Nexus - 1706 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

Crop Circes 2010 THE TWENTY-YEAR CURVE 2010 CROP CIRCLES TWENTY-YEAR CURVE THE This season's global tally of 11o crop glyphs featured an array of artistic masterpieces including complex mandalas, optical illusions and binary- coded images, and, as usual, fuelled controversial debate among cropwatchers. Two Decades of Pictograms his summer, a large annual event known as the Glastonbury Symposium celebrated its 20th anniversary (or 2Ist, if a smaller prototype event of 1990 is included) in the ancient heartland of Arthurian legends. Perhaps 20 years is slight on some scales, but as something that began as a celebration of the crop circle mystery it was a significant marker, making it the longest-running gathering of its kind. For something that has been subject to so much dismissal and misrepresentation, the circular puzzle has had an extraordinarily tenacious presence. Although it has roots going much further back, as archive records of circles dating from the 1600s onwards (and photos from the 1930s) clearly demonstrate, it was the early 1990s that saw a surge of new complexity in the fields with "pictograms", after what had once just been circles and rings. With them came all the attendant interest that such a seemingly new and bizarre public novelty was guaranteed to generate, hence the creation of the Glastonbury Symposium and other circle-focused conventions. Of the early events, the Symposium alone has survived, developing and adapting to other concerns and related phenomena in the years since, and we will return to it later, but the fact that, even after 20 years, painted banners still hang from its venue walls depicting glyphs that originated as anonymous shapes in the fields is an illustration that we were always dealing with something special—and resilient. For all the debunking since the sobering hit of the first major hoaxing claims in 1991, interest has remained at a relatively steady level amongst a certain demographic of open-minded souls, while the progression of the astonishing shapes themselves has continued to push back the boundaries year upon year. Cerealogical personalities come and go, ideas and concepts are proposed and retracted, and forums fill with heated exchanges, yet, somehow, the air of mystery wreathed around the enigma never quite blows away. For every new claim (and there are many) that human artistry explains it all, along comes another jarring physical feature or anomalous sighting that doesn't quite seem to fit such easy generalisation. So here we are, two decades on since British newspapers and televisions were momentarily full of the new wonders in the countryside before cruel cynicism set in to reinforce the dull status quo to the masses. But still, new and mysterious works of art are offered from nowhere each summer to those with eyes to see, and still an audience is found, drawn despite all. by Andy Thomas © August 2010 Email: info@vitalsignspublishing.co.uk Websites: www.truthagenda.org www.vitalsignspublishing.co.uk by Andy Thomas © August 2010 Email: info@vitalsignspublishing.co.uk A Later Start in the UK The crop formations of 2010, then, as with all seasons before, had their own quirks, astonishments and disappointments. Indeed, an unusual lack of punctuality dented the expectations of some who are used to mid-April appearances for the first UK events, traditionally seen as the key entries in the Websites: www.truthagenda.org www. vitalsignspublishing.co.uk NEXUS ¢ 57 OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2010 www.nexusmagazine.com