Linda Moulton Howe: Symbolism in Crop Formations

The Unique Formation at Cherhill Downs

On April 26, 2000, a pattern unique in the history of global crop formations was discovered in a field of bright yellow oilseed rape flowering below the obelisk monument and White Horse at Cherhill, Wiltshire, England.

It was a circle in which the crisp, five-foot-tall spring plants were neatly laid down in two different directions around a triangle of standing crop.

The crop around the edge of the formation and the west side of the triangle swirled counter-clockwise. But the crop around the southwest and southeast sides of the triangle flowed clockwise. The circle averaged 58 feet in diameter. The triangle's three sides measured 26 feet, 27 feet, and 29 feet. Opposite the triangle's base was another, smaller triangle extending from the perimeter of the circle and pointing northeast, coming to a point on the eastern tramline. This second triangle was eighteen feet long and was defined by flattened crops, not standing — except for one single stalk. A few feet beyond that flattened triangle were two seven-foot-diameter circles that overlapped, each swirling clockwise around a center of standing crop. The effect was an oval with a yellow dot at each end.

I was working on my book Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles at the time, and had been studying The Secret Teachings of All Ages, a book written by Manly P. Hall and published in 1928. On page 163, Hall reprinted a drawing he had discovered in the 16th century Philosophia Mosaica by Robert Fludd. The drawing was titled: "The Universe Created by the Dual Principle of Light and Darkness," and had been created by Fludd.

I realized that the 2000 Cherhill formation closely resembled a portion of Fludd's drawing.

Robert Fludd wrote about this drawing:

The Supreme Deity is symbolized by the small globe at the top, which is divided into two hemispheres, the dark half representing the divine darkness with which the Deity surrounds Himself and which serves as His hiding place.

The radiant hemisphere signifies the divine light which is in God and which, pouring forth, manifests as the objective creative power.

The large dark globe to the left and beneath the dark half of the upper sphere signifies the potential darkness which was upon the face of the primordial deep and within which moved the Spirit of God.

The light globe to the right is the Deity who is revealed out of the darkness. Here the shining Word has dissipated the shadows and a glorious universe has been formed. The divine power of this radiant globe is cognizable to man as the sun.

The large central sphere divided horizontally into a light and a dark section represents the created universe partaking of the light and darkness which are in the nature of the Creator. The dark half represents the Deep, or Chaos, the Eternal Waters pouring forth out of the Deity; the light half, the power of God which animates the waters and establishes order in Chaos. The light half-circle containing the figure of Apollo represents the diurnal hemisphere of the world, which in the ancient Mysteries, was ruled over by Apollo. The dark half-circle is the nocturnal hemisphere ruled over by Dionysius (Dionysos), whose figure is faintly visible in the gloom.

Fludd's Mystery-School Origins
Who was Robert Fludd? Why was he drawing and writing about the Dark and Light of God?

Robert Fludd was born in 1574 in Bearsted, Kent, England, son of Sir Thomas Fludd, paymaster to Queen Elizabeth I's military forces in France and the Low Countries.

He died September 8, 1637, in London. During those sixty-three years, he earned a medical degree, in 1605, from Oxford University, and joined the College of Physicians in 1609. Eventually he became a prosperous London doctor.

But his favorite subject was the Rosicrucian fraternity and the study of occult practices. His first book, published in 1616, was Apologia Compendiaria Fraternitatem de Rosea Croce (Brief Explanation of the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross). He wove information from many sources, including Adam and Eve in Genesis, the Jewish Kabbalah, alchemy, astrology, sympathetic magic, and chiromancy. But his main theme was the attempt to comprehend human beings, the world and God.

Dr. Fludd was widely dismissed as a magician, but the 19th century British essayist Thomas de Quincey described his writings as a principal source of the symbolic ideas of freemasonry. Freemasonry evolved from the guilds of stonemasons and cathedral builders of the Middle Ages, and from the first was strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic church. It was not and is not a religion — but members are expected to believe in the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul.

Hexagram: A Repeated Geometry in Crop Formations

On September 16, 2001, the largest crop formation in Canadian history was discovered in a wheat field about six kilometers east of Red Deer, Alberta (Red Deer is south of Edmonton). Seventy-three-year-old Ken Bickford, a farmer, became aware of it as he moved through one side of the field on his combine. Later, he told a newspaper reporter that in 60 years of farming, he had "never seen anything remotely like it."

The swath that you see in the picture, cut through the wheat on the left side of the hexagram formation, was made by farmer Bickford's combine when he was harvesting on the night of September 16 and discovered the pattern.

The ripe spring wheat had been flattened in a hexagram pattern of two overlapping triangles. Each of the six triangle points had a circle at the tip and a large seventh circle measuring 100 feet in diameter at the center. The whole hexagram measured 422 feet in diameter. Bickford looked in the dry soil, turned to powder by long drought, for signs of human intervention, such as shoe tracks. But he could find no evidence at all of intrusion.

Ken Bickford had been spraying pesticide in the field on September 1, and knew that the formation was not there at that time. And a local pilot announced that he had seen the formation from his plane on September 2, but had not reported it. So creation of this formation most likely happened the night of September 2. But until Bickford discovered it on September 16, no one else had reported this huge hexagram formation.

After the news stories appeared, the pilot mentioned above told Paul Anderson, Director of the Canadian Crop Circle Research Network, that he had seen the hexagram formation from his airplane on September 2. So September 2 must have been the day of its creation.

The Role of the Hexagram in History
The hexagram of two overlapping triangles known in the modern world as the Star of David has long been associated with the Jewish faith. However, the symbol's source is probably Arabic. Hebrew scholars such as Gershom Scholem, who intensely studied the Kabbalah early in the 20th century, concluded, "The hexagram is not a Jewish symbol. It goes back to pre-Islamic Jewish magic." He adds that it "had one and only one purpose in its career as magic: to serve as protection against demons."

So the very ancient Seal of Solomon — a six-pointed star formed by extending each of the sides of a regular hexagon into equilateral, woven triangles — is likely of Arabic origin. Alpha and Omega are top and bottom points; Tau is centered within the six-sided interior hexagon.

Further, Lenora Leet says in her 1999 book The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah, Recovering the Key to Hebraic Sacred Science:

It has long been thought that the hexagram was from Arabic alchemy, [but it was] the West [which] most popularized this symbol of equilibrium between the opposed spiritual forces of fire [expansive force represented by the upward-pointing triangle] and water [the contractive force represented by the downward-pointing triangle].

Since it was only in the early Middle Ages that the hexagram began to be featured prominently in Jewish magical texts and amulets, most modern historians have concluded that it was probably through the Arabic source that the hexagram was most directly transmitted to the medieval Spanish Kabbalists.

Crop Circles and Stonehenge

The hexagram found repeatedly in crop circle formations is implicit in the ground plan of Stonehenge.

Ancient science and religion researcher and author John Michell wrote about the squared circle around a hexagram in Stonehenge's 6,000-year-old ground plan in his 1990 book, New Light on the Mystery of Glastonbury. Michell wrote, "The square, drawn with its perimeter equal in length to the mean circumference of the outer sarsen circle, contains the circle of 'bluestones.' Within this (implied), a six-pointed star contains a circle of the same width as the inner bluestone formation."

Crop Circle Lights

A young man in Hoeven, Holland, named Robbert has reported several times seeing plants in the crop fields near his home go down in patterns in the presence of mysterious lights.

Nancy Talbott, American crop investigator, asked him what he thought the lights were, and reported his belief that "the crop formations are very important, somehow connected to what he thinks are angels — and humans should be paying attention to them. It has something to do with problems in the environment and 'deceit.' The crop circles, he says, are like an 'antidote' — but he has no idea what exactly that means or why he is involved."

Could the crop formations be part of a spiritual struggle? Could negative "shells" mentioned in the Kabbalah be part of the drama?

Who is deceiving whom and to what end? Perhaps intelligences high and low are touching Earth life and minds from one or more other dimensions.

If "deceit" and "antidote" are involved, as Robbert thinks, perhaps symbols are being used to summon, or counteract, forces — just as black and white magicians have used symbols inside circles for centuries.

Linda Moulton Howe was graduated from Stanford University with a master's degree in communication. She has devoted her documentary film, television, and radio career to productions concerning science, medicine, and the environment, and has received numerous awards and recognition for her films, documentaries, books, and research.

She has traveled to Ethiopia, Kenya, Egypt, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Australia, Japan, Peru, Venezuela, Canada, Europe, Mexico, the Yucatan, and Puerto Rico in pursuit of documentary footage and research information concerning crop circle phenomena, animal mutilations, non-human interactions with Earth, and other scientific and environmental topics.

She has written four books: An Alien Harvest, about the worldwide animal mutilations, Glimpses of Other Realities, in two volumes, about non-humans interacting with Earth life, and Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles (2001), focusing on eyewitness accounts and scientific research into crop circles and their energy.

For a more complete biography, and for books, documentaries, and further information about Linda Howe's investigations into crop circles and other Earth mysteries, please visit her website at EarthFiles.com.