copyright Jonah Ohayv 9/2002
For the background story and for others' interpretations of this shocking event, it would be wize to read the excellent articles at the end of this commentary. For the very relevant history and interpreatations of last year's two stunning formations only 8 miles away, which were in some ways very closely related to the new crop-circle, you'll find a thorough collecton of the best Internet articles here, at http://www.korncirkler.dk/cccorner/chilbolton2.html . You really need to know the original story before judging this new one.
Now, my own observations.
Due to the stern, bare appearance, let's call this being "he". He's not just a neutral "extra-terrestrial", but certainly an "alien", meaning a being of a different kind from a distant place, who might be dangerous.
In our Western picture-language, the fuzzy, intentionally hazy lines around him mean movement, giving us an unsurety of what we're seeing.
More than half of his head is in shadow - hidden, turned away, unknown, hinting: "Be on your guard." The dark shadowing in and behind the hidden section of his face enhances an emaciated look. The entire head is surrounded by a dark "aura".
The seen wide-open, somewhat protruding eye with its rectangular pupil certainly contains no warm expression. It seems demanding, fixed, or shocked. The eye in darkness is more like a slanted slit.
The huge, slanting frown between the eyes is concentrated, distrustful, maybe hiding some back-thoughts or an emotion like potential anger. The dark, extreme, V-eyebrows are those of demanding power.
The huge eye-cavity and shadows around the eye-sockets and cheek bones show habitual extreme alertness or wariness. The sharp cheekbone and its indented shadow are ascetic, disciplinarian.
The bulging skull represents an enormous brain, someone with much mental power and ability.
The sharply shadowed nose and chin denote a set intent and discipline, and the long, sharp chin is power-asserting, controlling, good for "chewing out".
The straight mouth is expressionless, on the guard, perhaps pessimistic.
The emotional expressiveness and softness of our hair is gone: he's bald, and perhaps an older, senior individual.
In conclusion, in this purposely chosen(!) representation, he's thought-oriented with no warm feelings, an authority figure who implies systematic disciplining.
Further assuming that this race by implication would be behind the earlier sending of crop-circles, they would indeed know humanity well - as earlier repeatedly demonstrated by, among other proofs: the interactive clairvoyant and telepathic synchronicities which many serious crop-circle enthusiasts have experienced; and by the cases of recognized, ancient, esoteric religious and philosophical symbols from our collective history, which have been used as crop-circle symbols.
This fellow is something of a charicature of the usual described "greys". One could even say the half portrait makes fun of our stereotype images of "greys". But are we laughing? Many people half-consciously take the stereotype of a potentially dangerous alien seriously. So only a few UFO-connoiseurs will focus on the insider-humour of this being's stern appearance. Many other people will emotionally throw his picture out as too preposterous, and with it, throw out both this crop-circle and perhaps most former crop-circles.
So the portrait itself can only serve those interested in pushing an either bad or mocking impression of space-beings, and this would imply that it was indeed made by such a well-coordinated group with, as a minimum, that intention.
The CD-like disk contains much less information than our CDs are used for - it simply stretches out spelled single letters. As Paul Vigay points out, the English language is no universal medium, as math would be, or pictorial diagrams would approach being, and a computerized alphabet-form (one of our quite recent modes from the 1960's) is even less so. If English has been chosen as our most dominant spoken language, then the message is not equally addressed to the great non-English speaking section of humanity, and its form also reinforces the world's presently existing cultural hierarchy based on power-relations. Limitations like these are why written language has not been used (to my knowledge) in our official messages sent or beamed into space, meant for other intelligences.
Here is Eltjo H. Haselhoff's rendition of the spiral's basically decoded message :
"Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts & their BROKEN PROMISES. Much PAIN but still time. EELRIJUE. There is GOOD out there. We OPpose DECEPTION. Conduit CLOSING [bell sound]"
Look at the pidgeon English used. It's the old movie-trick: "Here's a real foreigner for sure, he gets the grammar wrong and leaves out words." As in, "Me Indian - you cowboy. Much pain but still time!" The chaotic use of capitals is likewise either for intentional confusion or to imply a mysterious second code (which no one has found) within the first. The much debated nonsense-word in the text's middle is either a mistake or again a third, unbroken code.
The first e-mail from the man who most quickly deciphered the code was received shortly after the publication on Internet of the formation's photos; it was sent to a prolific net-publisher of crop-circle articles, Linda Moulton Howe, and is signed simply Richard. The many strange errors in his use of language there - particularly his very frequent unaccountable use of capital letters, but also grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors parallels the level of grave language errors in the coded text itself. He would fit well on the coding committee. His later e-mails to her are cleansed of such errors and signed Richard Brain. How many people do you know with instant mathematical expertise with the last name Brain? How much humour are we receiving?
The colloquial phrase "out there" is a give-away; which sort of sender uses our slang? If "out there" means outer space, the place it's sent from should be called "here". If "out there" means outside each individual person, beyond ourself, the message is no longer advice to humanity as a collective whole, but to us as single persons.
Most of the phrases are negatively put. The number of negatively-laden single words, especially capital words, is greater than the message's number of positive words. The message is purposely vague and general, and thereby can support lots of wishful thinking, any number of projections of proposed deeper meaning (as an example, see sections of source 8 below). This gives room for it to seem truer to a larger number of interpreters and their followers.
For far-advanced extra-terrestrials of any sort, there are too many broken, unfinished thoughts in the message, and it's tone is dire, not informative. Compare this with the Chilbolton prototypal face, with its combination of male and female and its neutral expression, and to its next-door code, with its wealth of precise postulates or information.
Option 1. Either hoaxers on the ground can now in essence make most anything designwise and (as seen from the aerial view only) constructionwise. No tell-tale physical signs of traditonal hoaxing, however, were found within this formation.
On the contrary, concerning the ground-lay (see articles 4, 14, and 3), Mark Fussell says the crop was dry and brittle, yet uncrushed when he as one of the first people arrived in it, crushing it as he walked. Lucy Pringle says that despite the crop's dry, mature state, no ripe seed-heads had been knocked off within the disc. Both Lucy and Charles Mallett say the formation's lay was the same sort as in Chilbolton last year. Paul Vigay's close-up photos of many of the crop circle's areas seem to show no examples of aesthetically touching or fantastic lay-patterns.
Option 2. Or the military has advanced air-borne computer equipment and technology which from satellites or airplances can in essence make most anything designwise and (as seen from the aerial view only) constructionwise. The face indeed seems computer-designed and to be constructed from far above, due to the difficulties of both measuring and manually flattening in the field precisely enough to fit the detailed overall patterns. It seems like somebody who likes to work with computers had a lot of fun.
Concerning the time-length of creation (see article 14), on Aug. 14 at 1 in the afternoon, the farmhand in the field saw part of the formation's frame and a numer of cross-lines, but found no downed crop in the later facial or disk areas. Another man reported the completed formation by e-mail Aug. 15 at 8 in the evening. Perhaps the formation was made in stages through successive nights, and not in the under 20 seconds which day-time eye-witnesses in the past have given as the duration of a genuine formation's creation.
Option 3. Or suspicious-looking aliens of this sort are behind the creation of both this crop-circle and of some percentage of others. The contrasting, several-scaled, obvious beauty of most formations would itself seem to contradict this.
The portrait part implies the association of malevolent aliens with crop-circles, at the mid-way timing when a Hollywood movie with this theme has its initial worldwise release and is trying to gain publicity, to sell tickets and perhaps also background beliefs. (Perhaps the same worldly sources who would undermine the general public's decades of growing awe of sighted UFOs are behind both of the above events, to give both extraterrestrials and crop-circles a really bad name.)
By implication, options 1 and 2 both desavour the technical designing of all previous crop-circles. One has to ask the question, "Perhaps, designwise and from the aerial view, these aspects of all crop-circles are now/were before capable of being made by the same techniques from the same humanly-controlled sources?" (My guess is that this discrediting and sowing of nagging doubt is one of the major reasons for this crop-circle having being made.)
1. Make fun of taking crop-circles seriously and of the researchers/croppies/ordinary people of the public who do so - if one bemusedly assumes this is a hoax.
2. Associate stern aliens with some of the prior, best, overwhelming crop-circles. And subconsciously become fearful, if taking the formation as a serious communication from these aliens.
It's a win/win choice for those who want to shoot down both crop-circles and extra-terrestrials.
The new formation specifically desavours last year's Chilbolton face and code, since due to the parallels in their theme and style, many people will assume by association that they were made by the same source and technique. If the present formation design is also hoaxed in a more detailed execution than the widely assumed genuine, Chilbolton formations were made with - well, justified confusion arises.
Now is their content similiar, or is their form just made to appear similiar by superficial tricks? The content of the new face is self-contradictory, and that of the new code is over-theatrical, abstract, and morose. The Chilbolton code, fiction or fact, is however a serious matter (as shown by systematic analyses in the articles about it), and that face makes us feel curious, not unpleasant. The overall feeling tones are likewise extremely different.
Remember that we're primarily a picture-minded and emotion-based human race, and our rational side is given less importance. People are immediately impressed with the Pitt formation because of the wealth of details in the face, although the code's content is insipid and vague. In Chilbolton, the code's content is rich and deep, but the visual face is ambiguous and vague. In this way, the Pitt formation upstages and steals the lime-light from the Chilbolton code of little squares, which glides behind the dark glitter.
I think that as many surface parallels have been made as possible, in order to intentionally discredit the Chilbolton formations. The idea being pushed is that either both years' formations bear water, which greatly compromises or even negates last year's messages, or that they will sink together, with the same result. There's clearly also the possibility of looking into the distinctions between them, as in this article, but the emotionality raised by the whole extra-terrestrial subject will in many persons often block the patience needed to systematically weigh details.
By this sleight, the Chilbolton formations - until now taken most seriously by at least the international research community - will for some lose much credibility as being a true communication from brotherly, informative space-beings. I see, however, every reason for people to pursue the further investigation of the information in the original Chilbolton code's already deciphered contents.
For starters - This season's closing crop-circle from Aug. 28 at Crooked Soley was described by Steve as a DNA-strand in a 6-fold shape. How might this geometrically tie in with the Chilbolton code's extra-terrestrial third DNA strand (containing silicon quartz, a hexagonal chrystal), with that strand's 6 steps per full spiral turn? When this new strand is also added to our traditonal double-helixed DNA (containing phosophorous), with its 10 steps per full turn? An unanswered question from Chilbolton is, "Is the extra-terrestrial's claimed 3-stranded DNA, with its greater abilities than ours, practically feasible?"
My considered guess is that the Pitt formation is made by a new military air-borne computerized technology, shooting some energy which can at the least adjustably rake through crop and push it down, but not form it into beautiful ground-lays (as had this been possible, it would also have been done). This is indeed an unnerving thought.
And that this has been done because the enthusiastic, collective deciphering of the Chilbolton code and continuing research into the consequences of its contents - by in many ways offering alternatives to our assumptions - does indeed threaten the perceived exclusive supremacy of several of our world's rather egoistic and short-sighted leading groups. To pull a brake on this focus, and to instill anxiety of extra-terrrestrials as ominous foreigners, a technically ingenious but content-wise superficial and self-contradictory, artificial crop-circle was made. "Damage control" turned subliminal propaganda.
And creatures of habit and hope that we are, our expectation and yearning for myth whispers now, "To be continued next year..", falsely assuming that when something is repeated and progresses, it thereby becomes truer and truer.
1. Photos from the air, Lucy Pringle
2. 2002 Image Gallery, Steve Alexander
http://temporarytemples.co.uk/crop-circles/2002-crop-circles pages 6-7
3. The Crabwood Event
http://cropcircles.lucypringle.co.uk/a-formation-in-a-field-east-of-winchester-just-off-sarum-road/
4. Star Nation's Special Art
http://www.starnationgallery.com/articles/2002-articles/star-nations-special-art/
5. Observations from the
Alien & Code formation, Crabwood
http://www.martinkeitel.net/cropcircles/articles/alien.html
6. Crabwood Formation Offers Clear Evidence of Contact Event
http://www.yowusa.com/et/2002/et-2002-08a/1.shtml
7. Is The Crabwood Formation a Hoax?
http://www.yowusa.com/et/2002/et-2002-09a/1.shtml
8. Are Extraterrestrials at Odds With Crop Circle Messages
http://yowusa.com/et/2003/et-2003-05a/1.shtml
9. Crop Circles and Life at Parallel Space-Time Sheets: part II
http://www.scienceoflife.nl/MPitkanen-CropCircles2.pdf
10. Comments on the formation
http://www.swirlednews.com/article.asp?artID=514
plus articles 495, 501, 512 and others