Text © Freddy Silva 1997. Photos © Derrick Christopher, Richard Beaumont, Lucy Pringle, Ron Russell.

After Doug and Dave's orchestrated appearance many people, predictably, stayed away from the fields by the thousands. Researchers, too, were despondent, many losing heart in the face of public humiliation. Government infiltrators and CIA operatives spread lies, misinformation, and generally set researchers against each other. More importantly, the media stayed well away from the subject since they didn't wish to spend any more energy on a phenomenon that had, supposedly, now been rationally explained.

For the first time, hoaxed formations superseded genuine ones in number but, as always, not in appearance. Yet the unfakeable characteristics of the real phenomenon continued to appear in the few pictograms of the season; and all this a year after Doug and Dave's supposed retirement from the scene.

For those researchers still determined to continue in the face of seemingly unsurmountable odds, new and surprising evidence kept turning up. One notable event was an experiment conducted by Steven Greer of SETI (Search For ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence). His group had already been fortunate enough to come face-to-face with structured craft in the vicinity of Alton Barnes, the location of many notable crop circles in the past. The group decided to establish contact by performing a meditation during which, it was agreed, everyone should focus on a particular symbol to be transmitted subconsciously. The design- three circles laid in the form of an equilateral triangle connected by three pathways- appeared a week later as a crop circle at the foot of ancient hill fort, Oliver's Castle, near the main female energy line that runs across Britain.

To make up for a truly disappointing season, the Circlemakers seemed to acknowledge the perseverance of the remaining researchers by producing one of the most beautiful formations to date. The season finale, near celebrated Silbury Hill, was the first mandala design with obvious references to Buddhist and Celtic traditions. The Dharma Wheel (left) was not only significant in the way it represented the eightfold path of human spiritual development, as represented by each symbol, but the Circlemakers decided that the message was important enough to lay the outer path of the design right through a physical water trough. Here was an intriguing situation: did the water trough simply get in the way? Or was there a purposeful communication behind this? On closer observation the only symbol missing in the design just happened to be on the location now taken up by the water trough. And the symbol, had there been no trough in the field, would have been the one for 'cleansing', typically symbolized by water.

1993

With the negative events of the past two years now tucked away, the 1993 season appeared to pick up where it left off and showed that the phenomenon was indeed alive and well despite efforts to derail it. There were few genuine formations. Overall, about 130 formations were reported. It was also a time when cooperation became more important between the various research factions. Plant biologists became interested in the phenomenon, biophysical testing on plants became normal proceedure, mathematical ratios were studied, and since diatonics were discovered in the geometries of formationms, experiments with harmonics and music got under way. Psychics continued to predict the appearance of crop circles, and channeled information spoke of the relevance of the phenomenon to our spiritual awakening. Even the case studies of psychological and physiological effects on humans encountering crop circles continued to grow; in hindsight it looked as if the slowing down of the phenomenon in 1992 had actually given people a moment to breathe and catch up.

The phenomenon also began to show up noticeably across the globe. Reports of simple formations came in from Holland, Hungary, Switzerland, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, Russia and France. Ironically, the same theories and pattern of logical explanations that had occured when the phenomenon first appeared in England were also present in these countries: that it was all the product of wind, plasma vortices, sex-mad hedgehogs, etc.

The season finale for 1993 was the Bythorn mandala, a magnificient representation of pentagonal geometry. The pentagram was revered by the ancient Greeks as a symbol of the five-fold nature of humanity and used as a talisman of good health (incidentally, the land on which this formation appeared belongs to a farmer who cares for sick animals). This optimistic thought is repeated throughout nature. As noted geometer Paul Devereux noted: 'Pentagonal geometry is present in many aspects of nature. The human body relates to the Golden Mean and pentagonal geometry, or more humbly in a wayside flower. A temple [or crop circle] based on the Golden Mean and pentagonal geometry will therefore automatically integrate the human being with the Cosmos.' The number five, ironically, is also the number associated with wheat, the crop in which the mandala appeared. Certainly the ten-petalled lotus flower on the outer edge of the design indicates in the eastern tradition the third chakra which deals with emotions and (again) cleansing. In Rossicrucian tradition it indicates humanity's spiritual nature.

As another season came to an end this crop circle, with its symbolism of spiritual rebirth, left devotees in no doubt that their efforts were being rewarded. And little did they know how well.