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STRANGENESS AND WONDER Crop Circles of 2009 STRANGENESS WONDER AND Crop Circles 2009 This year's season produced many awesome and beautiful designs including life-form pictograms, symbolic mandalas, bizarre codes and intricate stem-weaving. It also saw clashes between farmers, eager to erase formations from their fields, and croppies, keen to keep them intact and the interest alive. approaches to excite, terrify or disappoint as it may, anything with the emotest paranormal flavour is now being apportioned great significance, accurately or not. The ever-enduring crop circles, however, which have made several direct symbolic references to the celebrated time cycle, do stand out as true "signs of the times" with this in mind. In 2009 there was certainly no let-up in England from the still elusive circlemakers, determined as ever to impress their work upon the public consciousness. This year's circle season will be remembered as a fevered and imaginative one in the UK fields, especially in the earlier part of the summer, while the global picture remained comparatively muted. It seems that the phenomenon is continuing to draw specific attention to the ancient and mysterious heartlands of the Avebury area in Wiltshire, where yet again the vast majority of activity took place this year. A s the year 2012—that now much-discussed epicentre of prophecy— A Busy Early Summer July and early August are traditionally the liveliest months for English crop glyphs, with a quieter preceding period, but 2009 saw a burst of activity which began on 14 April with a striking symbol of radiating semi-arcs near Avebury and maintained a notable momentum from thereon. April saw five other generally advanced designs in oilseed rape (canola), while May, unusually, delivered nine major formations—including the longest ever found in rapeseed crop (over 600 feet or ~183 metres in length), discovered at Clatford, Wiltshire, on 4 May. The month culminated in the appearance of a huge "jellyfish" at Wayland's Smithy in Oxfordshire on 29 May, approaching 1,000 feet (~305 metres) in length. This striking aquatic symbol found its way into several national newspapers and seemed to spark a burst of media activity around the formations all summer, which saw the Wiltshire fields jostling with camera crews and journalists from around the world. “Life-form" designs continued as one of the big themes of the year, causing controversy amongst those less comfortable with the authenticity of overt pictorial content but giving delight to others more inspired by direct iconography. As well as the ubiquitous mandala-type formations, the fields of June and July saw everything from fish to dragonflies, from trilobites to swallows. Indeed, bird symbolism produced two of the most stunning emblems of the year: a massive, stylised "phoenix" that arrived on 12 June at Yatesbury, Wiltshire, complete with licks of flame around its tail feathers; and a shimmering hummingbird that appeared at Milk Hill on 2 July, a little reminiscent of the Nazca design of Peru, its shape strikingly delineated by thin standing walls of crop set against a flattened backdrop (this design was claimed to have been made for a television program, but evidence had not been presented by the time of writing and most such claims remain unsubstantiated). by Andy Thomas © August 2009 Email: info@vitalsignspublishing.co.uk Website: wwwavitalsignspublishing.co.uk by Andy Thomas © August 2009 Email: info@vitalsignspublishing.co.uk Website: wwwavitalsignspublishing.co.uk NEXUS * 59 OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2009 www.nexusmagazine.com