth’s sky on August 12, 1990, and their astronomical crop picture of July 11, 1990? What a clever message! But no one at the time caught on, and only a few people worldwide took any notice.

That became especially true after the international media concocted an elaborate fake story about two old English gentlemen Doug and Dave, who had supposedly made thousands of crop pictures from 1978 to 1991, late at night with rope and boards without ever getting caught (see chorley or www.cropcirclesecrets.org or WATCH). Given that the crop growing season lasts in southern England for three months, their claims would work out to 100 new crop pictures every year, or one for each night in summer, lasting 14 years in succession! Nor did they ever claim to work in the Avebury region of southern England, where most authentic pictures usually appear. Finally, they were reportedly paid a substantial sum to tell their story (see www.suppressedscience.net).

In summary, we can be sure now that their claims were untrue: not only for logistical and/or geographical reasons, but also because they knew no astronomy. The transcript of a 1991 interview with Dave makes interesting reading:

“How did you make all of those circles?”

Dave: “We made them using the most primitive equipment: two sticks four feet long, two pieces of string, and a baseball cap with an eyepiece.”

“But how do we know, Mr. Chorley, that you are not now hoaxing us about the hoax?”

Dave: “You don’t know, do you?”

Now in addition to Alton Barnes of July 11, 1990, approximately fifty other dumbbell or eclipse-type pictograms appeared in Wiltshire during the years 1990 to 1993. Most told about significant events in Earth’s sky contemporaneous with the appearance of specific crop formations on the ground, again using obscure and long-forgotten symbols from Ptolemaic astronomy (see time2007f). Or following an old adage, “As in heaven above, so on Earth below”. Anyone can go back now to the crop circle archives, and verify this is so (see http://www.cropcirclearchives.co.uk/archives/ccarchives.htm or www.lucypringle.co.uk).    

(b)        Megalithic-type pictograms from 1994 to 2007. Other crop pictures seem to show symbols from our distant past, that tell about the original function of well-known historical sites in southern England. Some of that information seems amazingly accurate, just as if it might be coming from the builders of those ancient sites, across 4000 years of time to modern humans today.  For example, the Avebury “spiderweb” of 1994 told us that five turns around the outer ring of stones at Avebury Ring were used to keep track of one 19-year Metonic cycle of our Moon (see spider web or  1994).

In two other cases, a daylight crop picture from Stonehenge on July 7, 1996 told us that monthly cycles of our Moon were once studied at Stonehenge close to sunset (see The Stonehenge code or 1996):

slide 13: Stonehenge 1996, West Kennett Longbarrow 2007 (photo credits to Lucy Pringle and George Latham)

Eleven years later, another crop picture from West Kennett Longbarrow on June 27, 2007 used clever three-dimensional perspective, to show us what that ancient burial mound once looked like inside (see west kennett).

Many people at first interpreted that daylight picture from Stonehenge 1996 in terms of fractal geometry from modern mathematics. Yet once you study the entire archives, to see if those same symbols appear anywhere else, then you can find perhaps a dozen other examples where they clearly represent monthly lunar phases. Consider for example a very lucid picture from Horb Am Neckar, Germany on July 1, 2007, that told about a recent conjunction between Venus and our Moon. It showed a five-pointed star for Venus (see below), and those same Stonehenge-type symbols for our Moon as it progressed from “new” to “full” (see germany).

(c) Sacred geometry pictograms from 1990 to 2007. Sacred geometry represents a beautiful form of mathematics or architecture that was once in widespread use on Earth, during our distant past (see geometry code). Somewhat surprisingly, it also appears in modern crop pictures today (see hypermaths or WATCH). The idea that sacred geometry might be important for understanding crop pictures was first developed by astronomer Gerald Hawkins, when he found five new geometric theorems in crops that had never been written down by Euclid (see hawkins or WATCH). Later that same idea was developed further by Bert Janssen in his book “The Hypnotic Power of Crop Circles” (see Hypnotic-Power-Crop-Circles or www.cropcirclesandmore.com).

Its most recent exposition came with two remarkable crop pictures during August 2007 at West Overton or Sugar Hill. One showed an ancient “Flower of Life” geometry from our distant past, say from the Temple of Osiris in Egypt (see westoverton), while the other showed “Metatron’s Cube” (see sugar hill or metatrons-cube-crop-circle-design-revised):

slide 14: Sugar Hill 2007 versus Metatron’s Cube (photo credits to John Montgomery)

In the latter picture, they showed us Metatron’s Cube in order to convey a clever double meaning. Thus “18 cubes” from its internal geometry matched the 18 days from when it appeared on August 1, until August 18 when Venus would complete an inferior conjunction with our Sun. Likewise, their Flower of Life picture showed “6 one-sixth parts of a cube”, and appeared on August 17, or just one day before August 18 and Venus conjunction.

(d)        Calendar-type pictograms from 2002 to 2007. Still other crop pictures seem to show calendars from ancient England or central America, that fell out of regular use on Earth many hundreds or thousands of years ago. One good example (below left) appeared at Windmill Hill on July 18, 2002, and illustrated a British megalithic calendar that once divided any year into six equal parts, each of 60 to 61 days in length (see photos) It appeared 28 days after the summer solstice of June 20, and hence 28 diamond shapes were omitted on the left, because those particular days had already been used up:

slide 15: Windmill Hill 2002, Silbury Hill 2004 (photo credits to Lucy Pringle)

Another good example (above right) appeared at Silbury Hill on August 2, 2004, and illustrated a Mayan Long Count calendar that divides any long period of 26,000 years on Earth into a series of 5200-year epochs or Suns (see  photos). According to the ancient Mayans, humans on Earth have supposedly lived through four past historical epochs of 5200 years, each of which ended with some kind of great natural catastrophe. Their last epoch or Fourth Sun ended on August 11-13, 3114 BC, supposedly due to a worldwide flood. Meanwhile, our current epoch or Fifth Sun will end on December 21-23, 2012 AD, supposedly due to a worldwide earthquake. Hence today we are living in the Fifth Sun, but there is not much longer left to go!

Those past four epochs or Suns (1, 2, 3, 4) were represented in the crop picture at Silbury Hill by two narrow outer rings, each of which was divided into four equal parts by a broad “dark space” in between. Likewise, our current Fifth Sun (5) was represented by a large open circle at its very centre, which was surrounded in turn by two multi-armed spirals, that seem to resemble the two moving hands of a clock. All of these features resemble those found on the original Aztec Sunstone from 1450 AD, which is today a major cultural symbol of Mexico (see Aztec sun stone).

Along the very outside of that crop picture, two rows of ten boxes divide any long, 5200-year historical period into smaller parts of 520 or 52 years each. A few of the small 52-year boxes (near any dark space) have been further divided with six thin lines, so as to suggest an even smaller time interval of 52 / 6 = 8.67 years. And indeed, that is just how many years were left in our current Fifth Sun, from when that crop picture appeared during the summer of 2004, until late 2012 or early 2013. Very clever and mathematical! Could they be showing us a countdown of some kind, to tell us when our current world age will come to an end?  

Some people continue to believe that such remarkable crop pictures could only be made by local human fakers, late at night with ropes and boards. Yet the detailed forensic evidence argues otherwise:

slide 16: fallen plants at Silbury Hill 2004 (photo credits to Verity Bullock and John Jameison)

How could anyone make such finely detailed patterns, across a broad expanse of several hundred meters, late at night without ever making a mistake, or ever being caught?

THE END OF PART I  

What do modern crop circles mean? Part II: Mayan calendars and Mayan binary codes 

Having reviewed the general science of crop pictures, we will now address some of their more specific aspects. For example, they often show long-forgotten Mayan calendars that were once used in ancient central America. Sometimes they even show modern binary codes which have been based on those calendars. A strange mixture of past and present: what could it all mean?

Those mysterious crop artists keep time in our modern era using the Mayan Long Count or Calendar Round

This crop circle matter is not nearly as simple as it may have at first appeared. Who could those pictures be coming from: friendly extra-terrestrials, or other people like us in our own past? And why would they be trying to tell us that our current world age is coming to an end? Further study reveals yet another interesting clue: those mysterious crop artists seem to keep time in our modern era using either of two calendars from ancient central America: the Mayan 5200-year Long Count, or the Mayan 52-year Calendar Round (see Mesoamerican Long Count calendar or Mayan mathematics).

We saw above how a detailed illustration of the Mayan Long Count calendar appeared at Silbury Hill on August 2, 2004. Then just last summer on July 15, 2008, the Mayan Long Count calendar was used once again, to remind us about an upcoming date of December 21-23, 2012 when their current Fifth Sun will come to an end. To be specific, they showed us a precise and accurate description of our nine-planet solar system on that particular day, in order to remind us in universal, astronomical symbols that anyone living on Earth today would be able to understand (see aveburymanor2008a or www.nyakonakar.com):

slide 17: Avebury Manor 2008 (photo credits to Steve Alexander and Nyako Nakar)

There was a brief race among researchers worldwide to post the first correct astronomical solution for Avebury Manor on the web, and several workers solved it simultaneously. How often do we get to match our wits against super-intelligent extra-terrestrials? In any case, one can conclude after studying both crop pictures: Silbury Hill 2004 or Avebury Manor 2008, that the Mayan Long Count calendar must be very important to whomever is sending us such mysterious and intricate messages, across vast distances of space or time.

Now there was also another famous calendar used in ancient central America called the “Calendar Round”, which lasted for only 52 years in any calendar period, rather than for 5200 years. It was used for more everyday purposes than the Long Count, which was primarily ceremonial. That second Mayan calendar was based on the astronomical cycles of planet Venus as seen from Earth, which could be seen clearly with the naked eye from near-equatorial latitudes in ancient central America. 

Any single orbital cycle of Venus about our Sun lasts for 584 days or 1.6 years as seen from Earth. During that time, Venus moves relative to the background stars by approximately 216 degrees, or by three-fifths of a 360-degree turn (see Pattern). Hence after five cycles or 5 x 1.6 = 8.0 years, Venus will move relative to those background stars by a total of 5 x 216 = 1080 degrees, which equals three full circular turns. In other words, Venus will come right back to the place in our sky where it started, eight years earlier, as a simple kind of astronomical clock.

That is how the ancient Olmecs, Mayans or Aztecs were able to count long periods of time in a highly reliable fashion, long ago in central America, even though they did not have access to modern digital clocks or computers. They simply watched bright Venus as it rose or set in the evening or morning sky, say from their famous observatory called El Caracol, and counted the years accordingly (see caracol).

That eight-year cycle of Venus has been depicted in English crop pictures on many occasions: for example at Cranford St. Andrew on August 1, 1992 or at Bythorn on September 3, 1993 (see bailey92 or www.lucypringle.co.uk). In both of those early crop pictures, planet Venus was depicted as a five-pointed star, in order to symbolize the regular pentagonal shape of its orbit as seen from Earth:

slide 18: Cranford St. Andrew 1992, Venus pentagram (photo credits to Peter Sorenson)

On other occasions, say at East Kennett on July 15, 2000, planet Venus has been depicted as a “heart”, because that is the detailed shape of its orbit during any single 1.6-year orbital cycle as seen from Earth (see www.lucypringle.co.uk or WATCH).

More recently at Chute Causeway on July 26, 2007, those crop artists showed us a series of five Venus pentagrams linked together (see www.lucypringle.co.uk). Since any single five-pointed star requires eight years of calendar time, as confirmed by eight small dots along the outside of each small star, then any collection of five stars should require 5 x 8 = 40 years:

slide 19: Chute Causeway 2007, one large star (photo credits to John Montgomery)  

Yet for the Mayans, their most favoured long-term cycle of Venus was a 104-year period called the Calendar Round. They would count 13 successive 8-year cycles of Venus that extend over a fairly long period of 13 x 8 = 104 years, and by so doing, they could keep track of calendar time accurately for more than one of our centuries! Their 104-year Calendar Round was shown symbolically in crops at Beckhampton on August 26, 2002 (see beckhampton2002):

slide 20: Beckhampton 2002 (photo credits to Steve Alexander)

There two five-pointed stars, each symbolizing five orbital cycles of Venus, were accompanied in any outer section by 13 scales. Hence the total number of Venus cycles may be counted easily as 5 x 13 = 65, while the total number of calendar years may be calculated as 65 x 1.6 or 13 x 8 = 104. In terms of its detailed orbit, planet Venus moves around the Sun by 216 degrees (as seen from Earth) once in every 1.6 years: say from arm “1” to arm “2”, or from arm “2” to arm “3”. Hence its long-term orbit traces out the shape of a five-pointed star or pentagram. Other analysts have commented similarly:

“A new crop formation appeared at Beckhampton in 2002. Its pentagram is a figure traced out by planet Venus over five of its 584-day orbital cycles about the Sun, which require a total of eight Earth years to complete. That picture also shows 13 scales between each pair of arms, to yield a total of 5 x 13 = 65. Now 65 cycles of Venus equal one Calendar Round of 104 years, or two half Calendar Rounds of 52 years” (adapted from www.diagnosis2012.co.uk).

To summarize, any time period of 104 years was counted in ancient central America as one Calendar Round, and was known to match 5 x 13 = 65 orbital cycles of Venus. Often the Mayans would divide that long time period of 104 years into two equal parts of 52 years, in which case any half Calendar Round would match 32.5 orbital cycles of Venus. When a comprehensive study of many different crop pictures is made, it turns out that the Venus-based Calendar Round has been used by those mysterious crop artists more than any other scheme, for keeping time in our modern era (see time2007c).       

Sometimes they even show the Mayan Sun-Venus calendar in binary notation, using a modern computer format

We have just deduced a very important clue regarding the possible origin of modern crop pictures. Thus, the unknown creators of those pictures seem literally obsessed with ancient Mayan schemes for the counting of time. Indeed, we see the same kind of obsession with calendars when we study the ancient architecture or culture from that region, for example the Pyramid of Kulkulcan (or Quetzalcoatl) from Chichen Itza (see chichen kukulcan).

Now any single orbital cycle of Venus lasts for 584 days or 1.6 years as seen from Earth. So even if we divide such a Venus cycle into two halves of 292 days or 0.8 years each, thereby matching the periodic appearance of Venus as a bright star in our morning or evening skies, still it will last for a fairly long time of ten months. So what do those crop artists do, when they wish to tell us about intervals of time that are much shorter, say only weeks or days? 

What they have done is extremely clever, and completely unprecedented in any archaeological sense regarding ancient central America. Thus, they sometimes adapt the Mayan Sun-Venus calendar so that it reads in base-2 or binary notation, just as for a modern computer! So far they have shown us three different crop pictures from the years 2002, 2005 or 2008, which encode a Mayan Sun-Venus calendar in binary notation. We learned from Crabwood of August 15, 2002 that they could use binary notation in modern 8-bit ASCII format, to send us brief text messages in English (see www.physi.uni-heidelberg.de or WATCH). But who would have guessed that they would use binary notation in the sense of an ancient Mayan calendar?

(a)        The uppercase-lowercase code from Crabwood 2002. Their first use of binary notation within a Sun-Venus calendar came in the form of an uppercase-lowercase code within the primary text of the Crabwood message. Some words from its ASCII text were anomalously capitalized, whereas others remained lowercase. One researcher commented at the time (see www.martinkeitel.net):  

“If we look at this message from a human perspective, we can see that its plain English  text is only the surface. It uses very short sentences, with uppercase characters here and lowercase characters there. It uses an ampersand symbol ‘&’ instead of the word ‘and’. It includes extra non-ASCII digits in certain characters. Doesn’t all of that suggest there may be another message hidden underneath?”   

Consider for example its first phrase, “Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts”. Why is the word “FALSE” capitalized? Did those crop artists simply make a mistake?

“Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts & their BROKEN PROMISES.Much PAIN but still time.BELIEVE.There is GOOD out there.We oPpose DECEPTION.COnduit CLOSING/”

No chance! Thus in addition to the primary ASCII message shown at Crabwood, its anomalous uppercase-lowercase code gave us yet another subtle message, by a clever strategy known as the bilateral alphabet. In other words, when that series of 25 words is translated into binary notation, where each lowercase word = 1 and each uppercase word = 0 (the same as for ASCII in its third digit), then they provide for a new set of 25 binary numbers as:

Beware the bearers of FALSE = 11110

gifts & their BROKEN PROMISES Much = 11001

PAIN but still time BELIEVE = 01110

There is GOOD out there = 11011

We oPpose DECEPTION COnduit CLOSING = 11010

Thus its first five words “Beware the bearers of FALSE” translate into binary as 11110. The entire 25-word message translates likewise as 11110  11001  01110  11011  11010. And since there are 25 new binary numbers, grouped logically into five sets of five, they may be converted easily into base-32 as 30-25-14-27-26.

Here for example 11110 equals 16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 0 = 30, while 11001 equals 16 + 8 + 0 + 0 +1 = 25, or 01110 equals 0 + 8 + 4 +2 + 0 = 14. Finally, those five numbers from base-32 may be switched into a certain length of time, using the 52-year Mayan Sun-Venus calendar, by one further brief calculation as (see time2007o):

52 x (30 / 32 + 25 / 32 x 32 + 14 / 32 x 32 x 32 + .....) = 50.04 years

What might be the significance of 50.04 years in the context of Crabwood as a whole? Well, that is precisely how many years separate its date of appearance on August 15, 2002 from another important date of July 19-26, 1952, when a fleet of unfriendly grey aliens flew over Washington, D.C. and terrified the whole country (see washington 1952 or 1952_Washington_D.C._UFO_incident). The unpleasant visage of a three-star, grey alien general was shown nearby, just in case anyone had any remaining doubts (see www.lucypringle.co.uk).

Hence in that 2002 crop picture, some benevolent extra-terrestrials told us plainly to “beware of the greys” as a less spiritually evolved alien race than themselves. They also reassured us that they are “spiritually good”, and that we can trust them. Yet because of the current UFO cover-up, not many people on Earth today believe in the reality of grey aliens, and so their important message was not generally understood (see www.ufoevidence.org).

(b)        The Comet Holmes code from Wayland’s Smithy 2005. Their second use of binary notation within a Sun-Venus calendar appeared at Wayland’s Smithy on August 9, 2005 (see www.lucypringle.co.uk). Its purpose there was to inform us that a newly-exploded Comet Holmes would make a close approach or conjunction in Earth’s sky to a bright star Mirfak in the constellation Perseus, two years later on November 21, 2007. The details of such a calendar calculation will be given below. Here we only need to understand how they drew specific patterns in the crops, to specify a certain series of binary numbers:  

slide 21: two binary codes from Wayland’s Smithy 2005 (photo credits to Crop Circle Connector)

As shown above on the left, each inner quadrant of the Wayland’s Smithy picture contains a complex series of bars and spaces. Yet only two of those quadrants are unique, because the entire picture possesses left-right mirror symmetry. Each of those bars or spaces represent binary numbers as “1” or “0”, and two broad arrows along each side of the centre tell us in which direction to read them. Two sets of eight cusps at lower centre tell us to read them in 2 x 8 or base-16. Twenty large spirals around its outer perimeter are traditional Mayan symbols for time, and tell us to use a Mayan calendar with 20 days per month. A large crescent at its very centre represents planet Venus, which was high and bright in the sky on that same evening. It tells us to use a Sun-Venus calendar.

Now when we look more closely at those bars and spaces, using two broad arrows to decide in which direction to read, we can quickly identify two different sets of binary numbers in base-16 as either 14-5-11-5-14 or 13-10-7-10-13. For example, the two outermost rows of bars and spaces read either “1-1-1-0” which converts to “8 + 4 + 2 + 0 = 14”, or else “1-1-0-1” which converts to “8 + 4 + 0 + 1 = 13”. So far, so good. But we still have to switch those base-16 numbers into modern calendar dates!

As will be explained below, one of those two sets of binary numbers may be converted from the ancient Mayan Sun-Venus calendar into our own modern calendar as “August 9, 2005”, which was simply the day when that crop picture appeared. The other set of numbers may be converted from a Mayan Sun-Venus calendar into our modern calendar as “November 21, 2007”, which was the day when a newly exploded Comet Holmes would make a close approach in Earth’s sky to the brightest star Mirfak in Perseus, two years later (see time2007g or time2007h).

(c) The 2012 code from Secklendof 2008. Their third use of binary notation within a Sun-Venus calendar appeared at Secklendorf, Germany on June 23, 2008 (see /Secklendorf). Its purpose there was to remind us of several important and predictable astronomical events that will occur between when that crop picture appeared, and the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar on December 21-23, 2012. The binary codes shown at Secklendorf were rather simple, and used symbols such as “1-1-1-1-space-1-1-1-0” to specify integers such as “127” in base-128.  

END OF PART II

What do modern crop circles mean? Part III: more clues of various kinds

Having reviewed the general science of crop pictures, and also their strange use of Mayan calendars or Mayan binary codes, we will now provide additional clues of various kinds, that might help to further explain their origin.

Only a few crop pictures seem to show any detailed awareness of current human affairs in Earth

What could all of this mean: small robotic probes, pi to ten digits, symbols from our distant past, or Mayan calendars and Mayan binary codes? Needless to say, the raw data from modern crop pictures often seem very cryptic, highly mathematical, or hard to understand! When such a tendency toward obscurity is combined with strenuous debunking from the international media, no wonder so few people take them seriously. It must be easier to believe for some people---a large sea of societal conformers--- that vast invisible teams of fakers are going out late at night into the fields with rope and boards, to make pretty but senseless patterns for TV commercials or calendars, than what is really happening.

It must also be frustrating for a few more perceptive people---those who understand that such messages are real---that they cannot easily understand them better. Even in our best-case scenario from Crabwood 2002, they told us in English: “Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises. Much pain but still time. Believe. There is good out there.”  What kind of message is that? Who are the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises? If all people on Earth will be in trouble soon, what will be the nature of that trouble, and when will it occur? Who are the good extra-terrestrials as opposed to the bad ones?

Yet after taking all such reasonable objections into account, we still don’t seem to have any real choice in this matter, except to attempt to interpret those cryptic field messages as best we can. To ignore them completely, or to suppress the truth about them as most governments and media organizations on Earth today are doing, seems foolish to an extreme.

But what might really be going on here? In our initial study above, we seemed to see field messages from friendly, visiting extra-terrestrials, such as the “pi to ten digits” that appeared at Barbury Castle on June 1, 2008 and made worldwide news (see  www.mailonsunday.co.uk or www.telegraph.co.uk). Then we saw detailed images from our distant past on planet Earth, whether from ancient England or central America. Finally we saw complex astronomical and/or mathematical diagrams, some in modern computer format, which refer to two ancient Mayan calendars that no one has taken seriously for the past 500 years. Who are those people, and why are they sending us cryptic or mathematical messages in the fields?

To make matters even more mystifying, few if any crop pictures over the years have dealt with current human affairs on Earth: say wars, politics or sporting events. All of those seem to make up the mainstay of TV news in 2008, but our crop artist friends seem either to not be aware or not to care. Two rare exceptions were a clever picture that appeared near Silbury Hill on July 9, 2005, and seemed to describe the contemporaneous impact of a NASA space probe on Comet Tempel (see silbury hill or http://solarsystem.nasa.gov). Another good example was the intricate octagonal shape that appeared in East Field on July 3, 2005, and seemed to describe the contemporaneous meeting of political G-8 leaders in Edinburgh, or perhaps a large octagonal meeting centre that was built for the occasion (see Crop Circle Archives).

More recently, a beautiful eight-fold symmetric crop picture appeared at Cherhill on August 7, 2008 (see cherhill). It seemed to describe the eight-fold symmetric magnetic field of a new ATLAS particle detector, that had just been tested successfully on the same day at CERN in Geneva (see thoughts or cherhill or Here):

slide 22: Cherhill and CERN (photo credits to Frank Laumen)  

So they are following our latest research into high-energy particle physics! What might they expect us to discover?

The occasional construction of some particular crop picture for certain human individuals or small groups

There have also been a few cases over the years, perhaps a dozen, where some particular crop picture has seemingly been made to address certain human individuals or small groups. For example last summer on July 27, 2008, the schematic image of an “ancient goddess” appeared at Honey Street, while the annual Goddess Conference was being held in Glastonbury nearby (see honeystreet2008c or goddessconference.com):

slide 23 Honey Street 2008, Goddess meeting (photo credits to John Montgomery)

In a second case, a respected NASA scientist called Alan Holt visited Wiltshire on July 20, 2000, looked at a few crop pictures that had already been made, then on a whim asked mentally whether those unknown crop artists might provide him with some kind of insight into “the direction I should pursue in my research activities?” He was rewarded two days later by the famous bar-magnet crop picture of July 22, 2000 from Avebury Trusloe (see www.lucypringle.co.uk):

slide 24 Avebury Trusloe 2000 (photo credits to Lucy Pringle)

Holt later wrote: “There is truly an astounding phenomena unfolding in England and elsewhere in the world today. It is very unfortunate that the unscientific thinking, or perhaps even deliberate disinformation, of a few individuals has been picked up and accepted by a naive press. As a result, millions of people have been deprived of the opportunity to experience a consciousness-expanding experience. Fortunately that apparently successful attempt to ridicule crop pictures will do nothing to stop what may be a major transformation ahead for humanity.

There is also a sense of warning coming through these crop pictograms. We have not been very good stewards of the planet on which we live. We have recklessly depleted our natural resources. We have contaminated water, air and earth. We have threatened the foundation of Earth’s viability with the use and testing of nuclear weapons, and perhaps other exotic technologies. We continue to waste at least one-half of what we produce, especially here in the USA. The Earth can compensate for some of those mistakes, but it too goes through transformations. Thus if our care of the planet is not soon dramatically improved, we might not have many more years left to enjoy the beautiful and nurturing environment with which it currently provides us. The upcoming year of 2012 could be a turning point” (see www.rense.com).

In a third case, a group of six crop circle researchers were having dinner in a local Wiltshire restaurant during July of 2005, when one of them asked verbally for a “Templar cross” to appear in the fields, just to see whether anyone might be listening? Shortly thereafter, a series of six Templar crosses appeared at Savernake Forest on August 3, 2005 (see Savernake).

Finally in a fourth case, the famous Crooked Soley crop picture of August 28, 2002 appeared in a field not far from Cambridge, shortly before a high-level group of researchers were about to hold a meeting there to discuss the “nucleosome core particle” of chromatin (see crookedsoley2002a or worm holetechnology):

slide 25 Crooked Soley 2002 and the nucleosome core (photo credits to Steve Alexander)

That essential quantum unit of chromosomes had been crystallized in Cambridge, and analysed there by x-ray diffraction twenty years earlier. Now a small group of high-level researchers were about to hold a follow-up meeting, and the very subject of their meeting appeared in a field not far away from where they met (yet far from Wiltshire). It showed 1296 curved pixels (504 standing, 792 flattened), and would have been quite impossible to make by any ordinary human means of construction (see Book or the Reconstruction).

The underlying psychology of most authentic crop pictures seems quite different from anything that ordinary humans on Earth today could produce

We listed above a few rare examples, where those mysterious crop artists seemed to interact directly with certain human individuals or small groups on Earth today. In most cases however, if they can really receive our radio, TV or Internet signals, and can follow in real-time what is happening on our planet, they don’t seem much to care! Instead they seem far more concerned with yearly calendars, planetary conjunctions, solar-lunar eclipses or advanced mathematics (see www.swirlednews.com or Cetus).

For example, a whole series of crop pictures from the summer of 2007 kept telling us about an inferior conjunction between Venus and our Sun on August 18, 2007 (see sugarhill2007cc or stanton2007 or westoverton2007 or crop circle countdown). The most important crop picture from 2007 (at East Field on July 7) even showed us a series of four lunar phase cycles, so that we could date that conjunction more precisely. Its fourth cycle began with a new Moon on August 12, then ended six days later on August 18 when Venus lined up with our Sun (see eastfield2007aa).

Likewise, another series of crop pictures from the summer of 2008 kept telling us about a total solar eclipse on August 1, 2008, followed by a near-total lunar eclipse on August 16, 2008 (see westwoods2008 or www.cropcircleconnector.com or 0101010). One of the most important crop pictures from 2008 (at Milk Hill on August 8) showed us for example their symbol for planet Earth, coming in front of a full Moon on August 16, so as to create a near-total lunar eclipse (see 080808):

slide 26 Milk Hill 2008, Knoll Down 2008 (photo credits to Steve Alexander and Lucy Pringle)

To make their message even more clear, they drew a series of 16 lunar phases from August 1 to August 16 in the shape of a huge “figure 8”, because on August 8 there were only “eight days left” until a lunar eclipse on August 16! Meanwhile, most humans on Earth paid no attention whatsoever to such clever astronomical reminders, because they were more concerned about the economy, sports, wars or politics.

Hence the great gulf between their advanced intelligence and ours could not be more obvious. Likewise, in the few cases of personal contact cited above, it seemed as if they were trying to reach out to other scientifically or spiritually advanced humans of their own kind: say CERN researchers, a NASA space scientist, or the free-thinking kind of women who attend a Goddess Conference in Glastonbury. Perhaps when you reach a certain level of intelligence, say IQ 200 by normal human standards, then everyday concerns about corporate profits or football matches no longer matter? One is reminded here of comments by Albert Einstein (1936):

“Many arrows of hate have been shot at me, but they never hit me, because they belonged to another world with which I have no connection whatsoever”.

One other subtle characteristic of authentic crop pictures, as opposed to fake human-made ones, is that the authentic ones usually provide a clever message that is either (a) only half-labelled or (b) multi-layered conceptually.

As a good example of case (a), at Stonehenge in 1996 there appeared an amazing daylight crop picture that was meant to illustrate the 29.5-day phase cycle of our Moon, as seen at sunset on any day. Once you come to realize the true subject matter of that picture, then its meaning becomes obvious, as does its relation to Stonehenge nearby (see The Stonehenge code). But before solving the puzzle, it remains mystifying! Recall how it took our entire world almost one week to solve the recent 2008 “pi to ten digits” crop picture, as described above.

As good example of case (b), at Crabwood in 2002 there appeared a remarkable two-part crop picture that showed the ugly visage of a grey alien general on one side, and a ASCII coded spiral on the other. That spiral showed 1368 individual binary numbers as either “0” or “1”. When its 8-bit ASCII code was translated into modern English, it provided us with a text message of 25 words that still seemed remarkably obscure (see time2007n). Yet on further study, two more hidden codes were found within the long string of binary numbers as shown there, which revealed what the primary text message was all about (see time2007o).

In stark contrast to these remarkable findings, it is generally conceded that most human-made crop pictures are no more than landscape art, made usually for local commercial interests (see www.circlemakers.org). Thus even if well constructed over several days in daylight, they usually contain no message except in rare exceptions (see magic numbers).

Physical artefacts from our distant past sometimes show images which are identical to modern crop pictures: important if true

We mentioned above how certain crop pictures seem to show images from our distant past, especially from ancient England or central America. Could those crop artists be living somewhere on Earth thousands of years ago, yet still have the technology to send small robotic probes forward in time to make modern crop pictures today? As possible support for that hypothesis, people have occasionally found what appear to be physical artefacts from our distant past, which show images identical to those of modern crop pictures. That would be a very important result if true! But can we really be sure that such artefacts are truly old?

In one famous case, a series of three metal plates were found buried deeply under a large crop picture from Grasdorf, Germany in 1991, by a researcher with a metal detector (see WATCH). Each plate showed a detailed image of the crop picture which had just appeared above. One plate was made from gold, another from silver, and another from bronze:

slide 27 Grasdorf 1991 versus gold plate

A lot of trouble for a hoax! Someone would have had to bury those three plates in the ground six months earlier, then carve an identical picture into the crops above without getting caught, then finally dig those same plates up again, to supposedly validate the fake crop picture which they had just made.

Alternatively, could the real crop artists have made and buried those plates 2000 years ago, while they were sending a message forward in time to the same field? Their intent would have been to help corroborate such a strange message, and to prove that it came from Germany thousands of years earlier.

Last summer in 2008, two German crop pictures were actually “signed” using a rune symbol from the ancient language of Elder Futhark (see Reinsdorf or  Juehnde). Once again, why would any human faker go to so much trouble?

Another interesting physical artefact was found in the mountains of New Mexico in 2004 by a deer hunter called Robert Ridge. It shows a crop picture from Chiseldon, England in 1996 on one face, and was carved into a naturally magnetic pebble or lodestone:

slide 28 Chiseldon 1996 versus the New Mexico lodestone (photo credits to Linda Howe and Robert Ridge)

The Olmecs from central America were the first culture on Earth to use naturally magnetic rocks for navigational purposes. Hence if authentic, it could have been carved there 2000 years ago (see HERE or Environment or www.earthfiles.com or WATCH). Yet within months of that interesting report, other people had managed to carve similar kinds of fake pebble which showed August 2008 crop pictures on their surfaces, and were likewise magnetic (see WATCH).

The internal symbolism of any authentic crop picture is often reinforced by nearby landscape features

One other important characteristic of authentic crop pictures, as opposed to human-made fake ones, is that their internal symbolism is often reinforced by nearby landscape features. Looking for example at Furze Knoll from June 20, 2008 (below left), one can see two tree-covered knolls near that newly formed crop picture, which match in size the two circular symbols shown there for “Earth” or Moon” (see furze2008):

slide 29 Furze Knoll 2008, Avebury Ring 2008 (photo credits to Philippe Ullens and Steve Alexander)

Looking next at another example from Avebury Manor on July 15, 2008 (above right), one can see a large and ancient circle of standing stones near that newly formed crop picture, which match in shape the circular orbits of nine planets about the Sun (see aveburymanor2008a). These examples and others suggest that our mysterious crop artist friends choose certain field locations, for their new and beautiful creations, by prior reconnaissance from the air

Sometimes authentic crop pictures appear over two nights in succession

One final characteristic of authentic crop pictures, as opposed to human-made fake ones, is that they sometimes appear over two nights (or early mornings) in succession. Can you imagine a big team of human fakers going back to the same field on the following night, where they just made a highly visited crop picture on the previous night? And then doubling that crop picture in size? How could they possibly escape detection over and over again?

That strange “two night” behaviour has been witnessed on perhaps a dozen different occasions since 1990: for example at Broadbury Banks on August 5-16, 2000 (see broadburybanks2000b), at Silbury Hill on August 2-3, 2004 (see silburyhill2004b), or at Garsington on July 15-25, 2005 (see Garsington2005c). Its most dramatic occurrence was surely at South Field on July 22-23, 2008, when a huge and spectacular “swallows” picture appeared over two early mornings in succession (see southfield2008):

slide 30: South Field 2008 (photo credits to Eva-Marie Brekkesto and Lucy Pringle)

Accompanying that “swallows” picture on one side (above left) was a bright region of white chalky soil, where no plants seem to have grown. Yet the shape of that white chalky region could hardly have been an accident, since it contains an arrow that points directly along the length of the major crop picture nearby, plus two highly curved serpentine motifs on either side. Could those be the signature of our mysterious crop artist? Indeed, a second symbol of that kind could be seen in the unflattened crop 100 meters away (not shown).

Geometrical reconstruction of the observed patterns

Given such a wealth of new pictures in our fields, some investigators have tried to find out whether any “geometrical rules” might underlie the true authentic patterns? In other words, if the extra-terrestrials who are making those crop pictures have a graphics computer, how exactly might it be programmed to work?

The first significant progress in that area was made by Professor Gerald Hawkins of Boston University (see hawkins or WATCH). First he found in a majority of authentic crop pictures from the late 1980’s or early 1990’s, a series of integral ratios from our diatonic scale of music such as 3/2, 5/4 or 9/8. Later he found in other authentic crop pictures from the mid-1990’s, a series of five new geometric theorems that had never written down by Euclid:

slide 31: Hawkins five theorems 

Here is an excerpt from an interview with Hawkins in 1992 (see music-spheres):

“Those five theorems are based on Euclid’s work, but Euclid did not write them down. Are they widely accepted?”

Hawkins: “Only after I published them. Before that they were unknown. The intellectual profile of any supposed hoaxer has therefore moved up one notch: he has to have the capability of creating new geometric theorems not found by Euclid!”

Other researchers later extended such studies to cover new and increasingly complex examples of plane geometry, as they appeared each summer in the fields: for example Nick Kollerstrom (see www.hypermaths.org), Michael Glickman (see www.michaelglickman.co.uk) or Bert Janssen (see www.cropcirclesandmore.com). In terms of sheer complexity, one of the most remarkable reconstructions would surely be that of Zef Damen for Crooked Soley 2002 (see crookedsoley2002en):

slide 32: Crooked Soley reconstruction

The original crop picture is shown above left, while its underlying curved grid is shown above centre, and its final reconstructed image is shown above right. Supposing that Crooked Soley was made by local human fakers, how exactly did they lay out its immensely complex curved grid in the field beforehand, so as to know where to flatten the crop? Its final reconstructed image shows 1296 square pixels, of which 504 remain standing, while 792 were individually flattened.

That ends Part III of our review, which was focussed mainly on data presentation rather than hypotheses. Part IV will discuss specific hypotheses, especially those which relate to the upcoming year 2012.

THE END OF PART III  

What do modern crop circles mean? Part IV: Jaime Maussan and the Quetzalcoatl hypothesis

Now we will find it useful to depart from strictly conventional views concerning modern crop pictures, and begin to speculate a little, in an attempt to solve this difficult and fascinating problem. Thus, we would like to explore further the merits of a new hypothesis that was not proposed until 2005, when the Mexican journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan visited Wiltshire.

One year earlier on August 3, 2004, a spectacular “Aztec Sunstone” had appeared in crops near Silbury Hill. It had illustrated certain long-term aspects of the Mayan Long Count calendar: namely four past historical epochs or Suns over the past 20,000 years, along with an upcoming end to our current Fifth Sun on December 21-23, 2012. It thereby caused much excitement around the world, especially in Mexico where the true historical Aztec Sunstone resides in the National Museum of Anthropology and History (see azte calendar).

The dramatic events of August 2005

Hence one year later in August of 2005, the Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan flew to England to be there personally, when the last few crop pictures of 2005 came down (see Lammas Messages). And he was amply rewarded: on the night of August 9, 2005, three new and spectacular crop pictures appeared in three separate locations across southern England. The most important of those appeared at Wayland’s Smithy, and encoded binary information in base-16 using an ancient Mayan Sun-Venus calendar.

It was clear right away that something significant had happened. Thus, Jaime commented to Stuart Dike on the 2005 Crop Circle Connector DVD: “Those are dates. Something is going to happen then” (see circlechasers2005dvd). He did not anticipate that it would be the 2007 explosion of Comet Holmes, because its binary information was far too complex to be solved right away. But he did make an important connection between the unexplained appearance of many Mayan-type crop pictures in southern England, with the long-promised return to our modern world of an ancient central American god-teacher called Quetzalcoatl (see www.mininova.org or WATCH or WATCH).

Quetzalcoatl was a tall, bearded white man who had first visited the Yucatan area of Mexico around 0 AD, and had been greatly loved by the common people there for his positive contributions to their technology and morality. What possible relation could those events in central America long ago have to do with English crop pictures today? At first the whole idea seems bizarre: could there be anything to it?

Four days after Wayland’s Smithy, another spectacular Mayan-type crop picture appeared on August 13, 2005 in the nearby field at Woolstone Hill (see www.lucypringle.co.uk). It showed symbolically a “birth of the Mayan Sixth Sun” in early 2013. Such a symbolic event---the start of a new world age in their Long Count calendar---is supposed to follow an end to the Mayan Fifth Sun in late 2012:

slide 33: Silbury Hill 2004, Woolstone Hill 2005 (photo credits to Lucy Pringle and Jaime Maussan)

The sixteen “spiral boxes” which surround a central six-pointed star in that new crop picture seemed to represent the same sixteen time periods of 52 / 16 = 3.25 years, which had been coded in binary format only a few days earlier at Wayland’s Smithy. Clearly something very important was happening here!

To summarize, a legendary god-teacher from ancient central America by the name of Quetzalcoatl had always promised that he would return to our modern world, at the end of his Long Count calendar in late 2012 AD. And now midway through the first decade of the 21st century, a series of highly mathematical or astronomical Mayan-type crop pictures were appearing mysteriously in the fields of southern England. What could all of this mean?

Several other authors also noted an unexpected connection between Mayan-type crop pictures and the possible return of Quetzalcoatl: for example Geoff Stray with his excellent book “Beyond 2012” (see Beyond-2012-Catastrophe-End-time), or Linda Howe with her many excellent articles about crop circles on the Earthfiles website (see for example www.earthfiles.com). It was an idea whose time had come.

Other possible clues to the underlying nature of this strange phenomenon

Given the mysterious nature of this strange phenomenon, some authors have attempted psychic means to find its origin. For example, Isabelle Kingston, a respected English psychic, has identified those unknown crop artists with a traditional “Watcher” class of extra-terrestrials from our distant past, mentioned sometimes in the Jewish Old Testament or Dead Sea Scrolls (see predictions98 or www.wholisticworldvision.org/tours/tour_menu.html).

More recently, the New York author Daniel Pinchbeck claims to have entered into psychic communication with an avatar Quetzalcoatl during his long trip to Brazil in 2003, and has even posted Quetzal’s message for the people of Earth on his website (see www.breakingopenthehead.com). Normally one should remain sceptical of psychic phenomena, but Daniel’s comments seem so insightful that they should perhaps be considered further:

“Soon there will be a great change to your world. The material reality that surrounds you is beginning to crack apart, and with it all of your illusions. The global capitalist system that is currently devouring your planetary resources will soon self-destruct, leaving many of you bereft. But understand the nature of paradox: for those who follow my words, and open their hearts and minds, there will be no problem whatsoever. What is false must die, so that what is true can be born.”

By 2006, Daniel had written a new book called “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl” which shows the famous daylight crop picture from Stonehenge 1996 on its cover (see questions_about_2012 or WATCH):

slide 34: Stonehenge 1996, Pinchbeck book

Thus in a land practically without crop pictures, the legendary Quetzalcoatl seems to have found a way to get his message across to the common people there, in another fashion entirely!

The original mission by Quetzalcoatl and twenty of his skilled colleagues to central America around 100 AD 

So who was this mysterious god-teacher of ancient central America by the name of Quetzalcoatl? No one today knows exactly, because almost all written records of the Mayans or Aztecs were burned by overzealous Catholic priests, after Cortés invaded in 1519. Most current academic historians dismiss the ubiquitous legends of Quetzalcoatl as no more than myths, produced by primitive natives in ancient central, south or north America for their own religious purposes (see for example quetzalcoatl.jsp or utmesoamerica). Yet some popular authors, for example Graham Hancock, have argued otherwise (see fingerprintgods03 or WATCH).

By most accounts, Quetzalcoatl (meaning “bird-serpent”) was a tall, bearded white man of great skill, morality and knowledge. He arrived on the coast of Yucatan with twenty or so skilled colleagues by sea from the east around 0 to 100 AD, although some natives believe that he originally came from the stars. In the first ten to twenty years after he arrived there, he taught the local people all kinds of new or improved technologies by which to better their lives: for example farming, building or metallurgy. He also taught them improved concepts of morality and spirituality, possibly of a Christian nature (Jesus had lived in Israel only a few years earlier). Similar cultural or technological changes were noted at approximately the same time in south America where he was known as “Viracocha”, or in north America where he was known as “Pahana”.

For all of those reasons, Quetzalcoatl became a great folk hero to most native people in central, south or north America for 1500 years, beginning around the time of Christ, until a relentless Spanish invasion led by Cortés in 1519 AD completely destroyed all of their native cultures. Indeed, the Aztec leadership and priests in 1519 AD had been awaiting the long-promised return of Quetzalcoatl in some year “One Reed”, which was one of 52 possible years in their Venus-based calendar. Quetzal had apparently promised long before that he would return to their shores, in order to bring them new and renewed prosperity:

“Their god Quetzalcoatl went to the heavens and promised, when he left, that he would come again and bring his children”  (Hernando Tezozomoc in Crónica Mexicana).

”Because of the place from which you come, namely from the east where the Sun rises, and what you tell us of the great lord or king who sent you, we believe that he is our natural lord, especially since you say that he has known us for some time.” (the Aztec emperor Moctezuma speaking to Hernan Cortés in Letters from Mexico).  

In summary, those Aztecs were definitely waiting for some kind of tall, white-skinned, bearded group of sailors to return! Little did they know that Cortés was a ruthless adventurer in search of gold, and not the benevolent god-teacher that Quetzalcoatl had proven to be 1500 years earlier. When the Spanish continued their invasion toward South America in later years, they found to their surprise that some of the ruling classes there were blond and blue-eyed like themselves, and were known as children of the gods. They also found some surprising Christian influences which should not really have been there: for example at Palenque, one can see crosses in some of the temples, or on the coffin lid of Pacal the Great, dating back to 600 AD (although those symbols do not mean “crucifixion” but have other meanings).

In any case, the ancient Olmecs, Mayans or Incas suddenly acquired a vast store of new knowledge and technologies, that they used to embark on remarkable building programs all across central or south America. Their greatest city was later called Teotihuacan, meaning “city of the gods”. There they built three great and magnificent stone edifices that are now called the Pyramid of the Sun, Pyramid of the Moon, or Feathered Serpent Pyramid (see http://archaeology.asu.edu/teo or http://au.youtube.com or http://au.youtube.com):

slide 35: city of Teotihuacan

“The earliest buildings at Teotihuacan date back to 200 BC, while the Pyramid of the Sun was completed by 100 AD. That city reached its zenith between 150 and 450 AD, when it was the centre of a powerful culture whose influence extended throughout much of Mesoamerica” (see Teotihuacan).

slide 36: Pyramids of the Sun, Moon or Feathered Serpent

“When the Aztecs arrived on the Highland Plateau at the beginning of the 14th century, they came across an enormous and abandoned religious centre which they named Teotihuacan. It is hard to believe that such a city could have been built by a people who did not know metal tools, had no beasts of burden, and did not use even simple machines to aid them in their constructions. Teotihuacan is located in a large valley about 50 kilometres from modern Mexico City. Although the area was populated from very early times, the construction of that large ceremonial centre did not begin until around 100 BC. The ceremonial zone of Teotihuacan was surrounded by a great urban population of 150,000 during its peak, and covered a land area of 20 square kilometres. The ceremonial complex itself is formed by two great stone pyramids, known today as the Pyramids of the Sun or Moon, together with temples, platforms and residential buildings distributed along both sides of the long Causeway of the Dead. Its main building, the Pyramid of the Sun, measures 215 meters on each side, making its base similar in size to that of the largest Egyptian pyramid at Giza.” (see conquista).

One should also take note of a special architectural feature found within the Feathered Serpent Pyramid. Thus, twice every year on the spring or autumn equinox, the shadow of a huge, carefully fashioned stone serpent descends at sunset “from the sky to Earth” along its northern steps (see chichenitza). Why would the original architects of that pyramid have built such a clever feature into its construction, unless they were sure that Quetzalcoatl and his colleagues had once come from the stars?

In summary, these sudden and remarkable technical advances do not seem to admit any simple, conventional explanation. On the other hand, if the original mission by Quetzalcoatl and his twenty or so skilled colleagues to central America around 100 AD was some kind of civilizing effort by a hypothetical Interstellar Peace Corps, who intended to bring improved technologies or improved concepts of morality or spirituality to other humans less advanced than themselves, living on an obscure planet far out on the Orion Arm, then everything would be explained nicely!

Quetzalcoatl and his colleagues arrived in the Yucatan by sea, from across the Atlantic Ocean to the east, meaning that his primary base was somewhere in Europe: say in England or Germany. And that is where most modern crop pictures are appearing today, next to ancient megalithic sites such as Avebury Ring, Silbury Hill or Stonehenge, just ten to twenty years before his long-promised return at the end of our modern year 2012 AD.

Three traditional symbols for Quetzalcoatl often appear in modern crop pictures: who could be making them?

That strange hypothesis, first suggested by Jaime Maussan in 2005, might seem bizarre or overly speculative on first notice. How could anyone possibly link putative extra-terrestrial visits to ancient central America with modern crop pictures? But once the idea is examined more carefully, with due regard to many unexplained crop pictures that have appeared over the years, then it begins to make a lot of sense. 

For example, not only do ancient Mayan calendars or Mayan binary codes appear sometimes in modern crop pictures, but also three traditional symbols for the legendary god-teacher Quetzalcoatl as his (i) feathered serpent, (ii) planet Venus or (iii) jester’s hat motifs. All three of those symbols have been associated closely with the person of Quetzalcoatl for the past 2000 years:

slide 37: East Field 1999, Chilcomb Down 2001, East Field 2006 (photo credits to Lucy Pringle)  

The Olmecs or Mayans called Quetzal a “feathered serpent” because he could fly and was wise, or perhaps because he rode around in a long silver craft that they called a flying snake. Looking for example at Stela 19 from the ancient Olmec city of La Venta (see Olmec or La_Venta_Stele_19.jpg), one can see a remarkable depiction of Quetzalcoatl riding around in his flying snake, that appears very modern to say the least (see below).

“The serpent was an important symbol to the Mayans. They described serpents as being the vehicles by which celestial bodies cross the heavens. One of their deities Quetzalcoatl was even represented as a feathered serpent” (see  Vision_Serpent).

“The mythological figure of a feathered serpent, once depicted all throughout north and central America, probably originated in Olmec times. Quetzalcoatl as a Feathered Serpent was said to be the inventor of books and the calendar, a giver of maize to mankind, and was often associated with planet Venus” (see Olmec_mythology).

Now the small serpentine crop picture which appeared at East Field on June 12, 1999 (above left) was apparently just his signature, for having designed and laid out another 300-meter-long crop picture in a neighbouring field on the same day (see www.lucypringle.co.uk or www.lucypringle.co.uk). Stuart Dike noted at the time: “Its design shows snaking pathways and an arrow-like head, pointing strangely toward the other large pictogram nearby. Its interpretation seems to be that of a Sun Serpent from South America” (see Eastfield99b).

See frame 00:15 on the video www.youtube.com for a good photograph of those two crop pictures in the same field next to one another. Thus, the arrow-like head of that “feathered serpent” pointed directly towards a long astronomical glyph nearby, which featured many symbols from the ancient science of Ptolemaic astronomy. Those told about an upcoming Grand Conjunction of the planets on May 5, 2000 (see time2007f). In all seriousness, who else would have the detailed knowledge required to make those two pictures, except for Quetzalcoatl himself?

The Mayans likewise associated Quetzalcoatl with “planet Venus”, because he taught them all about the naked-eye astronomy of Venus, as well as their Venus-based calendar (see maya). A crop picture from Chilcomb Down on July 14, 2001 (above center) shows the usual five-pointed star for Venus, plus a row of five circles between each pair of arms. Those remind us that Venus will complete five orbital cycles about our Sun, in any eight years as seen from Earth (see www.lucypringle.co.uk).

Finally, they associated Quetzalcoatl with a “jester’s hat” because he was apparently a bit of a jokester, and often wore one around! See for example a remarkable statue on display at La Venta Park in Tabasco, Mexico, in which a long-nosed white man is meeting some other European colleague, and wears a three-lobed jester’s hat (see olmec or olmec):

slide 38: two Quetzalcoatl stelas from La Venta

A very similar crop picture appeared in East Field on July 28, 2006 (previous slide, right). In that 2006 crop picture, Quetzal seemed to be showing his wry sense of humour, by adding a vagabond’s bag to indicate that he is now a star-faring or travelling jester! Certain visitors to that Wiltshire crop formation got its interpretation all wrong: “Some tourists from London said that, from the air, the new East Field picture looked like a jester’s hat, and thus was an obvious hoax, or perhaps a mockery toward people like ourselves” (see eastfield2006a or www.lucypringle.co.uk).

Those people were simply not informed as to central American history! By 600 AD, a three-lobed jester’s hat had become the accepted crown of Mayan kings, as a kind of cargo-cult symbol in honour of Quetzalcoatl’s memory (see JesterGod.pdf). That is why we see Pacal the Great wearing one at Palenque in 615 AD, when he was made king (see Pacal_the_Great). You can just imagine some humorous fellow showing up in central America around 100 AD, wearing brightly coloured clothes like their quetzal parrot, riding around in a long metallic craft like their coatl serpent, and wearing a funny-looking three-lobed jester’s hat. The natives could only have been amused, especially when he expressed a strong and legendary aversion to war or violence:

“When we spoke of war against a neighbouring tribe, Quetzal would put his fingers in his ears.”

But where did he and his friends come from? From somewhere in the ancient British Isles, from ancient Scandinavia, or from a more distant source entirely?

A crop picture from West Overton in 2002 identified his home star in the constellation Hercules about 160 light-years from Earth

Two weeks before Crabwood of August 15, 2002, which was the most famous picture in the history of this phenomenon, another very informative picture appeared at West Overton on July 28, 2002 (see westoverton2002a). Not many people paid any attention to it at the time, but there is good reason now to believe that the mysterious crop artist who made one picture also made the other. And that is quite significant, because the West Overton picture shows our old friend the “feathered serpent”, flying away from some very complex group of stars off into space, presumably on his way to Earth:

slide 39: West Overton 2002 (photo credits to Stuart Dike)

The feathered-serpent image as portrayed there has a much longer “neck” than the one shown at East Field in 1999, because the artist is trying to portray a sense of motion or distance: leaving behind one group of stars to travel to another. It seems almost humorous! But then Quetzalcoatl always was a joker. When we study the many different stars shown in that 2002 crop picture, to learn where the “feathered serpent” comes from, we find that they represent the well-known Keystone of Hercules, with a bright globular cluster M13 on the right:

slide 40: West Overton 2002 (photo credits to Stuart Dike)

Looking even more closely, to see which star the “tail” of that feathered serpent connects to, we find that it joins to a small star which lies close in Earth’s sky to epsilion Hercules, a fairly bright star that lies 160 light years from Earth (see Hercules_(constellation)):

slide 41: West Overton 2002 (photo credits to Stuart Dike)

Both his home star and epsilion-Hercules have been connected by a thin line, to suggest that both stars lie close together in space. That makes him essentially our backyard neighbour on the Orion Arm, since it is a much greater 25,000 light years to the centre of our galaxy!

Now in light of West Overton from 2002, there seems to be little remaining doubt. Quetzalcoatl was probably a true extra-terrestrial visitor to ancient central America, although he could have been based at that time in England or Europe. Yet we still don’t know where he is now, or how he might be sending us these crop pictures through the use of small robotic probes. Could he and his colleagues still be located in central America, waiting to jump through time from 100 AD to 2012 AD? Or have they since returned to their home star, and plan to arrive on Earth in the near future through space?

END OF PART IV 

What do modern crop circles mean? Part V: some crop pictures have predicted the future

We learned in Part IV that those crop artists can travel across long distances of space ot time, namely 160 light years, to get from their home star in the constellation Hercules to our own little planet Earth. So what else can they do? Might they even be able to see into our local future on Earth, so as to know what will happen next? In Part V of this review, we will try to estimate more accurately what kinds of advanced technology they really possess.

Some of those crop pictures can predict the future: a cometary impact on Jupiter in 1994, or the outburst of a comet near Earth orbit in 1995

Today on Earth we remain largely at the level of electromagnetic technologies, which when carefully manipulated will produce our electrical generating systems, communication systems or computers. That is really a big advance over past civilizations, because the classical Romans or Greeks were limited to mechanical or hydrodynamic technologies, and had to use wooden levers or water pressure for anything they wished to accomplish. We have also acquired since World War II a rather troublesome set of atomic technologies, which were once expected to bring free and clean electrical power to the world, but instead have been used to create highly destructive weapons.

Yet many of our leading physicists on Earth today believe that there exists another more sophisticated set of technologies, that would allow for the manipulation of gravity, space or time. Any extra-terrestrial race who were able to master such technologies would then be able to manufacture gravity-powered spacecraft, wormholes for faster-than-light travel, or time travel devices. They might also develop a deeper understanding of causality: how does event A lead to event B? If we change event A at time t1, will event B still happen at time t2?

In good accord with the extra-terrestrial nature of this crop circle phenomenon, we can sometimes see in those pictures certain strong clues that they can see and/or predict the future, in a way that our best scientists on Earth today cannot. For example they told us at Crabwood in 2002: “Much pain but still time”. Might they be able to see somehow, using their advanced technology, that humans on Earth will fall into deep trouble soon, whether political, financial or environmental? But rather than addressing this question first in human terms, let us ask more objectively whether they can predict the future in an astronomical sense, concerning unexpected events in our own solar system?

The first example of such future predictive behaviour appeared back in 1994, when Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 made its spectacular impact on Jupiter from July 16 to 24. It thereby left a series of large black scars on that planet, which could be seen from Earth using a powerful telescope. Sure enough, many large comet-type pictures appeared in the fields of Wiltshire around July 15, 1994 (see thinx94 or devizesa94), along with a five-pointed Venus star symbol for Quetzalcoatl at Uffcote (see clarke94):

slide 42: Wilsford Down 1994, Bishop Cannings 1994 (photo credits to Steve Alexander)

Then on July 23, 1994, one of those comet-type pictures showed an “extra ball” inside of its head or nucleus (below left), which resembled somewhat the newly formed impact site “G” of Comet Shoemaker Levy on Jupiter (see earlyjuly94 or www.lucypringle.co.uk). Next on July 26, 1994, an even more detailed representation of impact site “G” appeared in a field at Oliver’s Castle (see below right or oliver94):

slide 43: East Dean 1994, G site Jupiter, Oliver’s Castle 1994 (photo credits to Steve Alexander)

Yet the actual astronomical impact had occurred only one week earlier on July 18! How could any group of human fakers have acted so quickly, to copy accurately in the fields what NASA had just photographed using the Hubble space telescope? There were seven comet-type pictures in all, some showing the symbolic head of a scorpion (see above or www.lucypringle.co.uk), because Comet Shoemaker Levy had occupied the constellation Scorpius only weeks earlier (see scorpious hour  or Angel ForeTold or time2007i).

One year later in the summer of 1995, a new set of intricate astronomical pictures appeared in Wiltshire fields. Some showed “exploding comets”, while others showed many small “cometary fragments” in orbit near Earth (see www.lucypringle.co.uk or www.lucypringle.co.uk):

slide 44: Danebury Ring 1995, Bishop Sutton 1995 (photo credits to Lucy Pringle)

Likewise, another five-pointed Venus star symbol for Quetzalcoatl appeared at Watership Down (see waterb95). What could all of those new pictures mean? No one had any clue at the time, but then three months later on September 20, 1995, Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 outburst or exploded into many small pieces, just as had been shown earlier in crops:

slide 45: outburst of Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3

Furthermore, that comet was very close to an imaginary circular path that defines Earth’s orbit about the Sun when it exploded. Planet Earth had meanwhile moved three months ahead in its orbit from mid-June, or 90 degrees further around the Sun, so there was never any danger to humans living here.  

How could those crop artists have known, three months before the actual event? A “missing Earth” crop picture at Longwood Warren in the same year (see www.lucypringle.co.uk) was likewise not understood at the time, because the event to which it referred had not happened yet. Now in retrospect, we can see that it told us the precise location in space where Comet Schwassmann Wachmann 3 would later explode, or where a symbol for “planet Earth” had been omitted on June 26, three months earlier (see longwoodwarren2006 or time2007a).

The future prediction of Comet Holmes from August 2005 to October 2007 using a Mayan Sun-Venus calendar

The most recent and convincing example of future prediction in crops concerned a sudden and spectacular outburst of Comet 17P Holmes in late October of 2007. It seems to have been predicted in great detail by a whole series of crop pictures from England and/or Germany during the summer of 2005, more than two years earlier. Two good examples are provided below. First, in a highly detailed crop picture from Lane End Down on July 10, 2005, we can see the broad blue halo or coma of Comet Holmes that formed in the first week after it exploded, along with many faint background stars from the constellation Perseus near its site of out burst:(see www.lucypringle.co.uk):

slide 46: Lane End Down 2005 (photo credits to Steve Alexander)

Then in another clever crop picture from Garsington on July 15, 2005, we can see a time series of five images which foretold how Comet Holmes would dramatically expand in size from October 24 to 28, 2007, during the first few days of outburst (see www.lucypringle.co.uk):

slide 47: Garsington 2005 two parts (photo credits to Lucy Pringle)

That Garsington picture actually changed in appearance, several days after it first formed. Look carefully at the white dashed lines above, on left versus right. The fourth cometary image from the bottom (matching October 27, 2007) was initially drawn as a series of three concentric circles, perhaps to suggest rapid cometary spin? But then several days later, the inner two of those three circles were flattened, to produce a final crop image which matches the sky photograph well.

Three weeks after Lane End Down and Garsington, another spectacular crop picture appeared at Wayland’s Smithy on August 9, 2005 (see www.lucypringle.co.uk). There our crop artist friends used a Mayan Sun-Venus calendar in binary computer format, to tell us when the newly exploded Comet Holmes would join in Earth’s sky to a bright star called Mirfak in the constellation Perseus, two years later. How was such an amazing feat accomplished?

Wayland’s Smithy provided us with two series of numbers in base-16, namely 13-10-7-10-13 or 14-5-11-5-14 as described in Part II of this essay. Once we omit the last two digits of each series (that were added to ensure that we could read those numbers reliably in the field), we can translate the remaining three digits 13-10-7 or 14-5-11 into decimal fractions of 0.85327 or 0.89722 by a simple calculation:

(13 / 16) + (10 / 16 x 16) + (7 / 16 x 16 x 16) = 0.85327

(14 / 16) + (5 / 16 x 16) + (11 / 16 x 16 x 16) = 0.89722

Next, since we were told by other symbols in that same crop picture to use a “Mayan Sun-Venus calendar”, we can multiply those two decimal fractions by 18,980 days (the length of any Mayan Calendar Round), in order to find two calendar dates that lie either 16,195 or 17,029 days past when that calendar began back on April 10, 1961:

0.85237 x 18,980 = 16,195 days past April 10, 1961

0.89722 x 18,980 = 17,029 days past April 10, 1961

Many crop pictures have suggested that our current Mayan Calendar Round began on April 10, 1961, and will end on March 28, 2013, just after the Mayan Long Count calendar ends on December 21-23, 2012 (see time2007c). 

So if we add 16,195 days to April 10, 1961, we get:

16,195 days + April 10, 1961 = August 9-10, 2005

Yet that was just the day when Wayland’s Smithy appeared! Hence their first set of numbers 13-10-7 was simply an internal check on the calculation, to let us know when we got it right. Next when we add 17,029 days to April 10, 1961, we get:

17,029 days + April 10, 1961 = November 20-21, 2007

Hence their second set of numbers 14-5-11 was intended to predict some unknown event, that lies more than two years into the future from August 2005.

Following all the excitement of solving that difficult problem, we still had to wait for another two years and three months, to learn whether anything significant might happen on November 20-21, 2007? Would there be some kind of explosion in deep space, as we had been shown at Lane End Down or Garsington? 

Eventually on October 24-25, 2007, Comet Holmes exploded brightly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, in the constellation Perseus as seen from Earth. A few weeks later on the precise date of November 20-21, 2007, a newly exploded Comet Holmes joined closely in Earth’s sky to a bright star called Mirfak in Perseus:

slide 48: Mirfak conjunction 

Many amateur astronomers from all over the world photographed that historic conjunction, between a distant star and a nearby bright comet. In the diagram above, one can see the detailed path through our sky of Comet Holmes from when it first exploded on October 25, 2007, until it reached the star Mirfak on November 20-21, 2007. 

But the story remains incomplete. Did any other crop picture from the summer of 2005 predict the explosion of Comet Holmes on a date of October 24-25, 2007? It turns out that Waden Hill of July 16, 2005 did predict the actual date of explosion, but we did not understand its subtle astronomical symbolism at the time (see wadenhill2005a or www.starnationgallery.com). It showed a series of three semi-square symbols from ancient Ptolemaic astronomy, to tell us that three different pairs of bright planets would lie at 45 degrees to one another in Earth’s sky on that particular day (see time2007g or time2007h).

The future prediction of Comet Holmes from August 2005 to May 2007 using its closest approach to the Sun or perihelion

So far, so good. Now did any other crop pictures from the summer of 2005 predict Comet Holmes? A lot of them seemed to do so in a simple pictorial fashion, but without much hard evidence. One other very convincing example appeared at Bluebell Hill in Kent on August 10, 2005 (see bluebell2005b or www.medwaycropcircle.co.uk). It showed the deep space location of Comet Holmes, slightly beyond the orbit of Mars, during its closest recent approach to the Sun or perihelion on May 4, 2007:

slide 49: Bluebell Hill 2005 (photo credits to Ade Rowswell)

Yet back on May 4, 2007, nobody cared about Comet Holmes! Not even the most devoted of comet aficionados were taking pictures of it six months before it exploded, due to its extreme faintness (see http://cometography.com). Why then would any human team of fakers carve its near-future orbital location at into the crops at Bluebell Hill, two years earlier in August of 2005? On the other hand, if true extra-terrestrials laid down that amazing crop picture, how were they able to predict the future more than two years in advance?

A certain set of crop pictures, especially from the summer of 2006, seem to illustrate a deep knowledge of advanced space time technologies that could be used to predict unexpected cometary events, such as those shown in the three cases above from 1994, 1995 or 2007. Thus they have shown us wormholes, ring holes, closed time-like curves, or even the “Roman ring” used for time travel (see wormholetechnology or time2007k or longwoodwarrren2007). All of those complex devices are thought by leading physicists to be theoretically possible, although we are nowhere close to making them ourselves on Earth today.

To conclude, the case for future prediction in crops has been made beyond any reasonable doubt. Still, practically all modern academics have chosen to keep their heads in the sand like ostriches. Did academic astronomers from the University of Genoa look through Galileo’s small telescope at the newly discovered phases of Venus, or four moons of Jupiter, back in 1609? No, instead they chose not to look. The reason was because what he could see in the night sky, using that new device, did not agree with what they were teaching the schools (see http://cnx.org or year-text-Galileo).

END OF PART V 

What do modern crop circles mean? Part VI: Quetzalcoatl, Jesus and the year 2012

In the final Part VI of this review, we will discuss some of the latest crop pictures from 2008, and also try to put some of the missing pieces of this great puzzle together. Why should symbols for both Quetzalcoatl and Jesus appear in the crops? What will happen in the upcoming year of 2012 AD?

A gradual realization among crop circle researchers that Quetzalcoatl might be involved

After the dramatic events of Comet Holmes in late 2007, some of us searched through the crop circle archives, to ask whether there might be any other pictures from the past that could have predicted other astronomical events? That is how we learned more about the 1994 cometary impact on Jupiter, or the 1995 cometary outburst near Earth orbit.

In addition, while studying the Grand Conjunction crop picture from Alton Barnes on June 12, 1999, we noticed that in the same field, a magnificent “feathered serpent” image had been drawn, with its arrow-like head pointing toward the much larger astronomical glyph nearby. Likewise while studying the Seven Chakra crop picture from Pewsey on July 22, 2004, we noticed that in the same field, an ancient “Mayan Venus” image had been drawn, with four serpentine arms to represent the Feathered Serpent himself (see pewsey2004B or pewsey2004c).

It turns out that there have been a lot of symbols for Quetzalcoatl in modern crop pictures, too many to describe here (see time2007d or time2007e.html or time2007k). How could we not have noticed before? Was it due perhaps to our collective cultural ignorance of ancient central America? By contrast, Jaime Maussan as a leading Mexican journalist did not suffer such prejudices, and was already able back in 2005 to associate many of those Mayan-type crop pictures with the long promised return of Quetzalcoatl in late 2012, when his Long Count calendar ends (see www.youtube.com or www.youtube.com).

What might a return of Quetzalcoatl and his colleagues mean for the people of Earth? No one knows for sure, but we will discuss some likely possibilities below. Certainly there is nothing to worry about! It is an event that we can look forward to with great joy and exuberance, if such an amazing prophecy is really fulfilled. And when exactly might it happen? Last year at Beckhampton on July 26, 2008, we saw another serpentine crop picture in the close vicinity of Silbury Hill (see beckhampton2008a):

slide 50: Beckhampton 2008 (photo credits to Steve Alexander, Michael Murray and Patty Greer)

When inspected in close detail, the central ring of that new crop picture seems to have been carefully fashioned, so that it resembles the outline of Silbury Hill nearby (see above, left and upper right). Then around that central ring has been wrapped a large “serpent” shape, with a pronounced head and finely fashioned tail (see above, left and lower right). Such a serpent symbol could plausibly be meant to represent Quetzalcoatl himself. Finally on the far left, we can see a three-circle “comet” shape, the largest circle of which contains a small triangular arrow that points to the nearby serpent.

Hence the apparent message of that crop picture might be as follows:

The feathered serpent will return to Silbury Hill at the time of a comet.”

At first this message seems a bit obscure, because new comets appear fairly regularly in Earth’s sky. But when considered in the context of another crop picture that appeared four days earlier on July 22, 2008 at Avebury Manor, it could refer to a bright comet that has been predicted for December 13, 2012, which is the last new Moon before their Long Count calendar ends (see aveburymanor2008b).

Symbols for Jesus and Quetzalcoatl appear side-by-side on the same English hilltop in August 2008

Just when we thought we had this difficult problem solved, and were able to attribute most modern crop pictures to a certain group of extra-terrestrials who taught in central America 2000 years ago, the final few crop pictures of 2008 brought a real surprise. Thus on top of Etchilhampton Hill on August 15 or 31, there appeared two side-by-side images of a somewhat religious nature: (i) a “cross” symbol for Jesus, and (ii) a “Venus” symbol for Quetzalcoatl (see Etchilhampton2008a or Etchilhampton2008c or www.youtube.com or www.youtube.com):

slide 51: Etchilhampton August 15 or 31, 2008 (photo credits to Russell Stannard)

The first symbol for Jesus was clearly a “Celtic cross”, as may be seen by comparison to other well-known Celtic crosses from France or Scotland:

slide 52: Etchilhampton August 15, 2008 (photo credits to Steve Alexander)

There were also of course many “crosses” found in the Mayan temples in central America, by Spanish invaders around 1520. If Jesus never lived or taught in central America, why should so many cross-type symbols appear there, of a religious and/or astronomical nature?

slide 53: comparison to Mayan crosses (photo credits to Steve Alexander)

For whatever reason, the ancient Mayans or Aztecs always had a cross symbol that they called the “World Tree”. Some authors speculate that it may have been derived from a cross-like shape of the Milky Way as seen at that latitude: “The plane of the ecliptic is sometimes represented as a bar crossing the major axis of the Milky Way, thereby creating a symbol that is similar to a Christian cross” (see milkyway). Alternatively, it could perhaps have been taught there by Christian missionaries at a much earlier time?

Now when examined in close detail, the “Celtic cross” from Etchilhampton on August 15, 2008 (see above, left) seems to be made up of ten small S-like shapes. Six were drawn along its long vertical axis, while four were drawn across its short horizontal axis. In fact, that same S-like shape was shown earlier in the season at Furze Knoll on June 20, 2008, where it symbolized “25 weeks” between any two solar-lunar eclipse seasons on Earth (see furze2008). Hence ten such symbols might be intended to remind us that only 10 x 25 = 250 weeks or 4.8 years remain, from the summer of 2008 until the spring of 2013, when their Mayan Sun-Venus calendar ends.

Two weeks later on August 31, a large “five-pointed star” symbol for Quetzalcoatl appeared next to that Celtic cross in a neighbouring field. The five-pointed star has traditionally has been used to symbolize five orbital cycles of Venus, which are required for that planet to return to the same location relative to background stars as seen from Earth. It also showed eight thin stripes outside of any two pointed arms, in order to symbolize the eight Earth years which are required to complete five cycles:

slide 54: Etchilhampton August 31, 2008 (photo credits to Russell Stannard)

Two other Venus-type crop pictures appeared near the end of the 2008 season. One from Great Stambridge on August 3 showed a similar five-pointed star, but without eight thin stripes (see Stambridge2008). Another from Barton Le Clay on August 14 showed a five-pointed star with three broad horizontal stripes, located between any of its two arms. Those broad stripes may have been meant to remind us once again, that only three orbital cycles of Venus or 3 x 1.6 = 4.8 years remain in our current eight-year calendar, from the summer of 2008 to the spring of 2013 (see barton2008a).

One month later in September 2008, a series of poorly-made fake crop pictures appeared in Wiltshire, culminating on September 28 with a much simpler copy of the original Celtic cross from August 15. The new human-made version showed only straight lines and round circles, rather than beautiful S-like shapes. After a field inspection, Charles Mallett commented: “The new cross picture is extremely messy. All of the patterned plants have been smashed and left dead on the ground, while there are obvious construction lines that run underneath the entire picture” (see aveburydown2008).

Who made the Celtic cross picture from August 15, 2008?

Could friendly extra-terrestrials have made the original Celtic cross picture, which appeared on top of Etchilhampton Hill on August 15, 2008? And if so, what could that mean? Traditional believers in Christianity have based their interpretations mainly on written testimonies by several of Jesus' closest disciples during his lifetime, namely Peter, Matthew or John. Other important testimonies were written later by Luke and Paul, or by Jesus' brothers James and Jude.

Yet ordinary people in those days did not understand modern astronomical concepts such as planet, solar system or galaxy. All they knew was up (“heaven”) or down (“Earth”). Hence they could only write honestly about what they already knew. Should we perhaps re-assess what Jesus was trying to teach us, in light of modern scientific knowledge?

No one has gone up to heaven except for the Son of Man, who came down from there.” (John 3, 13)

You are from below, but I am from above. You belong to this world, but I don’t.” (John 8, 23)

“We speak of what we know, and testify about what we have seen, but you people do not believe us. If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how then will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” (John 3, 11)

We learn from those passages that Jesus “came down from heaven”, and that he did not “belong to this world”. Also, he arrived on Earth with at least a few other colleagues as a group. Other New Testament passages suggest a possible relationship between Jesus teaching in Israel around 30 AD, and Quetzalcoatl teaching in central America around 100 AD:

“I have other sheep that aren’t in this pen. I will bring them together when they hear my voice. There will be one flock of sheep and one shepherd.” (John 10, 16)

I am David’s great descendant, and also the bright morning star.” (Revelation 22, 16)

“I will give power over the nations to everyone who keeps obeying me until the end. I will also give them the morning star.” (Revelation 2, 26).

One of the three traditional symbols for Quetzalcoatl has always been that of Venus as a bright morning star. Indeed, that was the symbol that we just saw inscribed into crops at Etchilhampton Hill on August 31, 2008, directly next to another symbol for Jesus in the form of a cross. Could Quetzalcoatl have been one of Jesus' trusted colleagues around 30 AD, of whom he spoke in the Gospel of John? And by a similar interpretation, could Jesus now be “giving us the morning star”, by sending Quetzalcoatl to Earth to make crop pictures and soon open contact?

The long-promised return of Quetzalcoatl in late 2012 or early 2013: if it does happen, what will it bring?

As we approach the end of this long review, it seems increasingly possible that Quetzalcoatl and/or Jesus---two great spiritual teachers who lived on Earth 2000 years ago in central America or Israel---might be responsible for the modern crop circle phenomenon as observed. And as a corollary to that hypothesis, it seems increasingly possible that the upcoming year of 2012 will bring great changes on Earth: whether extra-terrestrial, astronomical or spiritual in nature. Let us briefly discuss each of those possibilities in turn (see www.youtube.com or diagnosis2012 or www.youtube.com or au.youtube.com).

(i)  One possible scenario for the year 2012 might be a near-future intervention on Earth by those crop artists, to help rescue our environmentally troubled planet. There seems to be no remaining doubt today that both North and South Poles are melting, whether due to natural or man-made causes. Our Sun has also begun to show unexpected behaviour (see www.jpl.nasa.gov or www.earthfiles.com). Our best clue to what might happen might come from studying their only message to us in plain English, obtained  at Crabwood in 2002 (see crabwood or www.cropcircleresearch.com or time2007o):  

“Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises. Much pain but still time. Believe: there is good out there. We oppose deception. Conduit closing.

In the text above, “bearers of false gifts” could refer to visiting grey aliens, who supposedly promised the US government various kinds of extra-terrestrial military technology to help defeat Russia during the Cold War, but then broke their promises (see www.american.edu). That interpretation seems especially plausible, since the unpleasant visage of a grey alien general was drawn in the same field nearby.

“Much pain but still time” implies that we will all be in trouble soon on Earth. Yet the precise nature of that trouble is not specified, nor its precise time.

“Believe: there is good out there” is a clear appeal to our faith, to help us believe that some extra-terrestrials are spiritually good. By implication, the greys do not fall into this category.

“We oppose deception” may refer to international media organizations who are lying about the reality of modern crop pictures, especially since the entire Crabwood picture pointed toward two radio-TV towers a few hundred meters away. 

“Conduit closing” may refer to their means of transmission: sending small robotic probes through narrow passages of space or time, which are then programmed to carve out specific pictorial messages in English or European fields. We showed in Part I of this essay some very clear photographs of those small robotic probes. Many different witnesses have seen them. They have been chased or intercepted on numerous occasions by British military helicopters.

In summary, the Crabwood message shows a clear and direct concern for the short-term safety of humans on Earth. And since those crop artists possess some kind of advanced space time technology by which to see into the future, they would know! Thus the possibility of near-future intervention in 2012 by those crop artists---for example to provide us with pollution-free energy while ridding us of nuclear weapons---should not be ruled out. Indeed, such an intervention may have been planned 2000 years ago:

“For then there will be great distress, such as has not been seen since the beginning of the world. Unless those days were shortened, there would be no one left alive. Yet for the sake of the chosen ones, those days will be shortened.” (Matthew 24, 21-22)

How will most people on Earth react to a near-future intervention by extra-terrestrials, no matter how benevolent and human-like in appearance they may prove to be? Michael Glickman commented in 2004:

“People don’t want change! The last thing most people want is the intervention of a non-Earthly intelligence that proves to be much more evolved and intelligent than we are. Those extra-terrestrials have been with us for a long time now. I believe they are making tentative approaches through crop circles because they have to: there is no time left. We are midway through a major planetary shift which may prove catastrophic. They want to ease things for us as much as possible” (see video.google.com).

(ii) Another possible scenario for the year 2012 might involve some kind of unexpected astronomical event in Earth’s sky, or geological effect on planet Earth itself. For example, those crop artists seem to have predicted a bright comet in our sky close to the new Moon of December 13, 2012 (see aveburymanor2008b). Somewhat more controversially, they also seem to have predicted that energetic waves of some kind will reach Earth around the end of 2012 or in early 2013, after having travelled through deep space from the centre of our galaxy for the past 25,000 years (see  time2007m).  

For example in one crop picture from West Kennett on July 13, 1996, they showed us an ancient Mayan symbol called “Hunab Ku” which means “galactic centre” (see www.lucypringle.co.uk or diagnosis2012):

slide 55: West Kennett 1996 (photo credits to Lucy Pringle)

Then in the same picture, they also showed waves of some kind emerging from our galactic centre in all directions, at the time of a new Moon and a comet. Presumably this would be the same comet just predicted for a new Moon of December 13, 2012, at Avebury Manor in 2008 (see aveburymanor2008b)? It will supposedly shine brightly in our sky close to the Sun, just before their Long Count calendar ends on December 21-23, 2012. Why would they show us such things, unless the centre of our galaxy were somehow implicated with whatever might happen in late 2012? 

Ten years later in another crop picture from Wayland’s Smithy on July 8, 2006, they again showed us astronomical rays of some kind that are being emitted from a central source in deep space, at long-term periodic intervals of 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 time units:

slide 56: Wayland’s Smithy 2006 (photo credits to Lucy Pringle)

The square form of such rays is meant to symbolize an intensity-distance rule from astronomy. Three separate rays are shown for each time unit, in order to symbolize three directions of emission along x, y, or z. Could those rays (or waves) be emitted from our galactic center once every 5000 years, in accord with various epochs or Suns in the Mayan Long Count calendar? Their longest ray “25” matches closely our distance from the galactic center as 25,000 light years.

Each of those “25” rays also shows an extra grid of 7 x 8 mini-circles in its open flat face, to symbolize 56 time periods from their Sun-Venus calendar. At the time when that crop picture appeared during the summer of 2006, 56 cycles of Venus spanning 56 x 0.8 = 45 years had been used up, since that calendar began back on April 10, 1961. And to reach the end of their Sun-Venus calendar on March 28, 2013, there were just 9 cycles or 9 x 0.8 = 7 years left to go.

(iii)       A third possible scenario for the year 2012 might involve some kind of worldwide spiritual change as we enter the Mayan Sixth Sun. It is well known that modern crop pictures have provided a spiritual inspiration to many people, for example Francis Blake (see www.theconversation.org/francine.html), as well as to many other people who visit them:

 

slide 57: crop pictures and their spiritual effects (photo credits to Gary King and Russell Stannard)

One of their most remarkable spiritual effects seems to have been upon long-term researcher Rod Bearcloud, who has recently set up plans for a 52-acre theme park in Arizona, to help show such “starglyphs” to the world (see www.starnationgallery.com or www.chameleon-project.org):

slide 58: Bearcloud and his Chameleon Project (photo credits to Rod Bearcloud)  

“The Chameleon Project will be a large facility to assist the spirit of humanity on Earth. It will be a world-wide destination oasis. The beauty of its unique gardens, structures and symbols will derive from a heartfelt inspiration of the whole facility. This monumental structure and its dome-enclosed gardens will be created to assist everyone in deepening their understanding of Mother Earth, and to promote a more conscious awareness of our planet. This classical garden park will be designed to inspire the hearts of all people.”

Who are those crop artists, and why are they sending us messages of spiritual inspiration in English fields? Have we met them before? Might certain governments on Earth already know who they are? Michael Salla reports for example on a putative meeting between certain friendly extra-terrestrials who look just like us, and representatives of the US government in 1953:

“In the meantime a race of human-looking aliens contacted the U.S. Government. This group warned against the other (grey) aliens who were orbiting our Equator, and offered to help with our spiritual development. They asked however that we dismantle and destroy our nuclear weapons as a major pre-condition. They also refused to provide any advanced military technologies, citing that we were spiritually unable to handle even the technologies that we already possessed. They believed that we would simply use any new technologies to destroy one another. They said that we were on a path to self-destruction, and that we should stop killing each other, polluting the Earth and devouring natural resources” (see www.ufoevidence.org).

A vision of the future: Martin Keitel’s dream and Crabwood 2002

Might Quetzalcoatl and his friends possess advanced psychic or spiritual technologies, in addition to all of their other wonders? Consider for example an instructional dream that was sent to crop circle researcher Martin Keitel, as he was decoding the ASCII message from Crabwood in August 2002 (see www.martinkeitel.net):

“The place is a schoolroom. Tapani Koivula (a Finnish UFO researcher) is presenting a huge book. He says this book has been received from space. It is written in an unknown language, but has been partially decoded. It tells about future changes, for example about our new Sun. Then a woman begins to talk. She says she has something to say about the Mayans. Next she disappears, and a huge ‘snake’ image appears instead. The ‘snake’ speaks to me with a low male voice. It says that I have an important task to perform, but I don’t have to do it alone. It swirls around me in the form of a spiral, and I feel a strong loving energy radiate from it.

It gives me a small plastic box filled with red plates. Each plate has some kind of text written on it. The snake says they are instructions. I should take out one plate at a time when it is necessary. Then he goes back into the centre of the room, and is replaced by the same woman. She seems unaware of what just happened. But she says again that we need to listen to the Mayans. It is very important. The dream continues: I am with a group of people and feel connected to them. We are discussing how Earth children will be prepared for an upcoming spiritual change in the world, although Earth governments won’t support it.”

In light of this remarkable dream, how could Crabwood have been made by anyone except Quetzalcoatl? Especially when it shows a small snake-like signature along its lower right-hand edge (see time2007o)? And when it appeared just two weeks after the space-travelling, feathered serpent picture of West Overton on July 28, 2002 (see westoverton2002a)?

Could we be the most spiritually insensitive race in this part of the galaxy? Do we need to undergo a major spiritual change in the near future to become whole? During his investigation of a UFO crash near Varginha, Brazil, investigator Roger Leir was told by a medical doctor who treated an extra-terrestrial survivor of that crash: “They feel sorry for us, because we do not seem to realize that we are spiritual beings, living here only in a temporary shell. And also because we remain totally disconnected from our inner spiritual selves” (see UFO-Crash-Brazil-Roger-Leir).

Signs on the Earth below

Continuing in a spiritual sense, let us recall a prophecy from the Book of Joel in the Jewish Old Testament:

“In the last days, I will pour out my spirit upon all people. On both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days. I will show portents in the heaven above, and signs on the Earth below.” (Joel 2, 28 or Acts 2, 17)

Signs on the Earth? Even in a sceptical sense, how can modern crop pictures be anything other than signs on the Earth?

Four years left until December of 2012: plenty of time left to gain a better understanding

We have made considerable progress here at improving our understanding of modern crop circles, but it is certainly not clear yet what all of them mean. Nor have the crop artists told us exactly what will happen in late 2012. They have only given us indirect clues. No one should be unduly concerned however! There are still four years until December of 2012, so we have plenty of time left to receive four more seasons of additional crop pictures, as well as to gain a better understanding of their underlying messages.

Current crop pictures lead us to believe that something important is going to happen soon, maybe in 2012 or perhaps later. If Earth governments and large media organizations continue to ignore such important messages, which are meant for all the people of Earth, and not just for a few photographers, calendar sellers or jewellery manufacturers, then they will do so at their own peril. They will also do so at the possible peril of many ordinary, well-meaning people whom they are theoretically supposed to represent.

To conclude on a positive note, we will summarize here the views about 2012 from some descendants of the ancient Mayan people who are now living in Guatemala (see chiron-communications.com or www.sacredroad.org):

“The world will not end in 2012. But it will be transformed. If the people of Earth can get there in good shape, then we will rise to a higher level. But to get there, we must overcome powerful forces that seek to block our way. There are three kinds of people living on our planet today: spiritual people, sleeping consumers, and dark forces or demons. Those dark forces would rather destroy our world than share power.

Humanity will continue but in a different way. The prophesized changes are going to happen, but our attitudes and actions will determine how harsh or mild those changes will be. We are human beings, not consumers or machines. We are the dream of the Great Father: remember that and do not despair!”

THE END OF PART VI

Charles Reed and Harold Stryderight

http://cropcirclemeanings.blogspot.com

PS We will need increased membership for Crop Circle Connector in the years 2009-2012, in order to meet greatly increased public demand for free and open access to those pictures, as they appear fifty times each summer in England or (mainly) Europe. If you would like to support this important effort, please see MEMBERSHIP.


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Mark Fussell & Stuart Dike

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