Farley Mount, Hants.

(nr Beacon Hill Plantation, Stockbridge)

Detail: This circle was reported on the 8th of July and is in a field of green wheat close to the folly/monument at Farley Mount in Hampshire. The circle measures approximately 200ft in diameter. 

Visiting: This crop circle has now been harvested. The farmer has now cut out the interior of this circle to discourage visitors. Please stay out of this field, there is no longer anything to see. Thank you. Could we take this opportunity to ask that everyone please respect the farmers wishes when they do not want people in their fields. There was a great view of this circle from Farley Mount which has now been spoiled and the circle has now gone and can no longer be enjoyed by anyone. There are many reasons some farmers may not want people in their fields (including your safety) – please respect their wishes. Thank you. 

Location: Farley Mount is a local beauty spot popular with walkers and picnickers. It is one of the highest points in Hampshire and the views and surrounding countryside are stunning. 

From the Hampshire County Council website:

The site is named after the famous monument to the horse named ‘Beware Chalk Pit’. It belonged to Paulet St John, the 3rd Earl of Bolingbroke. The horse carried its owner to a racing victory in 1734, just a year after it fell into a chalk pit during a fox-hunt

 

The inscription on the plaque on the north wall reads:
“Underneath lies buried a horse, the property of Paulet St. John Esq, that in the month of September 1733 leaped into a chalk pit twenty-five feet deep a foxhunting with his master on his back and in October 1734 he won the Hunters Plate on Worthy Downs and was rode by his owner and was entered in the name of Beware Chalk Pit”

 

The all round views from the monument are impressive. The monument itself can be seen from far and wide, particularly when the sun reflects off the white walls.

History & Connections: There have been circles before at Farley Mount one in 1990 and another in 2002. See the Geometry Gallery for more images. 

Design & Symbolism: This design is undoubtedly made from the intersection circles and rings, which create an interference-type pattern. Looking at this circle made me immediately think of the famous ‘double-slit’ experiment in quantum mechanics where photons are fired at a barrier with two  vertical slits. Traditional Newtonian Physics would dictate that the photon would travel through either one of the two slits before hitting a second, solid barrier. Logic then dictates that the photons would make two vertical lines on the back barrier  – one line for those photons going through the left slit and another for those going through the right. Right? No. Not always.

When the experiment is being recorded or measured this is indeed what does happen. However, when the experiment is left to run and no one is measuring or recording the photons do something amazing; each photon goes through both slits at the same time. This creates a classic interference pattern on the barrier. This strange ability to be two places at once is one of the central tenets of quantum physics and what makes the whole quantum world very strange. 

What seems to be suggested by this experiment is that consciousness plays a part in how reality unfolds. And although we know it happens, and we put this to practical use in modern technology (including in your mobile/cell phone), we really don’t yet, still understand exactly why. Physicists use what is called the ‘uncertainty principle’ to describe this behaviour, which basically says that in this instance, it is not possible to accurately calculate what any particle may or may not do; it is for some, however, an unsatisfactory solution. Many physicists do not like the idea of consciousness playing a role in the ‘objective’ world, but physicists are not the only people who get to legitimately describe and define reality. Certainly, in other academic disciplines this idea is not so much of an anathema and is discussed and debated widely. 

I have often wondered about the symbolism of interference patterns as crop circles; made as they are with no-one watching and recording them as they are made in secret, in the dark, at night. Just like the double slit experiment, they seem to be showing us something about consciousness and its role in the unfolding of reality. 

See Geometry Gallery below for more analysis.

Visiting the Circles? If you are thinking of visiting any crop circles this summer, please read our Visiting the Crop Circles section. It’s full of useful information and etiquette for visiting the countryside and the crop circles. Please remember that you should not enter any fields without the express permission of the farmer.

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Please Help to keep us Flying in 2019: If you have enjoyed looking at our pictures and information please consider making a small donation to keep us flying. There are so few of us left regularly recording the circles it’s really important that we continue. And while some now use drones to record the circles, it is important that there are still images taken from aircraft where the best quality camera equipment can be used and images that include the broad vista of the landscape can be taken. This kind of photography is expensive and it gets harder with each passing year to raise the funds we need to continue our work, but if everyone who regularly looked at this website made a small donation we would meet the funds we need. You can make a donation here.

NOTE: Some of the images below are beautiful landscape scenes. Click on each image to enlarge them and see the whole picture.

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Geometry Gallery

“If there’s 100 people in the audience, you’re going to get 100 different interpretations, especially when things get abstract. It’s beautiful. Everybody’s a detective and whatever they come up with is valid in my mind”.

David Lynch. (Film Director & Artist)

A word on meaning 

I don’t really think that the crop circles have a specific meaning. Not in the sense that they have a singular narrow interpretation. I think they’re meant to provoke, evoke, challenge and delight us in equal measure and to some extent they speak to us all individually as well as collectively. 

Number is but one way to approach the circles. It is in many ways a universal language – I certainly don’t think humans invented number, I think, rather,  we discovered it, or perhaps even (dare I suggest), we deeply intuited it. It is uncanny the way in which we can describe the universe, its forces, substances and behaviour with number – with blackboard full of equations; numerals and strange mathematical symbols. Is not number and mathematics a formal (consensus) form of symbolic language that we use to describe the universe?

If we discovered number, uncovered it rather than invented it, what does that say about us and our relationship to the Universe – did we deeply intuit number because we somehow have a deep connection to the universe that is much more than object and subject? There are some big questions here I think. 

Numbers in the Farley Mount Crop Circle

The crop circle at Farley Mount was a geometer’s delight. A formation of manifest and manifold correspondences. 

I decided early-on that when I drew this formation I would like to extend the geometry out beyond its perimeter and include what I (probably rather clumsily) call ‘radiating geometry’. I always feel that some circles are just larger than their seeming perimeter and the circles in this formation seemed to indicate that the pattern of this formation rippled out, unseen, into the landscape and I wanted to show that in my painting. 

Sometimes the seemingly simple can be incredibly powerful, not that this crop circle was simple, bit it was incredibly powerful and it used the  beautiful, humble, Divine circle to achieve something wonderful.

As the shape associated with the Divine (or the Heavens), the circle is immediately special. Although it might be the first shape we draw after the point and the line, it is unequalled for both its simplicity and complexity. The circle is a continuous unbroken line at an equal distance from the point at its centre; child’s play when drawn with a compass, its anything but when you try to do it free hand – and yet the curve, or curl is one of the first shapes we instinctively draw when we are children. 

This circle is first divided into four (a quaternity like at Danebury Ring this year), then there are four groups of interlacing rings, which radiate out from a central small circle and reach the central narrow, standing-ring in six iterations. The fit is perfect. If you look at the pencil line drawing below you’ll see what I mean.

The inner perimeter of the standing central ring and the inner perimeter of the ring around the outside of the formation have a relationship that allows a pentagram to fit precisely between the two – also shown in the pencil line drawing. This hidden pentagram, gives the design an affinity with living things, as the pentagram generates Phi – which is found throughout the portions of all living things. To me the presence of Phi gives the crop circles a living, geometrical-spirit if you will.

So the numbers at play in this formation are: 1 (unity/Divine), 4 (quaternity/substance), Five (growth and generation) and Six (structure and harmony) – That’s a nice set of interacting numbers. There are 81 standing elements in the formation – including the central standing ring. 

In my text at the top of the page I have written about the fundamental nature of interference patterns and their relationship to the most puzzling part of the behaviour of elementary particles, particularly the photon. I have often wondered if the circles are hinting at something similar taking place in Man himself – is consciousness also ultimately Quantum in nature? It’s an interesting question. Are we walking wave functions that collapse the world into being as we live, breathe and perceive?

Notes:

Past circles at Farley Mount: You will find images of two past circles at this location in the picture gallery below.

Further Geometry: There are also a set of analyses by geometer Peter van den Burg in the gallery – Peter was able to show further correspondences – including Squaring of the Circle and a set of Phi rectangles. His work is further food for thought.

Thanks/Credits:

Text | Hand-drawn Images by Karen Alexander.
With special thanks to Peter van den Burg for his additional diagrams and analyses below. You can see more of his great work on his Facebook page Geometry of the crop circles.

The image of the circle at Farley Mount in 1990 is taken from Latest Evidence by Colin Andrews & Pat Delgardo 
Bloomsbury Publishing 1990 | ISBN-13: 978-0747508434