Contact with the Circle-makers
Our journey began as we approached Stonehenge early on a misty, blustery morning, a few days before the UK summer solstice. We had been given access to the inner circle of that sacred space, normally out of bounds to visitors, who these days are allowed only to view the circle from a footpath. Our group was, over the next nine days, to experience activation and ceremony in the heart of some of the most venerated of the ancient sacred sites of Britain, as well as in recently created crop circles.
I knew at least one of our group would be selected to receive a profound initiation during this period and I waited patiently for its manifestation. It happened later than I expected, in true shamanic fashion, with spectacular results.
Our aim was to experience these places first hand, soaking up the unique energies there, creating three special ceremonies: one to honour the earth and the divine masculine at Stonehenge; another to honour water and the divine feminine at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury and a third to honour our own profound connection with the cosmos, the superconscious or All There Is, in a freshly created crop circle.
The first ceremony was set in Stonehenge amongst the soft mist of that first early morning, shortly after dawn. We set our intention amongst the cold vertical stones, after weaving our way around the ancient, weathered monoliths. We created our own circle near the altar stone, aligning our will with the five directions, the sun and the divine masculine.
At sunset in the grounds of the Chalice Well we aligned with the Mary and Michael ley lines in our second ceremony that took us around the gardens to drink the Chalice waters, finishing at the ancient well-head as the sun set and the birds sang and played around us. How many before us had aligned with the Divine Feminine and tasted, in ritual, the red and white waters of this holy well? The energies in that sacred place were wonderfully nurturing and feminine.
Our final ceremony took place in the centre of a massive, freshly created crop circle in a golden field of wheat near Liddington Castle, a circle we had chosen for both the symbolism of its design and its open and friendly energy. At the moment of the solstice, under a hot english summer sun, we aligned ourselves with Divine Oneness. By this time we had explored a total of seven circles, each with its own unique energy, all finding a special place in our hearts.
The appearance of these unexplained formations in ripe summer crops may not be a new phenomena; a late fifteenth century woodcut shows the devil mowing a field into patterns and a WW2 pilot reported strange circles near his landing strip. However, it was in the early seventies these enigmatic patterns started to appear more regularly and in greater numbers around Europe, particularly in the UK, often close to ancient sacred sites and Earth energy lines. Genuine crop circles never damage the crop, it is still healthy and harvestable, stalks are bent rather than broken and they often slowly straighten up. In some cases, even after several ploughings, the shape of the formations have remained in the soil for months.
Part of the fun of crop circle hunting is actually finding the circle by using maps, directions, hearsay from local hostelries and mostly our intuition; each formation took over an hour of patient searching. We came across one fellow traveller who had been persistently looking for seven hours! The excitement of being the first to spot a formation is a bit like unwrapping a much anticipated but nonetheless surprising Christmas present.
New formations are always easier to see from above and are often spotted by local pilots or people who have an elevated view. You could be walking or driving right next to a new formation and not see it on ground level. One man we chatted to at Chirton Bottom, was the first to see a huge infinity symbol formation whilst walking his dog early one morning. The large figure of eight design was right next to a tank firing range, the red flag warning us that live ammunition was in use. The calmness of gently swaying barley was juxtaposed by the hollow tinny thunder of tanks firing nearby, a surreal experience.
I had expected a profound change in vibration when entering a fresh formation, however their energies were subtle, rather than sizzling, and every circle had a different energy. One circle felt very upbeat and joyful, whilst another made everyone feel very peaceful, even sleepy. We spent some time looking for a member of our group and found her curled up asleep in the centre of smoothly folded spiraling circle.
The wind blew our hair and the long ears of barley as we laughed together in the complex and subtly formed yin-yang serpent at Walbury Hill. How the crop was woven so gently into this soft yet clear formation that contained contrary sometimes spiraling swirls is a mystery. We jumped and sang in the coded rapeseed mandala at Wilton Windmill and we thanked the circle-makers in the drizzle at Stoney Littleton. Later we entered the adjacent long-barrow to give thanks by torchlight, to our ancestors buried there thousands of years ago.
On one occasion at Pewsey we found access to a circle blocked by bulky farm labourers under instructions from the owners. The Rothschild estate, had decided to refuse access to a sensational design, which they described as an act of vandalism. Fortunately a steep nearby hill provided a great vantage point to study the design of twenty segments each divided un-symmetrically into a further ten segments. Researchers speculated on the meaning of the code, conspiracy theorists on its location.
I was surprised that there weren't more people in and around the circles and I discussed this at length after the tour with some English friends. These intelligent, well travelled and well educated people all seemed to have bought the "Doug and Dave" story perpetrated by the tabloid press, renowned for setting up any stunt to ridicule, further promote sales or enhance circulation figures.
A while back two larrikins claimed to have created a crop circle with a plank and a piece of string. No evidence or convincing footage shot at night was produced and they have been challenged on numerous occasions to reproduce any of the large complex designs that have appeared so far, sometimes in just fifteen minutes, in broad daylight, next to busy roads. A simple circle they maybe able to make but a huge complex design the size of two football pitches, they have yet to reproduced.
I was stunned by my English friends’ total lack of interest in exploring this amazing phenomenon, which has been happening right on their doorstep for more than three decades. They are not alone - the Great British public expresses a uniquely English apathy about this significant phenomenon, one of the great enigmas of the early twenty-first century.
This is an apathy not shared by the British military. An old friend who lived in the crop circle area and explored many over the years described the unpredictable behavior of a military whose top brass express disinterest in an obvious invasion of its territory. She described several occasions when she witnessed high speed, low level flyovers by military choppers apparently chasing some invisible object. There is apparent disinterest in the recent account if an off duty policeman who stopped by a fresh crop circle to offer assistance to what he thought was a white clad forensics team. They appeared to be exceptionally tall and ran way from him at high speed as he approached. It merited a three line account in the ever vigilant British press.
Late in our tour, on the day we were to visit Glastonbury Tor, a place sacred to my distant ancestors, one of our group confided in me that since waking she had been experiencing an intense tingling in her hands and body which increased as the day continued. It did not stop at the top of strange isolated natural hill that is Glastonbury Tor that was the Isle of Avalon and it continued to build as the day unfolded. After visiting the burial place of King Arthur in Glastonbury Abbey, our day’s pilgrimage culminated in a hike across verdant, rolling English countryside. The balmy summer sun continuing to warm us as day slowly transformed itself into a long summer evening.
Gog and Magog are two ancient Druid oak trees that are best approached on foot by an old bridleway and they can be hard to find. Fortunately the UK is covered by a matrix of these old ‘rights of way’, which are kept open by being constantly used by walkers.
Many believe these two ancient Druid trees to be over two thousand years old. Certainly they are the progeny of trees which formed a sacred avenue leading up to the Tor itself, planted by my Druid ancestors many thousands of years ago. The Druids created a pre-Christian language based on symbols relating to trees and they loved them dearly. Unfortunately the entire avenue was willfully desecrated and destroyed and only two trees remain, one of which is near the end of its time on this earth.
They are magnificent and it is moving just to be in their presence. For one member of our group however it was much more. Her whole body shaking, she stood before the trees crying as she remembered her time with them as a Druid high priestess, a culmination of the increasing vibration she had been experiencing since breakfast.
After standing before them for a long time she reached out and touched one of the trees and was transported into a state of total bliss, as she experienced a profound reunion with her old friends.
That evening the initiate having been selected, encircled by the group, we embarked on a Crystal Dreaming® journey to discover more. First she looked deeper into her past life as a Druid, then we spoke with the circle-makers. They advised us that the circles were their playful way of stimulating small circles like ours. They told us that they only communicate with groups focussed on unconditional love. We asked, would they like to create a circle for us, nearby?
They responded positively saying they would be happy to create one nearby very soon, we requested a sacred geometry design based on the flower of life. We were disappointed when no new circles were reported during the two remaining days of our trip.
However three days after our tour finished, just fifteen miles from our base, a gigantic geometric formation was discovered at White Sheet Hill near Mere, Wiltshire. It is stunning in its scale, symmetry and complexity
It took me a while to figure it out, but when I did I was absolutely staggered when I realised what it contained, I could barely believe what I was seeing. This complex, apparently abstract design bears testimony to the fact that not only are the circle-makers communicating with us, we are communicating with them. They have finally proven their existence as sentient beings ready to communicate in a two way dialogue with humans who attune to unconditional love.
The White Sheet Hill formation fits perfectly within the flower of life, the design we had requested days earlier.
Raym is a practicing shaman who teaches his Crystal Dreaming® technique to practitioners worldwide. He takes crop circle and sacred sites tours to the UK annually. More stories here... Diary of an Urban Shaman.
Copyright© This column may not reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, either in whole or in part, without prior written permission of the author Raym Richards.
This story was published in the August 2010 edition of Living Now magazine
White Sheet Hill, Mere, Wiltshire June 25, 2010
Flower of Life
Crop circle design
Design and Flower of Life