Newsletter of the Fortean Mysteries SIG of American Mensa
Aprilis 1679 AC only 200,000 millicents per 3 issues
Published irregularly since Undecember 1658 AC
"All things are possible ..." (Mt 19:26)
CROP CIRCLES
Cereology, the study of designs (agriglyphs) made by bending cereal crops, is now a semi-accepted discipline, part art (or art forgery), part fringe science. [WARNING: 200-word sentence ahead]
What Charles Fort wrote about the similar cup marks ("sometimes there are rings around them") in 1919 seems to apply here-now too, with crops being merely the newest substance affected: "Given that a force, say, like electrical force, could, from a distance, mark such a substance as rocks, as, from a distance of hundred of miles, selenium can be marked by telephotographers -- but I am of two minds -- The Lost Explorers from Somewhere, and an attempt, from Somewhere, to communicate with them: so a frenzy of showering of messages toward this earth, in the hope that some of them would mark rocks near the lost explorers -- Or that somewhere upon this earth, there is an especial rocky surface,or receptor, or polar constructon, or a steep, conical hill, upon which for ages have been received messages from some other world; but that at times messages go astray and mark substances perhaps thousand of miles from the receptor; that perhaps forces behind the history of this earth have left upon the rocks of Palestine and England and India and China records that may some day be deciphered, of their misdirected instructions to certain esoteric ones -- Order of the Freemasons -- the Jesuits."
Michael Hesemann in The Cosmic Connection: Worldwide Crop Formations and ET Contacts tries to make the case that crop circles (agriglyphs) are of extraterrestrial origin, but does in fairness explore other extradimensional theories.
He mentions in his foreword The legend of the Mowing Devil (Aug. 11, 1678 -- AD, not AC) 
Which does remind one of our modern-day crop circles (reported in 1930s and '40s, photographed since 1972). So-called UFO nests have been reported since the 1960s (then in Australia, U. S. A. and S. Africa). They do, however. seem to have many connections with much older symbols. Fairy rings, now usually "explained away" as caused by the Maramius oreades mushroom, have been known since the Picts (hence pixies, pixilated). Interestingly both are often associated with strange sounds, lost time and mist, as have been crop circles.
The reconstructed Avebury henge design resembles an agriglyph found near there on July 11, 1992. One found at Grasdorf, Lower Saxony, near Thierberg, July 22, 1992 is said to have had metal plates buried beneath it with the same design on them.
The 1989 Winterbourne Stoke agriglyph was the Mayan representation for the Universe. The 1990 Cheesefoot Head agriglyph similarly was the Hopi symbol. Other symbols that reappear in the crop circles the Germanic irminsul (tree of life), Hindi trishula (trident of Shiva).
Michael Green, chairman of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies, identified the basic crop circle types with the Celtic planetary symbols, the cosmic spiral, the cosmic egg and the cross. He also identified the lettering found at the 1991 Milk Hill site as a mixture of Phoenician, Hebrew and Ibernian referencing the Sumerian god Enki(!)
Gerald S. Hawkins also doubts the hoaxing claims of Doug Bower and Dave Chorley. He used a computer to analyze the Milk Hill script as the Latin "Oppono astos." (I am against trickery.)
Hesemann reports on sightings not only in England, and Germany, but also Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zeeland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the Ukraine, the United States.
In England, particularly around Avebury, Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst connected crop circles to the Mary leyne (ley line, line of feminine earth energy) in The Sun and the Serpent. Even if one disregards the leyne energy theory, (or the more sophisticated morphogenetic field theory of Rupert Sheldrake), it does seem that the crop circles are associated with prehistoic pagan sites, stone circles, moot places or burial mounds.
Dr. Terrence Meaden, founder of the Tornado and Storm Research Organization, naturally has a natural explanation -- a plasma vortex perhaps related to ball lightning. Ufologists prefer (as usual) the ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis). Conspiracy theorists suspect secret government experiments with electromagnetic fields, though Fortean Times says "the organization behind itoutstrips the Mafia, KGB and the Illuminati combined."
Colin Andrews, who co-authored with Pat Delgado CircularEvidence in 1989, created quite a stir when he concluded in 2000 that 80% were hoaxes (like these -- the pig-spiral from FunPile.com and the mouse-eared one from home.clara.net/lucypringle/photos/2002/uk02bi.html)
Andrews believes the rest, some of which have been formed in minutes, are Mother Earth communicating with us about pending ecocatastrophe.
Diahann Krishna believes they are caused by merkaba ("light body"), psychically-created interdimensional craft used by hyperdimensionals.
Dowser Richard Andrews thinks it is more a two-step process involving an intelligence above directing a subterranean force.
That higher intelligence seems most evident in the beautiful mathematics noted by
Nick Kollerstrom in Crop Circles: The Hidden Form leaves unanswered the question of who the Circlemakers are and simply appreciates the mathematical Beauty. Fordham Place's "oZo" form, for example, seems a new variation on the old vesica piscis used (among other places) in the chapel of St. Mary at Glastonbury.
The vesica piscis (fish's bladder), the all-seeing eye or amygdala (almond), with its square root of three porportion, symbolizes the Piscean age, the Christian era, tri-unity, the balance between change (creation) and changelessness (Creator) -- an appropriate Christmas theme. From it can be made regular polygons of 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 and 12 sides. There have also been many other beauties cerealogized -- Borromean rings, Double Pentagram, Escher Cube, Heptagon, Koch fractal, Koch snowflake, Maltese Cross, Moire patterns, Sierpinsky Sieve, spirals, Star Heptagon, Star Octagon, etc.
The Museum of Hoaxes points out, however, the damaging effect to cerealogists' credibility when it was recognized that the crop circle found near Johannesburg, S. Afr., in 1993 was the BMW logo. (We aso learned there that before the Gregorian calendar change New Year's Day was April 1 -- Happy 1679 AC!)