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Circle investigators who have adopted this method are not confined to the New Age 'true believers’. Dr Meaden, whilst wishing as a scientist to understand dowsing as a response to the ambient magnetic field, used it as a diagnostic tool. It is said that similar patterns are detectable at crop circles as those found in stone circles, and these findings have led to speculation that the stone circles might mark the sites where 'crop' circles appeared in antiquity. This theme is elaborated in Dr Meaden's book The Goddess of the Stones. Amongst the New Age fraternity this connection between ancient sites and crop circles has become an article of faith and is woven in a loose association with ecological concerns, spiritual/earth energies, channelled messages and extra-terrestrial contact. As the early messages of UFO contactees tended to comprise warnings about human behaviour, in the wake of the nuclear age, so the interpretation of the circles’ significance has tended to be apocalyptic warnings about our treatment of the Earth. Often these are linked to native American traditions which speak of the Earth as a living entity. Another aspect of this is the belief that human consciousness is undergoing a transformation or shift as we The case of Mary Freeman's sighting illustrates how these themes come together. Paul Devereux has described how the monuments of the Avebury area can be interpreted as a 'mythic landscape’ and Michael Dames' books paint a picture of an ancient worship cycle set round the same sites. This was the backdrop for Mary Freeman's sighting. On the night of 18 July 1988, she was returning home to Marlborough from Winterbourne Monkton, driving along the stone avenue which leaves Avebury to the southeast. Her attention was drawn to a light in the west. She saw an illuminated column or tube, of a white colour, stretching between the A traditional dowsing rod New Age Ideology move towards the next millennium.