In their book, Crooked Soley: A crop circle revelation (1) Allan Brown and John Michell develop an argument that this particular crop circle represents direct communication from a divine intelligence.  Not just any superior intelligence, they say it is the divine intelligence that created the Universe.  We are not talking here about UFOs or aliens, nor about a superior intelligence that exists elsewhere in the Universe.  We are talking about the Goddess of all Creation.  This is a revelation indeed.  In the Crooked Soley crop circle that went down in the wheat fields of Crooked Solely towards the end of August 2002, we find the direct affirmation not only that there is a God, a Universal Creator, but we will find when we take their argument to its logical conclusion, that we are also told specifically what this God is and where it is to be found.

The Crooked Soley crop circle depicts an unbroken double helix strand of DNA, and the pattern  uses an extraordinarily sophisticated geometry.  Brown & Michell, in their book, seek to explain the significance of the geometry which exhibits what Plato described as the ‘heavenly pattern’, and which has been the basis of the design of ancient monuments (and indeed of the world itself).  Essentially their message is that the same God that designed and created the world, and the ancient monuments such as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid, also saw fit, just 3 years ago, to design and create the Crooked Solely crop circle.  This modern sacred monument did not last quite as long as Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid (in fact it was harvested only hours after it was discovered).  Its fleeting existence notwithstanding, the Creator of the Universe had a hand in it.  This, in a nutshell, is what Brown & Michell would have us believe, which means that at face value their book has more significance than the Bible (both Old and New Testament), the Koran, and the Hindu Upanishads put together.

These modern day prophets base their ‘revelation’ on the geometry of the Crooked Soley crop circle, which I will attempt to explain in due course, but it seems to me that they have rather overlooked the most significant and obvious message in the design.  They have paid more attention to how the divine intelligence is communicating with us, and have given little thought to what the divine intelligence is actually saying.  The fact is that the Crooked Soley crop circle depicts an unbroken strand of DNA that encloses a circle.  It doesn’t take an expert at charades to figure out that the statement being made is that the divine intelligence that created the world is in the DNA.

There is now a great deal of research material that indicates a divine or creative intelligence in the DNA.  There are the findings of the Russian molecular biologists, Dr Pjotr P. Garjajev and Dr. Vladimir Popinin, that  the DNA has a mysterious resonance that continues to manifest even after the DNA sample has been physically removed.  This has been termed the DNA Phantom Effect.(2)  These same researchers have found that the DNA reacts to voice activated laser light provided the correct frequency is found.(2)  Using these methods it is possible to actually communicate with the DNA, as well as change the information patterns in the DNA.  The Russian researchers have concluded that the DNA acts as a solitonic/holographic computer, and that it acts as a superconductor at body temperature.  In addition it is known that the DNA is emitting light photons, (3) and it has been concluded that this resonance and these emissions of the DNA are capable of interacting with conventional electromagnetic forces, the natural magnetic resonance of the Earth, as well as the brain waves of living creatures.

In support of these findings, the Finnish physicist, Matti Pitkänen, has constructed a physical theory that treats the external material world as synonymous with the consciousness of the observer.  Fluctuating magnetic wormholes in the DNA are capable of creating a seamless connection with the conventional electromagnetic forces in the external world thus presenting a physical theory of life as a unified magnetic force field. Grazyna Fosar and Franz Bludorf in their book Vernetzte Intelligenz (2) describe the findings of the Russian molecular biologists, as well as the theories of Matti Pitkänen, and they conclude that at the level of the DNA there is hypercommunication amongst all sentient beings, a hypercommunication that effectively sets up a networked intelligence that underpins all life in the Universe.  By hypercommunication is meant instantaneous communication – zero time lag.  At the level of the DNA, in this intelligence network, the concepts of time and space are meaningless, and there can be an instantaneous exchange of information throughout the entire universe. The substratum of the physical universe is simply hypercommunicating information contained and transported via fluctuating magnetic wormholes in the DNA.  Needless to say, by virtue of these theories, all life and all events and phenomena in the external world are merely composites of a global consciousness that is the Universe.

With these groundbreaking new findings about the DNA in mind, let us now return to the Crooked Soley crop circle and consider what Brown & Michell tell us about the sacred geometry in its design – an exquisite geometry that only the creator of the Universe could have come up with.  The picture that this crop circle presents could not be more simple.  – a circle surrounded by a continuous double helix of DNA.  No matter how complex or novel may be the geometry, the message is so simple and straightforward that Brown & Michell themselves appear to have missed it.  The Universal Creator is the DNA.

This is not to say that they didn’t recognize that the DNA had something to do with the Crooked Solely message.  Allan Brown says: “It was not the first time that the crop circles have made reference to the DNA molecule, for back on June 17 1996 a beautiful formation was found in the famous East Field, near the tiny hamlet of Alton Barnes in Wiltshire.  See Figure 1.  This field was then farmed by Tim and Polly Carson who – by one of those strange coincidences that haunt this subject – had previously managed a farm at Crooked Soley, and had worked the very fields in which the Crooked Soley formation was later to appear.  This linear formation, 648 ft in length, symbolically depicted two polynucleotide chains in the form of a double helix spiral, with the chains open at either end, like the actual nuclear DNA molecule.  As John Martineau subsequently pointed out to me, the Crooked Soley formation seems to be a depiction of mitochondrial DNA, which is the form of DNA that is passed down purely through the matriarchal line.  It is distinct from the regular DNA molecule in that the open ends of the chain are linked together forming a complete loop.  The mitochondrial DNA is an unbroken chain that binds us to the primordial Eve, the Goddess of All.”  

  Figure 1

The Crooked Soley crop circle is about 300 ft across, and the pattern is made up of 1296 ‘curved squares’.  In 504 of those squares the crop has been left standing, and they depict the double helix DNA spiral.  The other 792 curved squares are in fact flattened crop that enables the DNA pattern to stand out in relief.  John Michell tells us that these are the numbers of sacred geometry.  If you multiply 504 by 10 you get 5040 which is the number much favoured by Plato for the planning of his ideal city. The recommended number of citizens is 5040, and all the institutions in the city are based on that number, as is the physical radius of the city as well.  Plato took this number to be the key for a divinely ordered creation. 

5040 is a most significant and auspicious number in numerology and arithmetic. It is factorial 7 (7!), that is to say the result of 1x2x3x4x5x6x7.  It is also the result of 7x8x9x10, and it therefore occupies a pivotal position in systems based on real numbers that impact on every facet of life.  “The number Seven has unique qualities that make it the natural symbol of the universal soul.  Philosophers call it the Virgin and the eternal feminine in nature.  On the lower plain, where numbers multiply and grow elaborate, the archetypal Seven is represented by its factorial, 5040."(1)  St John, as well, in his vision of the Heavenly City, describes its radius as 5040, this same number that Plato adopted as the key to a divinely ordered Creation, the ‘heavenly pattern.’ 

Both Plato and St John referred to a ‘squared circle’ with the radius of 5040, which means that the circumference of their city would be determined by the π relationship.  The circumference of a circle is 22/7 times its radius, so the circumference of the ideal or heavenly city is therefore 31680.  “The square has the same measure round its four sides, so the length of one side is a fourth part of 31680, which is 7920.  That brings in the second number in the Crooked Soley circle."(1)  We have seen that there were 792 flattened curved squares in the formation.  John Michell goes on to explain that these same numbers or multiplications or divisions of them, figure in the mystical system of the early Christian Gnostics, as well as being the length of the circumference of the ring of lintel stones at Stonehenge.

The same numbers also reappear in the dimensions of the Earth and the moon.  The Earth’s mean diameter is 7920 miles, and the sum of the two radii of the Earth and the moon is 5040 miles. “Thus, unnoticed by modern astronomers, the earth and the moon together demonstrate the squared circle – and in the same canonical numbers that appeared in the crop circle.  These numbers consist of the basic integers multiplied by 720:

2160 =   720 x 3

5040 =   720 x 7

7920 =   720 x 11

31680 = 720 x 44

This marvellous figure, alluded to in sacred writings, traditions and temple plans in every part of the ancient world, is the key to all the traditional sciences.  It accommodates in its framework all systems of geometry, number and measure.  Expressed in it are the canons of sacred music, the cycles of chronology and the harmonies of planetary motion.  At various times over thousands of years, ideal constitutions have been created on the model of this cosmological figure.  It is like the Holy Grail which, whenever it appears, brings light and knowledge into human affairs.  And here it is again, this divine instrument of happiness on earth, not discovered and proclaimed by learned professors, but briefly and mysteriously depicted in a remote cornfield.  This is the mark of a refined culture, higher than anything we are familiar with today."(1) 

The actual position of the Crooked Soley formation is said to make up an equilateral triangle with the two farm hamlets of Crooked Soley and Straight Soley, and Brown & Michell manage also to derive these measurements of 5040 and 7920 feet if the crop circle was expanded and superimposed over the actual landscape containing this equilateral triangle.  They therefore advance the argument that the actual location of the Crooked Soley formation has sacred significance, and of particular significance is the fact that it is equidistant between the two hamlets of Crooked Soley and Straight Soley. See Figure 2

Figure 2

There seems to be little doubt that the Crooked Soley formation does contain sacred geometry.  There are aspects of the design of this formation that someone familiar with sacred geometry will recognize.  The fact that Brown & Michell have recognized it means that there has been communication between The Circlemaker and the human race.  It only takes one person to be able to correctly read the signs in order for the message to be delivered.  The next questions that arise are ‘What is the message that is being sent’ and ‘Who or what has sent it?’ 

John Michell seems to think that the message is that the human race is approaching the end of an era, and he is confident that the new era is going to be better, or more enlightened than this one, although he doesn’t specifically state it.  He says: “The modern world is obviously chaotic and unstable.  Much of it is ruled by groups or individuals so ignorant that they do not even know there is such a thing as wisdom.  To them and their followers this obscure incident in a corner of Wiltshire is laughably insignificant.  They do not want to know about it, and least of all do they want to hear about the knowledge it conveys.  That does not seem to matter to the unknown artists who are putting forth this knowledge.  Year after year they continue their work in the summer cornfields, producing original designs, geometrically themed, which inevitably affect the minds of those who pay attention to them.  This is communication on the highest level, far above the channelings of self-centred New Age mystics.  It is the due and timely revelation of truths that are inseparable from human culture.  We are privileged to be living in these times of signs and wonders, with freedom to enjoy them and to learn from them.  These may be the ‘last days’ – the end of one social and mental system and the beginning of another – but these times of transition, when former standards of culture and conduct no longer obtain, are the best times for individual pleasure.  Plato remarked on that.  In the last days, he said, you can do and think as you like, and you meet the most remarkable people.  That is my experience today.  Never before have we been so free, so comfortable, so uninhibited in following our own interests or admitting the influence of ancient gods into our minds.  It will not last long, I know, but I can think of no better use for the present freedom than to record and elucidate, in partnership with Allan Brown, the world-changing information that is encoded in the Crooked Soley crop circle."(1)  John Michell makes no attempt to answer the question ‘Who or what has sent this message?’ – i.e. Who is The Circlemaker.

We can actually answer these questions with more particularity.  The question ‘Who is The Circlemaker?’ can be answered affirmatively – “The Circlemaker is the DNA.’  In the light of the Mayan Wheel that appeared in Wiltshire in August 2004, we may also affirm that John Michell has correctly answered the question “What is the message’ with his assertion that we are headed towards the end of the current era.  This era is to end precisely at the winter solstice on 21 December 2102, to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar.(4)  The new era is to be one where all the peoples of the world will know precisely that there is a God, and that it is located within ourselves in the DNA.   In the new era there will no longer be all the strife and friction between religions competing for supremacy.  This will be an enlightened era indeed.

Both Allan Brown and John Michell agree that the Crooked Soley formation is ‘genuine’ – that is to say it has not been hoaxed.  “The centre of the formation was unmarked and lay deep into the standing crop, which was intriguing, as this is where someone would have had to have stood, had the inner and outer circumferences been manually inscribed.  This highlighted just one of several practical obstacles that would need to have been overcome by anyone laying out something of this complexity in the short, dark hours of a summer night.  It is difficult to reproduce the design on paper, even on a small scale with the advantages of a bird’s eye perspective, good lighting and freedom to rub out and correct the drawing.  I have tried it several times, and so has John Michell, but we have never managed to do it without errors.  Only the computer seems to be able to do it perfectly.  It is hard to imagine how any team of surveyors could have completed the design on such a large scale – about 300 feet across – with seemingly perfect accuracy, without blunders or signs of their presence."(1) 

The Crooked Soley formation, regardless of whether it is genuine or hoaxed, also seems to resolve the problem of hoaxing.  Let us assume for a moment that it was actually hoaxed.  A person or persons unknown were able to design and construct this exquisite pattern in a wheat field using technology that the human race at its current stage of development does not actually possess.  This is what they say about Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of course and everyone takes it for granted that they were man-made, so let us just assume that the same advanced technology was used for this crop circle as well.  The message in the pattern remains the same, namely that the DNA is the Universal Creator, and the sacred geometry remains the same.  The only thing that changes is that people actually went into that field and did it.  Just like it was a person, namely Plato, who first tells us about sacred geometry, and it is a person, namely St John, who uses the same sacred geometry to describe the dimensions of the Heavenly City.  We do not for one instant doubt that Plato and St John had divine inspiration.  So why should we doubt that the unknown persons who constructed the Crooked Soley formation did not likewise have divine inspiration.  What they constructed there was just as incredible as the Great Pyramid or Stonehenge, and it is just as profound as anything that Plato or St John ever wrote.  For these people to create the Crooked Soley crop circle means that they (whoever they are) are the instruments of God.  Especially when the message being delivered is that the DNA is God.  They receive their divine inspiration direct from God within, and so the exquisite pattern they created in the wheat field is every bit as sacred as the other monuments that have lasted for millennia.

Brown & Michell say that the positioning of the Crooked Soley crop circle equidistant between Crooked Soley and Straight Soley has a message for us as well.  The formation has been called Crooked Soley when it could just as easily been called Straight Soley.  In their book they quote a number of famous literary and religious figures, for example the Prophet Isiah and Friedrich Nietzsche, all of whom have stated that when the end of this era arrives the crooked will be made straight.  The fact is the crooked and the straight does have a particular significance for croppies.  Allan Brown records his own thoughts: “I visited the area some time after the event, but was unable to find any trace of where the formation had lain, but I was immediately struck by the fact that not only is there a Crooked Soley, but a Straight Soley too, and that a short footpath connects the two hamlets.  I sensed immediately that this wasn’t a random location choice.  I was reminded of a verse by T.S. Eliot, in which he speaks in prophetic terms about the completion of an epochal cycle and the renewal of an age.

Round and round the circle

Completing the charm

So the knot be unknotted

The cross be uncrossed

The crooked made straight

And the curse be ended.  

                        T.S. Eliot 

Interestingly, this very same verse had been used in the opening article of the Winter 1991/2 edition of The Cereologist, the original crop circle journal edited by John Michell.  The verse was run around a picture of the infamous hoaxer, Doug Bower, whose name, weirdly, is echoed in a small copse, Bower Wood, just half a mile northwest of Crooked Soley itself."(1) See Figure 3

Figure 3

It is a fairly subtle message maybe, but this is crop circle so it can be subtle, and croppies will still be able to read the message loud and clear.  These are the signs they are looking for.  The message is that the hoaxed circle can contain a divine revelation every bit as much as a genuine crop circle.  With the divine intelligence in the DNA, and with the crop circle being an event in the global consciousness, it matters little whether it was man-made or whether it appears through seemingly miraculous means.  If the perfection and uniqueness of design are there, if it contains a message that is original and supramundane, then why should we not marvel at it?

The location of this particular crop circle is loaded with significance.  We have seen that it draws attention to the crooked and the straight.  But this is only one of many dualistic aspects that are highlighted, from which we may infer that it is also alluding to the two aspects that are uppermost in the crop circle world – the genuine and the hoaxed and the Old Era and the New Era.   The croppies are yearning for an insight as to how this current era is to be ended and what form the new era will take.  Allan Brown’s observations are fairly typical of the mentality of crop circle enthusiasts: “Another interesting dimension to this landscape work, and one that seems to perfectly reflect the daimonic nature of the event itself, is the extraordinary abundance of dualistic place names. Concentrated within a two mile radius of our figure, that serve to reiterate the basic duality already established by the site of the formation, equidistant from both Crooked Soley and Straight Soley.  As well as the basic split between Crooked and Straight Soley, or West and East Soley, we have a whole series of dualities such as that between West Soley Old Farm and East Soley Old Farm and then again between West Soley Farm and East Soley Farm.  Furthermore we have a King’s Copse and a Queen’s Coppice as well as two thin strips of woodland to the south west of Crooked Soley that serve as windbreaks called Dwarf Brake and Lower Dwarf Brake respectively.  Just to the east of Straight Soley there is a New Hayward Farm and an Old Hayward Farm.  Similarly there is a stretch of road nearby that has a New Hayward Bottom adjoining an Old Hayward Bottom.  The large field below East Soley was called North Field and this stood opposite South Field, which lay on the other side of the River Kennett, both having been enclosed in 1813.  On the corner of the South Field there once existed a small lodge called East Lodge, which was mirrored a little further up stream with a West Lodge.  The River Kennett itself gave rise to two marshes, an Upper and a Lower Marsh.  Just beyond the limits of this two mile radius exists a Poughley and a Lower Poughley, a Little Hidden Farm and a Great Hidden Farm, a North Hidden Farm and a South Hidden Farm, a Denford Farm and a Lower Denford Farm, a Lower Slope End Farm and an Upper Slope End Farm, a Lady’s Wood and a Lord’s Wood, a Little West Wood and a Great West Wood, a Bonning’s Copse and a Lower Bonning’s Copse as well as a Starve-all Farm and a Prosperous Home Farm.  Perhaps this location was also seen as favourable because it is bounded by both the parish and the county border, which divides Wiltshire from Berkshire, thus heightening the sense that heretical events of this nature inhabit a liminal zone that lies between worlds, oscillating between the real and imagined, exactly where, Patrick Harpur reminds us, we traditionally encounter the daimonic."(1) 

In an afterword, an article by Patrick Harpur is reproduced, entitled Mercurius in the cornfields.  This article actually appeared in the very first issue of The Cereologist, and it has really been the benchmark for crop circle literature ever since.  Harpur also asserts that the crop circles are in the nature of a portal between the divine and the mundane.  Quite simply that God is talking to us via the medium of these extraordinary and miraculous apparitions.  Interestingly, about the same time that this article was published, the Russian molecular biologists were making their ground-breaking discoveries concerning the miraculous properties of the DNA, in particular that it acts as a solitonic/holographic computer, and that it is a natural superconductor at body temperature.  “The world can be cut any way you like, but the inclination of Western culture has been to cut it in two: spirit and matter, mind and body, subject and object, God and Nature, sacred and secular and so on, it seems, forever.  But the Platonic tradition describes a third realm, which neither Christianity nor science allow.  This third realm, both mediating between the two halves of the world yet maintaining distinctions between them, is the realm of the soul.  It is neither spiritual nor material, neither inner nor outer, etc. but always ambiguous, always both-and.  It is a ‘subtle’ or ‘breath-body’ which, Proteus-like, can take on any shape.  Crop circles belong to this third realm.  Crop circles are both images within the soul and images of the soul.  That is, they are symbols.  As images within the soul, anything whatsoever can be a symbol; as images of the soul, all symbols are inexhaustible as to meaning.  Like circles, symbols are both self-contained and self-transcending.  Unlike signs or emblems, they can’t be translated into another value or meaning; they are themselves meaning."(5)  Of all the crop circles that have gone down since that article was published, the Crooked Soley crop circle brings us closest to the truth – the Crooked Soley crop circle is an image of the soul. 

NOTES

1. Allan Brown and John Michell. Crooked Soley. A crop circle revelation.  East Sussex: Roundhill Press, 2005.

2. Grazyna Fosar and Franz Bludorf. Vernetzte Intelligenz [Networked Intelligence]. Aachen: Omega, 2003.

3.  Rattemeyer M., F.A. Popp, and W. Nagel. “Evidence of photon emission from DNA in living systems”. Naturwissen 68 (1981): 572.

4. Bradley York Bartholomew. “The Mayan Boomerang”.  The Circular, 54, Autumn 2004.

5. Patrick Harpur. “Mercurius in the cornfields”. The Cereologist, 1, Summer 1990.