I am sitting in a field in Wiltshire on a gloriously sunny day. My fingers are gently stroking the strands of wheat around me. Overhead, several small planes fly by, banking sharply after each pass so they can fly over the field again, as low as aviation laws permit. They are taking photos of the ground.
I am sitting in a crop circle.
The pictures they are taking from those planes show the crop circle’s design in a way that my eye cannot take in at ground level. From my vantage point, there is a sort of organised chaos around me, with individual stems of wheat gently bent at various angles. There are little nodes in several places along the long stems, and it is at those nodes – like elbows – that the stems have changed direction. Some are bent at 90 degrees at one single node, and others are bent perhaps 15 degrees at one node and 30 degrees higher up at another node. The planes above will see the layered effect this creates, as the sunshine reflects differently off all these bent strands of wheat, creating intricate geometrical patterns.
The crop circle is over two weeks old now, but the strands of wheat with their bent nodes are very much alive and growing in their new direction. They had not withered like broken strands. There is something much more gentle at play here.
And I say “at play” as I feel pleasure running through me as I sit in the crop circle and immerse myself in the phenomenon. There is mystery, beauty and symbology aplenty here. This particular design looks like an hour glass with sand running through it, and most of the sand has now arrived in the bottom part of the glass. I feel a calling to sit in the area depicting the sand that is still left in the top half. Perhaps time is running out, but I will be present with it and infuse it with all I have to offer. I am grateful to the crop circle’s designers for allowing me to connect with that place in myself and state it consciously.
Finding that part of the crop circle’s design is, however, another proposition entirely. The wheat is almost waist high, and while I can see larger open areas with gently folded blades and finer lines around them, I cannot seem to orient myself. The circle may well be 60 metres wide, and my eyes keep stumbling across exquisite spiralling vortices in the wheat at ground level – beautiful and disorienting. Perhaps I am experiencing the consequence of electromagnetic changes that scientists have measured in crop circles.
I catch myself wanting to gain the clear overview from the planes overhead, but at the same time still to be down here having this curious physical experience. Hmmm. Is that not the driving force that compelled the rainbow-coloured droplet of spirit that I am to incarnate in the first place, to be down here and experience materiality and matter? I recognise the sweet longing to have the overview, the Big Picture of it all again, while I stumble around in the confounding beauty of Earth.
With all that, I decide that where I am sitting will do just fine. My intention for offering all my merits and blessings to that last bit of sand-still-to-fall can travel to it through the green-golden sea around me.
Where do these circles come from? Dozens of them appear in Wiltshire in the United Kingdom every year, and many more appear across the world in many types of natural media: wheat, barley, rape seed and even poppy fields, but also in forests and in snow… CropCircleConnector.com has a vast archive of them. Are their creators mini whirlwinds, aliens bent on communication with us, or men with planks in the night? What is known, in that three-dimensional human way that we like to quantify and categorise knowledge, is that the mineral composition of the soil is changed in crop circles. After the wheat all around me has been harvested by the farmer, and a new season starts next year, the imprint of this crop circle will be there in the new wheat. Planes flying overhead next year will see the shadow of this crop circle’s design.
Many of the photos taken from those planes also show how very close the crop circles are to ancient sacred sites. There are eight sizeable white horses dug in to the hillsides of Wiltshire: our ancestors from many thousands of years ago perhaps wished to communicate something to the heavens. The field that I am visiting is within a stone’s throw of Silbury Hill, an sacred site which is the largest manmade mound in Europe.
I wonder whether crop circles already appeared back then. Was it perhaps two-way communication? Francine Blake, of the Wilshire Crop Circle Study Group who has lead this excursion here today, points out how the crop circles lead us to rediscover our ancient sacred sites. Someone who comes to visit a crop circle only need make a small hop to see a prehistoric monument nearby. And someone who comes to visit the likes of Stonehenge, the Avebury Stones, the white horses, Silbury Hill, the city of Salisbury, and many of the other historical sites in this area, only need make a small excursion to see a nearby crop circle. These crop circles invite time travel.
Something occurs to me.
This talk of beauty, spirit incarnated in matter, connection through time, and playfulness reminds me of a Life Between Lives Regression session I recently facilitated for a wonderful client. She discovered that she takes on the form of wind and light when she is in spirit form, and during her “playtime” in the world of souls, she makes ripples on water – beautiful liquid patterns. Her spirit guide silently coached her to learn this transient art, which was delightful to hear her describe. Other regression clients have explained how they visit Earth in spirit form between their incarnations, and learn from what they observe while zooming around and taking in all the natural beauty.
What if the fields of nature on Earth are the canvases for spirits who share such creative pastimes, and crop circles are their artistic expression?
Well, it certainly appeals more to me than a man with a plank in the night. My train of thought is broken as I hear repeated and rather loud giggles from another part of the crop circle. While some visitors are sitting in quiet meditation, or lying on the ground with their hands on various chakra configurations, others sound like they are tapping in to other forms of pleasure under the waist-high blades of wheat.
A sunny day in a crop circle, floating in time and space.
