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Ideas connecting the circles with earth energies remain popular and depend largely on subjective methods, such as dowsing, for validation. As an explanation for the circles, the earth energies approach has been relatively unaffected by the recognition of hoaxing as a major component in the data. The acknowledgement of the man-made element has been most grudgingly made by the more spiritually inclined researchers, many of whom see hoaxing in terms of a conspiracy against the circles. Michael Green, one of the founders of the CCCS, who has been at the forefront of the mystical interpreters, has nevertheless gone on record as recognizing that an intelligent evaluation of the subject cannot support a wholesale acceptance of all and any formation as genuine. To my mind, the most useful approach is one which avoids the either/or thinking of those who insist that only one answer is valid. To the question of who or what causes the circles, the best answer is a composite response, comprising several contradictory ideas: some are man-made, others ‘genuine’, perhaps due to atmospheric causes, which may include a visible aerial component and could even have interactive properties. While our contemporary worldview may be essentially a scientific one, we need to recognize that many events that we now attach scientific labels to have been observed and known for millennia. They form part of folklore and lie within the realm of poetic imagination, where natural forces were personified, and the intervention of the gods or the spirit world taken for granted. This model should also include ample recognition of the part that individual and collective psychology plays in the development of the phenomenon, as instigators, observers and operators. There is more than a suggestion that individuals have acted out of motives they do not fully understand, nowhere better illustrated than in Doug and Dave's own mystification at their own behaviour: ",.. when Dave and I have been out in these fields night after night, you can't help wondering about the mystery of the whole universe... that feeling of mystery, that feeling of why are we here at all.' (Doug) "Doug used to say to me sometimes... why do we do it... do you think there's something that makes us?... We were being told to go out and do them, I know it sounds crazy.’ (Dave) Scientific research continues, having promised on several occasions to provide either an answer to the cause of the circles, or a repeatable test for ‘genuineness’, that would be superior to the human fallibilities of dowsing. It has been observed that when the claims made are fantastic, and the claims of an unknown intelligence are fantastic, then the demands made of scientific proof need to be high, leaving no room for doubt or error. To date, it does not appear to me that such research has been carried out. Mysteries remain, epitomized by the enigmatic photograph taken by Busty Taylor in 1994. It showed a lightly imprinted circle with a radial burst pattern which, confident that it was not man-made, he challenged anyone to identify its location. Each new season brings a fresh crop of formations, with no sign of an end, and always the expectation that this year will bring the proof that will support our own particular viewpoint.