Hackpen Hill, Wiltshire, Reported 30th May 2011. Barley
“You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you just might find
You get what you need” – The Rolling Stones
It always gives me great joy to see people attempting to draw the crop circles. I prefer the time-honoured hand-drawn method personally, although I know many now like the convenience of computer graphics. There is just something contemplative and meditative about drawing with a compass on paper. You get to feel the shapes as you draw them; to understand their construction and the way the shapes fit together.
I am by no means any great geometer let me tell you! But I enjoy the struggle with the crop circle shapes when transferring them to paper and I always feel I know a crop circle a little better if I can draw it. Drawing the crop circles creates an intimacy between the drawer and his (or her) subject. I consider my drawings sketches, they are not inch perfect diagrams; I draw them in the service of understanding the geometry.
However, the Hackpen Hill formation of the 30th of May presented a problem for many amateur geometers. Firstly, it was thought that it was only partially finished. This may, or may not be true (who knows!), but on the face of it there doesn’t seem to be any real reason to suppose this at all. Here we have a design which has three equally spaced circles connected by a unifying central circle. Then in each of the three equally placed circles is a DIFFERENT pattern. One circle is a simple ringed circle, another shows a set of nested circles of increasing (or decreasing) sizes, and the third shows a harlequin design – again using circles of increasing (or decreasing) sizes.
I have seen a number of diagrams of this formation on the internet, many of them, I have to say, quite them beautifully crafted. In many of these renderings the harlequin design has been repeated three times, as if to show that the formation in question was partially finished and that this ‘triple-harlequin’ was clearly the intended design.
Now I have to admit here to being slightly baffled by this. Why did so many make this assumption? The Hackpen Hill crop circle quite plainly shows us three circles of differing designs. I understand, because one of the three is quite plain, that it might be tempting to see the formation as unfinished. I could understand even more if the other two circles showed exactly the same pattern – but they don’t.
I’m sure the answer to some of this lies with the human penchant for simplicity, symmetry, and order. However, look again at the circle – really look at what is actually there and you realise that this is not what was ever intended.
Sometimes we can look at things and in fact fail to see what is before us. This happens especially with repeating patterns. We expect to see them. We fill in the missing parts without thinking. It’s part of human nature. But if we are to really grasp the patterns and geometry of the crop circles we have to look at what is there, rather than what we expect to see, or would like to see. Sometimes by hook, or by crook, circumstance, or coincidence (and just like the Rolling Stones song), we might not get what we want – but we might just get what we need!
I liked this circle for what was really there. To me, this circle seemed to show three stages, or ‘aspects’ of an unseen whole. It bordered on the ‘Integral’, a multi-aspected design that shows all perspectives of a unified design simultaneously. I found it fascinating just as it was.
KAREN ALEXANDER – JUNE 24, 2011
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