Jenny Randles and Paul Fuller. Crop Circles; a mystery solved. Hale, 1990.
The Cereologist; the Journal for Crop Circle Studies. Editor John Michell. 🔻
'A mystery solved'. now there's a hostage to fortune! The mystery in Randles and Fuller's book is explained, as readers of their earlier BUFORA booklet will anticipate, in terms of the 'Meaden Vortex'. For a full explanation of this it is best to read Meaden's own book and the authors do not go into the science of the vortex in great detail. Instead they concentrate on the investigation of the corn circles, and spend some time examining alternative theories, and are often scathing about other investigators who they believe have made sensational claims about the phenomenon. They also spend a great deal of time relating the Vortex Theory to ufology - the reverse attitude to some other circle researchers, and more particularly the media, who have attempted to explain the circles in terms of UFO landing traces or similar. Randles and Fuller also examine the geographical and temporal spread of the circle phenomena in an attempt to challenge what they see as the myth that it has suddenly appeared in a small area of Britain just over the past ten years or so.
In brief they say that it's all over but the shouting. The Meaden Vortex explains most of the circle phenomenon, although the picture has been made more complicated in recent years by the increasing number of hoax circles - often artistic 'improvements' to naturally produced circles. But not only has the circle phenomenon been solved, so has most of the UFO mystery, for it seems that the versatile Meaden Vortex has also been the origen of most UFO reports, from LITSs, up to and including abductions.
Now I'm not one who's going to knock any reasonably scientific theory that explains UFO reports in terms of terrestrial phenomena, but this sort of approach is going to cut no ice at all with The Cereologist, a handsomely produced periodical which seems dedicated to maintaining the mystery of the circles. In fact an article by Patrick Harpur puts forward a convincing case that the whole point of the circles is to be mysterious - how they may probably be produced is irrelevant: "Crop circles are not problems to be solved but mysteries to be entered ... the language appropriate for them is the language of myth." Just like Magonian UFOs in fact! Harpur sees the circles as an expression of the 'Soul of the World ' manifested through the trickster Mercurius. He comments: "lt may not matter if the hoax is perpetrated directly by Mercurius or through the agency of human hoaxers". So what is the evidence that Mercurius may have been given a little help along the way by one or two more solid trickster figures?
Corn circles are probably the first significant anomalous phenomena which exists solely as physical evidence; whereas UFO reports exist primarily as verbal and the physical evidence is sparse and vague. Randles and Fuller do indeed examine witness reports, but I fear that they do not subject them to the same degree of critical analysis that they would give to UFO reports. Many of the reports of pre-1979 circles are so vague it is impossible to determine whether they are the 'classic' clear-cut circle, or the roughly circular 'saucer-nest' type of phenomenon that actually looks as though it could be caused by some weather anomaly. They give us reports of whirlwinds, possibly with ionisation effects, lifting straw and small objects, but without leaving the distinctive marks. Some of these accounts, particularly those which attempt to place early corn circles outside of southern England, are second hand, and would not be accepted by the authors as evidence of, say, a UFO landing.
There is however one important lacunae in the circle reports, and it is curious that the authors have not
commented on it, since at one point they quote Arthur Shuttlewood's description of a grass-flattening phenomenon. Put simply: if corn circles were being created in anything like their present number and appearance for more than ten years we would know of it because of Warminster. From the mid-sixties to the late seventies Warminster was crawling with ufologists of every hue (including members of your editorial team), everything unusual that happened in that area was immediately incorporated into the Warminster canon. Not a sparrow could fall from the sky (literally!) without it being written up by Arthur Shuttlewood or one of the many other writers and magazine editors devoted to recording the mysteries of this small town.
Yet in the many books about Warminster, the dozens of magazines, the hundreds of articles, the thousands of eyewitnesses, how many corn circles do we get? One. And a pretty vague one at that. In Crop Circles, the authors claim that Cley Hill, just outside Warminster, is a centre for circle phenomena,, and they suggest that it is because the geographical layout makes it a suitable site for the formation of Meaden Vortices. Not in the sixties it wasn't! At the height of the Warrninster flap, Cley Hill, and most other hills in the neighbourhood, hosted sky-watches practically every day and night throughout the peak summer circles season. We had lights in the sky, lights on the ground, lights in every bizarre formation you could imagine, strange noises, mysterious smells, Men in Black, Men in Telephone Boxes ... you name it, Warminster had it. But not crop circles!
I think Patrick Harpur gets to the heart of the mystery. What we have here is the work of Mercurius, but Mercurius is working through the agency of a host of human hoaxers. I'm not talking about a carefully planned and executed hoax. I think we have a hundred different hoaxers who haw become possessed by the spirit of the circles, and are performing the work of Mercurius unknown to each other and unknown to us. There must be an immense satisfaction in creating a circle, looking secretly upon one's handiwork and leaving it for the rest of us to discover. I would certainly like to create one. For one thing is obvious about the circles: they are beautiful; they are Art. I suggested a while ago that they might be the work of a group of art students creating pieces of conceptual landscape art. I think this could still be the case for many of the earlier circles, they could even be, as Randles and Fuller suggest, artistic ' improvements' of naturally created circles, although I feel that the Warminster Non-Effect argues against even less-regular 'natural' circles.
There is, as I have suggested before, a spectrum in the creation of mysterious events, from clear fiction to unequivocal fact. Between those two there is a vague land where fact becomes hoax, hoax becomes art, art becomes fiction. The circles I feel, move uncertainly between hoax and art. They are the latest manifestation of the great English love of landscape art. The circle makers are the Capability Browns of our time!
- John Rimmer, from Magonia 37, October 1990.
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