Crop Circles: Messages from Beyond?
article and photos by Ron Russell
Copyright © 1998 FATE Magazine 
September 1998 

In the summer of 1992, a colleague and I were driving to Alton 
Barnes in the southeast of England. The area is known for the 
number and quality of crop circles that turn up there, and I was 
hoping to see my first one. Little did I know what a powerful 
impact they would have on me. 

Quite suddenly, we saw a giant snail-shaped formation in the 
fields on the east side of the road. We were not the first to 
discover it. In fact, scientists were measuring it, artists were 
drawing it, and others were simply experiencing it. We stopped 
and paid the farmer an admission fee of 50p (around 85 cents). 
When we went in, I was overcome with awe. The formation was 
beautiful, but more than that, I felt gently bombarded by 
unusual energies. In later crop circle visits, the energy felt 
transformational. It seemed to spin and realign me spiritually. 


Ancient Images 


Considerable evidence shows that crop circles have been known 
throughout Earth's history. The Dead Sea Scrolls' Book of Noah 
and several works of medieval literature mention them. Many 
ancient stone carvings, including one at Stonehenge, seem 
remarkably similar to the shapes in the fields. 

Crop circles appear all over the world. About 10,000 instances 
from various countries have been reported in the last 20 years, 
but the most aesthetically advanced ones are in the Wessex area 
of southern England. 

Placed carefully in our fields of food grains, some are larger 
than football fields and exceedingly complex in design and 
construction. Others are smaller and more primitive. We call 
them crop circles, but many of them are not circular. Some are 
elongated abstract designs, a few resemble insects or other 
known forms, and some are agglomerations of lines, circles, and 
other shapes melded into intricate patterns. Most become visible 
overnight, though it has been claimed that a few have appeared 
within a half-hour in broad daylight. 

Although people have asserted that they have created crop 
circles, it is difficult for me to see how any ordinary person 
or group could create these wondrous Earth designs in the short 
time it takes them to appear and without leaving traces of their 
construction. 

Researchers have spent a great deal of time investigating 
different aspects of crop circles. They try to detect traces of 
human involvement in the circle-making, test the area of the 
circle itself for geophysical anomalies, and analyze the field's 
grain both from within and outside the circles, searching for 
differences. 

Dr. W. C. Levengood of BLT Research, headquartered in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, has analyzed many grain samples and has 
confirmed, time after time, that significant changes have 
occurred at the cellular level of crop circle plants. The plants 
from the circles have elongated cells and blown-out growth 
nodes. Seeds from the circle plants often show accelerated 
growth rates when they are sewn, and in some instances, quite 
different-looking plants result. In many instances it appears 
that a vortex-like energy causes the plants to swirl down, 
flattening the design into the land. Whatever this energy is, it 
does not generally inhibit the plants' growth. They continue to 
show normal phototropic response to the sun, raising upward over 
several days following the appearance of the circle. 

Dowsers have no difficulty finding complex arrangements of 
energy lines in and around the circles. I have been amazed to 
see the rods swing abruptly and consistently when I dowsed near 
the edges and centers of a formation. I have seen pendulums fly 
out of the hands of friends who tried to read an energy 
signature in the centers. 

Michael Chorost of Duke University found occasions of 
short-lived radionuclides in the top layer of soil in some of 
the formations. A British government laboratory found diminished 
nitrogen and decreased nematode populations as well as decreased 
water content in the soil of a formation. Researchers have 
discovered other anomalies, as well, such as curious embedded 
magnetic particles and charred bract tissue. 

Reliable eyewitnesses have reported seeing anomalous lights and 
hearing unidentifiable sounds while on an early-morning walk in 
the countryside where a crop circle shows later that day. On 
several occasions a strange glow or a darker differentiation has 
been seen in the sky over a crop circle. And in more than one 
instance, the electrical power of small planes flying overhead 
has abruptly been cut off, an alarming event I myself have 
experienced! 

The physical and chemical anomalies clearly show that crop 
circles are abnormal formations, but perhaps more convincing 
than any other evidence is the effect they have on people who 
see encounter them. Lucy Pringle of the Center for Crop Circle 
Studies (CCCS) in England has gathered a wealth of human 
physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual experiences in her 
study of more than 500 cases of extraordinary occurrences while 
in, or after being in, a circle. These have included sudden 
illnesses, healings, transcendental spiritual and mental states, 
momentary loss of consciousness, psychic and transformative 
emotional events, and other strange enchantments. 

While the causal energies do not seem to harm animals, or even 
insects as far as we can tell, wild creatures tend to avoid the 
circles. I have seen flocks of birds split apart and fly around 
the perimeter rather than go directly over a formation.


Spiritual Machines 


What could possibly be the purpose of these amazing Earth works? 
They are unquestionably a beautiful art that can charm us into a 
new way of seeing. Perhaps that is their purpose, although I do 
not feel it is that simple. Crop circles are transformative to 
those who touch them. But even those who never see or touch a 
crop circle may be affected by them. Farmers harvest the grain 
from crop circles along with the rest of the grain in their 
fields. Can this special grain, some of which we know has been 
altered cellularly, fail to affect us when we eat it in our 
bread or cereal? 

I suggest that crop circles may be a covert engineering feat of 
the highest order that will move us gently toward the next step 
of our evolution. They are a kind of cultural medication that 
may be designed to help us avoid the more radical surgery of 
catastrophic changes which so many seers predict as we near the 
end of this millennium. 

We have seen lovely balls of light, like fairy spirits, in the 
fields near the circles, little silver discs flying over the 
crop, bigger UFOs in the sky nearby, and felt the presence of 
something ineffably large and wise watching us. 

Year after year, more great formations appear, hundreds and 
hundreds all over the world. This is such an obvious contact. Is 
it not likely that someone is telling us something? 

Like toys on a carpet scattered by wise parents, the circles ask 
us to awaken and study them and ourselves. Who would give us 
such profound gifts but great beings who know we need to be 
reminded of our true home and our true nature in the Spirit? 


See more of Ron Russell's crop circle photos in the 1998 issue 
of FATE.


Ron Russell is the Colorado and Midwest USA coordinator of the 
Center for Crop Circle Studies and the author and photographer 
of FATE's 1999 Crop Circle Calendar (Llewellyn). He leads annual 
crop circle tours to England and can be reached at Research 
Tours to the Circles: Ron Russell, PO Box 40307, Denver CO 
80204. 


Copyright © 1998 FATE Magazine P.O. Box 64383, St. Paul, MN 
55164-0383