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new
and very complex picture appeared in crops at East Field
in Wiltshire last week (July 7). It showed three long
semi-circular arcs; each of which was divided on a finer
scale into a series of contiguous circles, varying smoothly in size.
In addition, there was a short partial "fourth arc", that was
located somewhat anomalously in the field between two long ones.
Some
people have interpreted East Field in terms of the Hindu religious
symbol "Aum", to which it does bear a superficial resemblance.
Yet I
will show here by quantitative analysis, as well as by comparison
to other pictures from the CCC archives, that East Field more
probably represents a series of four lunar phase cycles, spanning
the summer of 2007. Three of those four cycles begin and end
normally, whereas the fourth will end supposedly after just six days
(possibly on August 18).
An overall view of East Field 2007
An
overall view of the new East Field crop picture is shown below,
along with labels to help understand its "lunar phase"
interpretation:
Four
different arcs or lunar phase cycles were drawn there,
labelled as "I, II, III, IV". Cycles I and II both begin and end
with tiny balls to symbolize a "new Moon". At the center of each arc
or cycle, one very large round ball represents a "full Moon". There
are 29 balls within each of cycles I or II, which seems fully
consistent with a lunar phase period of 29.5 days.
These
new symbols as shown at East Field seem quite similar to other
symbols used in the past: notably at Stonehenge 1996, Windmill Hill
1996 or Milk Hill 2001.
Cycle
III (upper left in the picture above) was drawn as somewhat smaller
than the first two cycles, and hence only its brighter lunar phases
(or larger balls) were included. It begins with a "half Moon" on the
left, proceeds to a "full Moon" at center, then ends with another
"half Moon" on the right. Other tiny balls between "half" and "new"
were omitted, probably for technical reasons.
The
"full Moon" symbol from cycle III spans just one set of tramlines,
and is thus smaller than the "full Moon" symbol from cycle II (one
and one-half tramlines) or from cycle I (two tramlines). That
gradient of size, along with with a long "tail" on the far end of
cycle I, enables us to say which of those three cycles comes first:
I (large) then II (medium) then III (small).
Cycle
IV at East Field seems to be the most critical element of this crop
picture. Why does it end only six days after a new Moon, or nine
days before the Moon goes to full? In order to address that
question, we will need to study each cycle from East Field in closer
detail.
The problem of phasing: which current lunar cycles does
East Field represent?
When
trying to provide a calendar interpretation of East Field, the major
source of ambiguity seems to be phasing. On what day does cycle I
begin and end? On what day does cycle IV suddenly end? I have chosen
to assume that we may be dealing here with the "summer season of
2007", as shown in an earlier crop picture from Yatesbury.
There the summer season of 2007 was defined as proceeding for 87
days from May 30 to August 24. Within that approximate interval,
there will be four full Moons on June 1, July 1, July 30 and August
28. One may therefore plausibly associate East Field cycle I with a
full Moon on June 1, cycle II with a full Moon on July 1, cycle III
with a full Moon on July 30, and cycle IV with a full Moon on August
28 (never reached).
A calendar interpretation of cycles
I, II and III
With such tentative assignments in mind, we can now interpret each
of those four lunar cycles in terms of our modern yearly calendar.
Cycle I would begin with a new Moon on May 17, proceed to full on
June 1, then end with another new Moon on June 15:
Cycle II would begin with a new
Moon on June 15, proceed to full on July 1, then end with
another new Moon on July 14:
The crop artists apparently made two errors when portraying
cycle II. First, its full Moon on July 1 shows a slightly
smaller size than for an almost full Moon on July 2. Secondly, a
series of tiny minicircles appear on both sides of cycle I
wherever the Moon exceeds half-illumination. In cycle II, those
minicircles were drawn as extending all the way down to a new
Moon on July 14.
Cycle III at East Field was drawn only in part, owing to its
smaller size in the field than for cycles I and II. Following
the calendar assignments used above, it would begin with a half
Moon on July 22, proceed to full on July 30, then end with
another half Moon on August 7:
An earlier crop picture from
Trottiscliffe 1999 confirms these lunar phase interpretations
The lunar symbolisms used in cycle III seem quite similar to
another set of lunar symbols shown at Trottiscliffe on June 20,
1999. At Trottiscliffe, one picture showed "three crescent
Moons", while another showed three overlapping lunar phase
diagrams:
Each of those phase diagrams showed half of a 29.5-day lunar
cycle: beginning with a new Moon on day 1, then proceeding to a
full Moon by day 14 or 15.
Those two crop pictures from Trottiscliffe seem to confirm,
beyond any reasonable expectation, that the three long and one
short "arcs" shown at East Field 2007 were truly meant to
represent "lunar phase diagrams".
A calendar interpretation of cycle IV
Finally we come to the very heart of our analysis, which is an
anomalously terminated cycle IV. It begins with a long thin
"tail" (just as for cycle I at the far end of East Field) that
is embedded appropriately between two other "new Moons"
belonging to cycles I or II:
But
instead of proceeding all the way to a full Moon as shown for cycles
I and II on left and right, cycle IV begins with a new Moon
(presumably on August 13), then terminates unexpectedly after only
six days before it can reach a full Moon on August 28.
What
could this mean? Might there be something special about a
near-future date of August 18, 2007? A dramatic increase of cloud
cover perhaps?
A related calendar prediction from 2005
One
other crop picture from 2005 also specified a near-future
date of mid-August 2007. To be more precise, Wayland's Smithy showed
a hexadecimal date of "14-5-11" within our current 52-year Mayan
calendar. The major source of ambiguity, when trying to provide a
calendar interpretation, was again one of phasing.
On
which days might our current 52-year Mayan calendar begin and end?
When counting by 365-day cycles of the Sun, that long calendar
period would contain a total of 52 x 365.25 = 18,993 days. On the
other hand, when counting by 584-day cycles of Venus, it would
contain a total of 32.5 x 584 = 18,980 which is 13 days less.
So if
we choose to end our current 52-year calendar on December 22, 2012
(just as for the Mayan Long Count, or as shown at Silbury Hill in
2004), then it could begin either on December 22, 1960 or else
January 4, 1961. The former converts a hexadecimal date of 14-5-11
into "August 14-17, 2007", while the latter converts the same
date into "August 16-19, 2007".
Neither value lies far away from August 18, 2007, as just suggested
by a quantitative study of East Field. Even if our choice of phasing
for East Field might be one month off, still that new picture
seems to say "six days after a new Moon".
The need for a third dated picture
Is
something really going to happen on August 18, only five weeks from
now? I don't know. It all seems rather strange. But then crop
pictures are strange too!
Let us
hope that those crop artists will understand our natural human
tendency toward cynicism, and provide us with a third or even fourth
dated picture soon.
A detailed knowledge of past crop pictures seems
essential, when trying to interpret new ones
When
trying to interpret new and complex pictures such as East Field
2007, a detailed knowledge of other crop pictures from the CCC
archives 1990 to 2006 seems absolutely essential, in order to
understand what certain kinds of symbol mean.
Hence
I would stongly encourage any serious students of this phenomenon to
carefully study those archives, just as they might study a
difficult academic subject such as calculus or Chinese. I have
made some progress in that way, yet hundreds of important pictures
still remain to be explained.
Red Collie
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