Our December article about the official collapse of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies has stirred up some strong feelings about the reasons for it in NICK KOLLERSTROM...


The London Crop Circle Forum in January 2006 heard Michael Green talking about how the CCCS (Centre for Crop Circle Studies) closed down after its 15 years of active life. As its permanent president, he should perhaps have been in a position to tell us why? The phenomenon is carrying on as lovely and as unpredictable as ever (indeed, I’d say 2005 was one of its best years), and yet Britain’s society for studying the phenomenon dissolved itself. Why would it have done that?

Our President naturally put forward his view, which he has endorsed for quite a few years, that 95% of the crop circles each year are man-made. As there were less than 100 recorded in the UK last year, I guess that means one was ‘genuine.’ He can tell this, as he has long been prepared to explain to anyone who wishes to listen, by scrutinising aerial photographs. Thus the CCCS has had a permanent president whose view of the phenomenon was, to all intents and purposes, identical with that of the hoaxers. Or should we call them ‘cereal artists’? They are indeed willing to acknowledge that the odd one here and there may be ‘unexplained.’

I’ve known CCCS council members over the years and seen their valiant efforts to try and get somewhere with the study of Britain’s Number One Miracle. In a sense the message of the phenomenon is nonverbal, so I never really envy people who are obliged to make statements about it. But (big sigh) I am prepared to say that they experienced their efforts as undermined by having a President whose views were utterly at odds with their own. None of them, I believe it is fair to say, in the least endorsed the President’s view of the phenomenon, in terms of the percentage that were man-made. Did they? [Actually, one or two others did, with an equal lack of solid reason, but all the many others who DIDN’T endorse this view were long ago frightened off being part of CCCS and left the sceptical core to it – Ed] Indeed I never met anyone in the CCCS who could even make sense of the President’s view of the phenomenon. And it should be the duty of a president to give expression to the views of the council behind him or her.

Michael would hold forth about the sinister influence of the US ‘Skeptics’ in funding hoaxer groups in the UK, unsuspected by the simple-minded croppies, and then you waited for him to get round to providing some evidence for this – well, don’t hold your breath, as Andy Thomas would say.

I’d say that the ‘genuineness’ of a formation can only be apprehended by being there soon after its appearance; or, if you can’t do that, by talking to someone who was. There is no ‘litmus test’ or ‘criterion’ for assessing this, precisely because of the plastic, mutable nature of the phenomenon. It has to be an intuitive judgement… One may call Michael Green ‘The Terminator’ for the strange influence he has exerted, in bringing about (in my view) the demise of the society he helped to found.


Meanwhile, for those still interested in the real phenomenon, please note my improved ‘Hypermaths’ website - the holistic geometry of tomorrow ...

* Thrill to the construction of Crooked Soley (Aug 2002)

* Gasp at the nested parabolae (July 2005)

* Be incredulous at the frequency interference-patterns (August 2004)

(N.B. these three are all in Ch.8) Every picture expands upon clicking.

Its address is:

www.hypermaths.org/cropcircles/

Viewers may find that contemplating these geometries brings happiness, on account of their deep inner harmonies.