A City of Pyramids (part 2)

Part Two – Spiders Webs: The East Kennet formation 22nd July 2011

After completing the drawing of the East Kennet formation, as pleased as I was with the result, it seemed something was missing. It was that big blackness in the middle of the picture that bothered me. Comparing the drawing to the actual photo, it was plain that the thing that was missing was the floor-lay.

Traditionally, crop circle drawings denote the laid crop as black and the standing crop was white, but when the floor lay is patterned, and is an integral part of the design as a whole, a simple black and white drawing means that this intrinsic element is missing (literally blacked out), and so it gives a false impression of what the formation actually looked like.

We first started to see elaborate floor-lays as early as the 1990s; the first time I remember seeing a truly sophisticated floor-lay was in the Koch snowflake of 1997. The design required a huge area of crop to be flattened in order to fill the interior of the formation. To simply flatten the crop in a big swirl would have perhaps been acceptable, even expected, but what took the Koch snowflake to a new level was undoubtedly its beautifully patterned floor-lay – it gave the formation an almost three-dimensional appearance.

The late, great, John Michell drew and painted this formation. His watercolour can be seen in our Crop circle Year Book 2000, or another version can be seen in his Magnum Opus – ‘How the World is Made’ (Thames & Hudson). John was fascinated and very impressed by the floor-lay in this formation; laid in distinctive, successive bands (from the outside inwards) until reaching a central swirl. These patterns are barely perceptible at all at ground-level; it is not until one takes to the air on a sunny day, with plenty of light and contrast, that they really come to life.

While some floor-lays can seem to be a pretty addition to a design, others have evolved to become an integral part of that design. The floor-lay at East Kennet was definitely of the later category. Rather than just being an attractive way to fill space, this floor-lay had a design all of it’s own (separate to that of the rest of the design) and it was a recognizable pattern – a spider’s web. I decided that my exploration of this formation was not complete until I had made a drawing of the floor-lay. The pattern was picked from the integral geometric structure of the formation. In order to generate the pyramids around the perimeter of the design, the 360° of the circle had to be divided into twenty. The floor-lay tells us how this was done. Two pentagons are created, one placed over the other, to fashion a ten pointed star, then ten further points are created, where the perimeters of these two shapes intersect (see above). The pattern for the floor lay can now be picked out and flattened to create the distinctive spider’s web design.

I am no expert on the symbolism of the ancient Maya, and don’t know whether, or not, the spider’s web is linked to their culture in any way, but from a purely archetypal standpoint the web is a symbol for the interconnectedness of all things. The diaphanous nature of the spider’s web links it squarely to the realm of consciousness, where it symbolises the unseen patterns and pathways that underpin our reality. Just as the gossamer threads of the web are made visible in morning dew, the web is also linked to synchronicity – those strange connections where our unseen inner world meets the tangible outer world.

It was the Goddess Ariadne, who gave Theseus a silken thread of great strength that allowed him to venture into, and return safely, from the Minotaur’s labyrinth – her name is derived from the genus name for the spider, arachnid. She is therefore one who is a guide and protector in the realm of consciousness exploration. So as you can see, the spider’s web is of rich symbolic meaning.

In the East Kennet formation, the position of the web is also important, as it connects the crowned alien-head at the centre of the formation (see previous blog) to the pyramids at its perimeter. Here the web shows us the connection between the old classical world of the pyramid makers to the ultra-modern world of alien-consciousness. I find this utterly fascinating. While there is much ‘popular chatter’ about ancient knowledge and its pertinence to our modern world, it seems that this formation symbolises a drawing together of these two realms. As I was researching this blog, I came across this picture of an Islamic pattern that reminded me so much of the crop circle, that I include it here. What interested me was the link between the number ten and the spider’s web. As I have scoured the internet and not a few of my own books, I have found that the spider’s web is often drawn as being ten-fold in nature. This does not mimic the natural world, as webs vary from spider to spider and species to species, but symbolically, it seems, it is much associated with the number ten. Ten is the first of the dual digit numbers, it contains zeros and ones (like the binary of our modern computer and digital media language) and in our modern world zeros and ones convey information invisibly via the internet world-wide-web! The famous spider’s web crop circle at Avebury in 1994, also depicted the web as being divided into ten equal segments.

The number ten has some fascinating properties. For instance, it is the sum of the first four numbers 1+2+3+4=10. The Pythagoreans enshrined the number ten in the Tetraktys (a triangular pattern made from ten dots), which was said to represent the whole of the universe. Ten is five doubled, it is therefore an intensification of the life-generating number five and, as we shall see shortly, the pyramids of this formation each had five steps. Perhaps most importantly here, ten is a number of the new – but significantly – the new encapsulating the old. The number ten is made from the parental numbers of one and zero, but contains within itself all of the numbers of the decad. This echoes very much the link between the old and new worlds symbolised by the alien-head, the web, and the pyramids inside the East Kennet crop circle.

Finally, the East Kennet formation was surrounded by pyramids, the design looked like a gigantic ancient plaza encircled by ten pyramids, each with five steps. I saw the image (below) on the internet and have reproduced here because it gives a flavour of the kind of mental imagery that this formation evokes.

Throughout this formation we have found the numbers five, ten and twenty. To me, this formation is about the intensification of the number five and was the herald of the Jubilee Plantation formation (Aug 2011), where we finally saw the fifth dimension fully manifest for the first time.

The crop circles are of profound cultural significance; they contain within their designs an amazing amount of information about the current themes being played out in the collective unconscious and beyond. Those who would strip them down to their basest, lowest, common denominators do a great disservice to our culture and our world. Formations such as East Kennet serve to remind us how the circles, if we are respectful, patient and willing, can enrich our lives. And how they can be a reflection of, and simultaneously a catalyst for, change on a monumental level.

If the East Kennet formation demonstrates nothing else, it demonstrates just how dense the symbolism, number and geometry within the crop circles can really be!

Post Script.
Back in the summer just after the East Kennet formation appeared, I was drinking a coffee in my local shopping centre (and yes it was a boring decaf!), when I suddenly looked up and this is what I saw…

Five-step pyramids! Not that I am obsessed or anything, but I saw the patterns as a synchronistic intensification of my absorption by the crop circle designs! Long may it continue!

KAREN ALEXANDER – DECEMBER 2011